A couple of months ago, I was asked to do a photoshoot with a local industrial band. I do it for free for them because I am an amateur and because I am a fan (and it doesn’t hurt to get experience and a portfolio for posterity). The band chose the site this year (I had found a shooting range in the desert last year, which worked because they were doing a post-apoc theme at the time). This year, it’s steampunk, so we all went out to this seemingly abandoned industrial site on the edge of Phoenix. I couldn’t tell if it was an old cattle ranch because there were huge silos and gigantic pipes and machines with guages and gears. My photographic utopia! There was so much rust there that I couldn’t take enough photos during that session. I will have to make the hour trip back out there to get more before the city reaches the site and tears it down to build suburbs, walmarts and home depots.

Anyway, just wanted to share some photog love

Troy, you’ve been an inspiration to so many people. The fact that one person suffered a minor arrest is a small price to pay for the amount of cultural and historical awareness that you’ve helped inspire. What you do, and many of the other landscape artists have done, is integral to how people perceive the things around them. I can’t wait to see where this goes. I’m happy to be here to see it happen.

A few comments:

It’s refreshing to see an urban explorer using his real name when talking about trespassing, something every UE’er does, yet rarely admits to. I admire your frankness.

Yes, most of these places are lapsed, unattended and forgotten, without a caretaker in sight. However, you and I have both been to many of the same places. We both know that had we been caught in them, there would have been hell to pay. Fines, “film” confiscation and even possible arrest.

I get e-mail almost every day from people wondering about trespassing aspect of the places I explore. Many of them are “Too scared to risk it.” I think that’s good. UE is not for the risk averse. People that have reservations about sneaking through a fence need not apply.

Conversely, it’s easy to become too cavalier about it. It’s one thing to trespass on abandoned, toxic and dangerous military/industrial complex ruins yourself, but it’s quite another to encourage the public at large to do it. What we do is dangerous and illegal. We come prepared, we understand the ramifications of what we’re doing. I’ve had e-mail from someone who went to Byron because of my photos and got caught by the sheriff and had to pay a $300 trespassing fine. I won’t come right out and say it made me feel guilty, but it sure made me sit back and think about what I say to people who enquire about locations.

So yeah, just get out there and do it people, but don’t come crying to us if things go horribly wrong.

Troy

Still, I think much of what we explore as historians, landscape speculators, lovers of all things built — the things we appreciate should, by proxy, be publicly owned. But maybe that’s just my bias speaking

It’s interesting that you tie the concept of trespassing with the American value of private property. Although I agree with the connection, it seems that nobody knows who really owns many of the properties that I’ve considered trespassing on. It’s not like I’ve (considered) trespassed(ing) on someone’s farm or in their house. But there may be an old resort hotel (we think it’s owned by a developer, but we don’t know where they’re located), an abandoned Naval communications base (we can’t be sure if the county owns it, or if they’re just holding it for the federal government), not to mention all of the neglected government property (is that private, or public)?

I wonder if other people who consider trespassing try to rationalize their actions the way I do (that is, if I were to ever trespass, and I’m not saying I do, and if anyone says I did, well maybe they just thought I did).

Andy