A few pieces of my work.

[Kokoro]

I rarely show my work here. This is the sort of pictures I take. I do a little research on places and then plan my trips before spending a day out and about with the cameras. When I can afford to go.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Do you have an affinity to fixer upper houses and "real estate with great potential", or is that just a result of the limited selection provided?

 

[Dali]

Do you work towards an end with these pictures?

 

[Fixcinater]

If you'll humor me, I'd like to know more about a couple things :

Why do you make photos like you've shown here? What draws you to those scenes?

What do you do to get that specific color palette? It's rare that color work interests me, yours does very much so.

 

[amellice]

What do you do to get that specific color palette? It's rare that color work interests me, yours does very much so.

agree, the last one is nice colors

 

[Dr Croubie]

What do you do to get that specific color palette? It's rare that color work interests me, yours does very much so.

The middle one looks a lot like a few I've shot lately, on 10-year-old 250D, cross-processed in C41. The white spots look like bits of Remjet left over on the neg (I couldn't see them on the neg itself, they only showed up in scanning. Pecpad and Eclipse solved that).

I'm interested to see if this is what the OP does too...

 

[Kokoro]

Thanks for looking at my pictures.
I dont exactly know why I started photographing abandoned farms. I wanted to do something different and stand out. Something that isnt a tourist attraction or the typical places that attract urban explorers such as hospitals and forts. The farms have a human connection I guess. Also if I had a lot of money I would like to have a farmhouse in the country. I would love to restore one.

I am not an urban explorer, I wouldn't do anything ilegal or dangerous, I use os maps to find where the rights of way are that are close to places I would like to visit and I don't go inside. A lot of places are structually unsound and are dangerous to enter.

I have done a hospital recently though. It was an infectious diseases isolation hospital but is not like other hospitals.

I used to use BW400CN as my film of choice but when Boots stopped stocking it I looked to other films. I was using vista plus 200, because its cheap, in my trip 35 as an every day camera and recently I have bought a few rolls of Ektar 100 to see what its like so I have been using tham a lot recently. A lot of my pictures are also taken on out of date films that come into the charity shop my mother volunteers at.

I don't do too much to try to get a particular colour or warmth to my pictures though I would rather go out when its sunny. Maybe the light here in Wales helps? Sometimes I use a polarizer but I haven't been recently. I went through a time of using a redfilter and a polarizer on everything when using black and white film but I was never really satisfied with the results and I prefer to hand hold pictures anyway and the slower shutter speeds needed was a little annoying at times.

I dont do my own processing (yet). Any processing issues have come from "tesco". Although I have had some good scans back from tesco, the bottom picture, most have some sort of problem. My last film via tesco came back with finger prints on it and I had enough so last time I took films to be done I went to another place further away and more expensive but the processing is much better, top pic. Express Imaging on City Road in Cardiff. This place will also process black and white so I have put a roll of hp5 I have into my trip. I would like to self process but I dont have equipment or money to spare at the moment.

Thanks for looking. ^_^

 

[horacekenneth]

These are lovely! They feel haunting to me. Not in a scary way, more like a sense of what used to be.

 

[barzune]

Kokoro,

Your pictures are beautiful, and are what I keep looking for, on these forums (fora ?).

You see that the purpose of photography, as I see it, is to record a scene in order to show it to someone who has not seen it, but might be interested in it.

You show pictures of scenes that are significant,
but that may never be seen again.

Thank you, for reminding me of the most important reason why I first became interested in photography.

Dan

 

[Kokoro]

You show pictures of scenes that are significant,
but that may never be seen again.

Thanks Dan.

I have noticed places I have visited a few times have changed. One house had a lintle from an upper floor window fall down a few years ago. Without conservation they disappear fast.
The royal commission has a picture of a farmhouse I visited last month with two end-gable walls still standing but when I visited one had colapsed.

