Staircase to heaven
May, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This is one of the uncountable staircases featured at the Bureau Central in France. Well known european urbex spot. This particular staircase appears in nearly every urbexer's portfolio who visited this location. Bureau Central was bulit approx. 1890 as a result of the developpement of one of the largest metal enterprises in france, the Wendel family. As they needed a really huge and grandiose office building to represent the family's achievement, they even upgraded the Bureau Central in 1926. After all, their workforce exceeded over 7000 people. Since the abandonment somewhere between 1980-1983, the building has been left on it's own.Time
As the picture has been taken indoor and nearly every window an door has been sealed, it's not that relevant, but as far as I can remember it was in spring during the morning when I entered this building.Lighting
The low amount on available light present for that shot only shortened exposure time for the long exposured captures.Equipment
Nikon D300s with the Tokina AT-X 10-17mm Fisheye on a Manfrotto 055XPROB Wireless triggerInspiration
As some available light enters the main hall of the Bureau Central, this is the most captured staircase in the whole office building. There are uncountable versions of this staircase and I wanted to create my own one, getting a sligthly different angle, lower point of view and usin a fisheye instead of a ultra wide angle lens.Editing
As this picture is a HDR, I set up my camera a 5 frames @ 1eV. Merged in Photomatix Pro, without any changes at all. Processed in Photoshop. Some minor prspective corrections, colour gradiation and adjustments, saturation, shadows/highlights and dodge & burn.In my camera bag
Actually my urbex gear backpack is a Hazard 4 Photo Recon with: Nikon D7200 Tokina AT-X 10-17mm Fisheye Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 Ultra Wide Angle Sigma 20-70mm f/2.8 Nikon 50mm f/1.8 Manfrotto 055XPROB CamRanger Wireless Trigger 1-2 Strobes with triggers ... and some urbex related "always carry with you stuff" ;)Feedback
As this goes into urbex photography, you're lucky if you get some available light. If you get it, use it! The more you have, the shorter your exposures will be ... if you're going the HDR way. Don't imitate but inovate.
