Gold Boxes

When I was in Mexico, all I could think about was how many great urbex opportunities there were down there and how I wasn’t going to be exploring any of them. Between the bus rides to and from the airport and the cab ride to the second resort we stayed at, I saw more great urbex locations than I can count on two hands. I would have absolutely loved to be able to pull over and explore all of them, but firstly, that wasn’t the reason for our trip, and secondly, I think it would have been pretty dangerous. Even if it wasn’t, I would have been too scared to wander around abandoned buildings in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language. So, since I’ve been home I’ve been chomping at the bit to get out and shoot a little urbex. Over the Christmas holiday we had a nice Chinook here in Calgary, so the temperatures were back in positive territory for a few days, and I took advantage by going out for a quick shoot on Sunday afternoon.

This is one of those shots that I visualized before I even knew how to get to the location. While driving home through the industrial part of Calgary, I saw these stacks of shipping containers and knew exactly how I wanted to shoot them…the only trick was finding how to get to them! Turns out it wasn’t too difficult to find, and I was able to get almost the exact shot I wanted. As usual, after running my brackets through Photomatix Pro, I exported the tonemapped image to Photoshop and applied a few of my favourite onOne Phototools filters (Grunge, Orton Hears a Who, Just Enough Darkness, Fall Out, and Enter the Dragon A4 applied selectively). Then I took it into FocalPoint to add the tilt effect I had envisioned. This was my first time using FocalPoint, and I couldn’t be happier with how that plug-in works. Very simple and intuitive, and the blur quality is fantastic. Hope you like it!