But also I have gone to visit places a few times but rather than finding an abandoned house it has been bought up and restored and has people living in it. Sometimes the building has already been demolished. You never know what you'll find.

Is it okay to share some more?

Llangewyd Court. A large farmhouse. I don't know when this one became derelict. Tiles have been stolen from the roof allowing water to enter the building. Vandals and thieves had used a telegraph pole of all things to break in through a bricked up window. The building still has a georgian interior but it won't last long without a roof. The house is built on the site of a monastic grange too.

Bovil Farm. This was the last frame on the film. I wanted to waste a shot so that I could change to black and white film. This ended up being my favourite of that day....

The farm overlooked two manor houses further down the mountainside. Both of them have been demolished.

 

[Kokoro]

Efail Fach. I don't know much about this cottage I couldn't find anything about it. All I know is that it was used as a barn but has since lost a corregated iron roof it had. It has been re-enforced in places with concrete. When I visited I noticed the remains of a sign or something metal on one of the walls. Maybe it was a pub at one time. It is right at the edge of a road.

Garth Hall. A large farmhouse. I went to visit a house site in a forestry planation one day and was disapointed to find that that house had been completely demolished and cleared. It wasn't a wasted journey because on the other side of the valley I saw this derelict farmhouse. So, a few days later I took another trip to find this other farmhouse. It is built into the side of a hill. The roof has colapsed in the last few years, there was still light fittings, skirting boards and wallpaper inside.

 

[marciofs]

I love old and abandoned buldings an ruins. They always inspires imagination about the time and people when it was occupied.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are full of them in the country and I love it. The best of them is that they are so natural there, just left. In Germany they try so hard to romantise houses gardens that they look reather too artificial, too planed and boring.

I wish I had a car and time to go explore as much as possible when I used to live in Ireland and was often in Wales and England. I miss a lot its countryside and people.

 

[Kokoro]

I love old and abandoned buldings an ruins. They always inspires imagination about the time and people when it was occupied.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are full of them in the country and I love it. The best of them is that they are so natural there, just left. In Germany they try so hard to romantise houses gardens that they look reather too artificial, too planed and boring.

I wish I had a car and time to go explore as much as possible when I used to live in Ireland and was often in Wales and England. I miss a lot its countryside and people.

There are a lot of laws and regulations about what can and cant be done to old buildings here that I have heard other countries dont have, maybe that gives people there a lot more freedom to buy up and alter old buildings.
Like I mentioned there are quite a few places I have been to that I was expecting to find derelict but there are cars parked in the driveway and some well-off family are living there. A farm near bridgend, a place near Perthcelyn and a house at Castellau, just places off the top of my head.

Another thing I have noticed with a lot of farms is that there is an old derelict farmhouse on the land because it was replaced with a newer one. Which is what happened with this one:

Cars. Although I have a car I don't have the income or the free time to do as many trips as I would like. That is probably the same of most of us though.

Some of the places I have visited are so overgrown and inaccessible I have only been able to get a partial image:

There have been a few that I have also walked away from without getting a good picture. I cannot be the only one to have creative off-days like that.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I like your photographic work a lot.

 

[Kokoro]

I like your photographic work a lot.

Thanks ^_^



Is it okay to post another?

Pen-y-Lan farm. It is at the very top of a hill and it was a long steep climb to get to it. I am not sure why it was abandoned. Maybe it was because the road to it, which is no longer a road just a footpath, is so steep.

A few of the old gates around there had stone gate posts like in the picture. I haven't seen them before.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

There is a strong sense of the forlorn in these photographs. Not just of the subjects. But also of the photographer who is, presumably, working far removed from other people and alone in creating them.

Just a guess, but I suspect they would not be nearly so delicately rendered if they had been created with crowds of people in the vicinity. Even disinterested people. The buildings would be the same. But the photographer would not.

