REPORT: Abandoned Hospitals & Cars

Over the last few weeks, I've been hearing and reading a lot about this abandoned hospital that was apparently closed down about fifteen years ago. it's a psychiatric hospital to be exact called 'Hospital del Torax'. Searching on google, you can find some pretty creepy images. Set several kilometres outside of the village of Terrassa in Catalunya Spain, it's situated in a valley on the edge of a forrest. From the information and the photographs I found, you can see that a few of the original medical machines and furniture have been left in various rooms, along with the ghosts from the many suicides 'they' say happened here. I found one fairly recent image that showed glass slides containing blood samples. Of course, all these objects are balanced with an equal measure of vandalism and graffiti, even though these days all entrances to the main building have been closed off. Still, the main entrance and exterior of the building look like they would be great places to photograph, so a friend and me decided to go and check it out.

I found the location on the map and last Sunday we drove up to have a look for ourselves. We arrived and hour later and found the best entry to the perimeter fence. We got the equipment out the car and set off following a vague trail of deep grass, climbed this tall dirt bank and arrived to the fence. My heart sank. The building is still there, but surrounded by scaffolding and cranes :( There was active restorations going on and no way through the fence. Cameras watching for intruders, we weren't going to get close today. What can I say, I couldn't believe it. I believe it has been taken over by a Spanish film company and restorations have gradually been taking place.

Walking back to the car, we found this large open brick shed. Inside was nothing but rubble and two completely torn down cars, (one being upside down on its roof), so I got a few shots, which you can see here...

I was indoors using a 50mm lens which gives a very narrow field of view, so finding good composition was important. Looking at them, I happy how they came out.

So... moral of the story, if the first idea doesn't go to plan for whatever reason, there's always substitutes and other solutions available, we just have to find them!

Simon @ theblend
http://www.theblend.co.uk/

INTRO: Hello World! (Please, come on in, welcome to post number one! :)

Hey! Welcome to 'who is theblend?' Thoughts and musings from the website www.theblend.co.uk. Out of the probable zero amount of people who are going to find this blog, let alone read it, I hope it will be a starting point for something that I can grow going into the future! :)

First about the site, www.theblend.co.uk. It's a site I set up in about 2006, which has developed a fair bit since the beginning. It focuses around projects I'm doing in graphic design and photography. I have almost no previous experience in website design, but using dreamweaver and a lot of determination I've brought it to what it is today, which is essentially a one page portfolio site. Although, I think over the very near future, I'm going to change it to a multi-page so each area has it's own page.

About me, from the UK but have been living in Barcelona for the last five years. When I'm not working my questionable 9-5 job, i've always got one or two projects I have going on, involving graphic design but mainly these days revolving around photography. I have studied graphic design in Finland for a short period but I'm completely self-taught in photography, learning everyday. Lack of time is my only enemy.

For the future of this blog, my space on the internet, I intend to document my development and progression in photography and design. To talk about ideas I have, problems I'm facing, how I overcome them. I want to post articles where I'd like to think I can pass on knowledge to people, maybe some reviews of kit or books I've used, or places I've visited. Hopefully it could become a place of some interaction, but, it's early days!

If you've made it down this far, sincerely I applaud you, the opening ramblings of in introduction to a new blog isn't the best attention grabber, but hopefully it'll get deeper from here on out.

Incase you are wondering, or really, just for my own documentation, I aim to update this around once a week with new, hopefully interesting content, there, my commitment is out there!

Saludos!

Simon @ theblend
http://www.theblend.co.uk/