Urban Adventuring - II

I was over at the iconFactory pulling down a cool wallpaper called Indy's Desk.

It is a great desktop that has some nice retro-feel vibes to it.

While you are there go ahead and also pop-in at their Indiana Jones home page.  It is loaded with icon packs from the series.  Make great stock RocketDock icon replacements.

All this adventuring got me looking for some new urban-adventuring websites.

• opacity.us - Abandoned Photography and Urban Exploration has always been my hands-down favorite. I think it is due to the quality of the photography.  While there haven’t been as many recent posts of late, trips into the Eastern State Penitentiary and the Worcester State Hospital are more than worth-while.

• Lab-Wan also has a collection of interesting sites and photography. High-quality.

• Illicitohio.com is a bit rougher in the photography scale, but more than makes up for it in the unusual locations.  I’m not sure how, but somehow I ended up on this site (and this post) when I was following a link-to on Mike Tyson's former home. What seems so fascinating to me is the condition of the home and items still remaining in it, and that it was able to be breached.  The exterior looks pretty cool and interesting, but the scale of the interiors just seems so cold and large. It seems to be a place to make even the biggest men seem quite small.

• Dark Passage: Exercises in Forensic Archaeology – quite a collection here. I wish there were more photos-per-location, but the quality of them is very good and artistic.

• abandoned places – The website is as much mystery as the locations captured. Just have fun and click around.  You will get it down pretty fast.

• Abandoned – lots of black and white photos of buildings and industry in Moscow.  The scale of the abandoned and uncompleted structures is amazing.

• Urban Exploration Database – Very well organized and photographed.  I spent more hours that I care to admit looking at this site’s showcases of decay.

• Modern Ruins Photographic Essays - Shaun O’Boyle – This is more of an “old-school” website, but it really accentuates the drama of the locations captured.  There is a great variety of locations here, from Cape Canaveral to boatyards to mills.  All good and haunting.  Tip, don’t give up on the first page.  Scroll to the bottom of the photo-gallery and click “next”.  Often there are multiple pages per location lurking. Shaun has a great eye for detail.

• out of site - Similar presentation to Shaun's site above. More color.  For a good sample take a look at the southern railway freight depot gallery.  I've seen more than a fair number of similar buildings here and there in small Texas towns.

• Infiltration.org was/is a magazine based on covering just such locations.  I believe they are currently not actively publishing, but you can still get books via Amazon.com Anyway, they provide great material and organization for more linking.  For example, Infiltration: Texas has links to locations in and around Texas that are fun to explore (via the web).  They also have Infiltration - North America for links to places in other states as well.  Full of additional resources, tips, and ideas if you are thinking on taking more than a Web-observer's viewpoint and getting you own feet dirty in this hobby.

Wonder what our place will look like a hundred years from now....

--Claus