Ken

 

[NJH]

Well I like your photographs a lot Kokoro. I live in the countryside, don't see many abandoned buildings but what I do see is lots of beautiful countryside and little towns which get over looked or over shadowed by the coastline 30 miles to the south. Photographing my local area is going to be my project over the next few years.

 

[Kokoro]

There is a strong sense of the forlorn in these photographs. Not just of the subjects. But also of the photographer who is, presumably, working far removed from other people and alone in creating them.

Ken

Maybe my INFP personality comes over in the pictures?

Well I like your photographs a lot Kokoro. I live in the countryside, don't see many abandoned buildings but what I do see is lots of beautiful countryside and little towns which get over looked or over shadowed by the coastline 30 miles to the south. Photographing my local area is going to be my project over the next few years.

I do a lot of research of places and keep a lot of notes about places I would like to photograph. I have two in Dorset at the moment omn the list. The first is a ruined "large domestic building" in Witchampton. It is on private land but may be able to be seen from the road.
The other is the ruins of a 14C house in the middle of Sturminster Newton castle hillfort. I cant see how to get to it though on maps.

 

[Drew B.]

These are all my types of shots...although I'd rather see them taken with a LF camera. It is so much more interesting shooting old decaying structures than some new oversized dwelling that looks over the ocean...!

 

[StephenT]

Good work. Keep it up.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Kokoro,

Your pictures are beautiful, and are what I keep looking for, on these forums (fora ?).

You see that the purpose of photography, as I see it, is to record a scene in order to show it to someone who has not seen it, but might be interested in it.

You show pictures of scenes that are significant,
but that may never be seen again.

Thank you, for reminding me of the most important reason why I first became interested in photography.

Dan

the technically correct plural of forum is 'fora' but 'forums' is far more commonly used in general writing. I'm glad someone at least cares

 

[Kokoro]

Not all my pictures are any good. I should have rejected this one. Shadows in the picture. Distracting buildings in the distance. Not enough of the farmhouse in the picture. useless.
The thing is I drove for hours to get to the farm. It is on MOD land and there are only limited times when you can get close to it. The farmhouse has interesting features like the round chimney which is unique to this part of wales. I have wanted to visit for years. Despite all the planning, it is isn't until you get somewhere that you can really tell what pictures you can get from what angles. In this case I found there is a strict boundry to MOD land and it shouldn't be crossed. Keep-out and danger notices everywhere. I walked around but this is the best angle on the farmhouse I could find. So close and yet so far. No doubt other photographers have visited this place and had more courage and jumped the wall to get closer pictures but I didn't do that. I wont do a search for other pictures though, I will only get jealous of other people's pictures.
There are other abandoned houses nearby but they are way out in the military ranges and cannot be visited at all as far as I can tell.

 

[mono]

I love these images - and those old buildings!

 

[Kokoro]

https://www.instagram.com/p/8aPCPXEUBg/
Instagram pictre taken with phone just after I took the above picture.

Would that have worked? cropping the large barn on the right just passed the two windows to the closest edge of the farmhouse on the left?

 

[Kokoro]

Henllys. I didn't expect to see the Disco parked there. I don't know why it was left there. The land is still farmed maybe the land owner has left it there off the road?
Anyway my interest is in the house. The house has been vacant for a number of years, no proper road access. It is a little odd isn't it? Is this the front or the back? This is in-fact a grade II listed, 16th century house. It was held by the manor until the 1960s when it was sold to a private owner. That may have been when the original massive chimneys were pulled down and replaced by red brick ones and the house modernised. When I talked to a person who tends the church that is nearby she said she can remember it when it wasn't covered in concrete rendering and said how it was such a beautiful building.

This is the back? All the other houses I photograph are always to some degree, south facing. It is a thing with Wales, we only get the sun from the South. So houses are south facing. It is likely that this isn't the back of the house but may have originally been the front.

additional:
Kennexton Farmhouse, rebuilt at St Fagans museum originally stood 1.6 miles away showing what it may have looked like:
http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/stfagans/buildings/kennixton/