I hardly ever get the chance to shoot stuff for myself these days so I decided a while back to set aside a day, grab a willing volunteer and just go shoot some pics with no strings attached.

About a month ago I was searching for a location for another shoot when I stumbled upon this old abandoned mansion in the middle of nowhere which had the most amazing grand rooms that were still in remarkably good condition. For me this was the place to go, although my model for the day had to be a bit adventurous (crazy?!) in order to venture into this place. Meet Gail, a good friend who along with me breached just about every Health & Safety law there is in order to get some different portraits.

In order to get into the place we had to enter through a broken back window. The lower floors were in pretty good condition but the real wow rooms were on the third floor where there was a huge ballroom and a very creepy nursery, complete with cot. As we entered this room I almost had a cardiac arrest as some joker had lain a bandaged mannequin on the floor. You can see the visitor in the first shot. As I didn’t have any real expectations from the shoot it was great to try out some new things with no pressure. For two hours we moved to a few rooms and made some photographs, some good and some not so good, but that’s what it was all about.

To finish off I headed outside and left Gail inside and took some shots turning day into night with Gail in her own creepy little window. As you can see from the full building shots it really is a superb building  and a crying shame that it’s in the condition it is. If I won the lottery I know which renovation project I’d be undertaking

Thanks again to Gail for helping out