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Photographer sneaks inside wrecked Costa Concordia to shoot these haunting photos of the ghost ship

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On January 13, 2012, Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia hit an underwater rock. The ship wrecked, taking 32 lives away. The disaster attracted a huge attention of the public, and one photographer was among them.

Two years after the disaster, Jonathan Danko Kielkowski managed to sneak inside Costa Concordia just before it got scraped. He brought his camera and small tripod with him and brought back the images of the ghost ship – one of the largest ones ever to be abandoned. He shared his images with DIYP, and they are beautiful, haunting and sad beyond words.

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Orphans of Time: Photographer travels the world for five years to capture the beauty of decaying places

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How do you feel when you pass a decaying old house? Is it just an ugly ruin or you see something more? Photographer Rebecca Lilith Bathory sees beauty in these objects most people just seem to pass by or even avoid. Sure, they are sad, ruined, chaotic and even scary – but Rebecca finds beauty and art precisely in these things.

In 2012, she stepped into an abandoned school and instantly fell in love with the beauty she found in decay. Five years and over 500 abandoned locations later, she brings a stunning photo series of truly wonderful abandoned locations in her project Orphans of Time.

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Photographer documents abandoned places in Fukushima in this devastating photo series

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The very thought of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster can bring tears to your eyes. It’s been more than six years since this event, and consequences still remain visible.

Many photographers have tried to explore this place and document the aftermath of the terrible accident. Very few of them have succeeded, and one of them is Rebecca Lilith Bathory. She managed to get the necessary licenses, and she was granted access to the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. In her series of images and a recently published book, she tells the moving story of Fukushima, where time stopped on March 11, 2011.

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30 years later: Exploring Pripyat in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and shooting only with iPhone

I originally announced my plans to visit the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on my private Facebook account. My friends know me and thus the reactions were anywhere from “you’re nuts” to “HaHa”. Maybe because I posted it on April, 1st?

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15 photos of abandoned bedrooms show their dusty remains

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The bedroom is one of the most personal spaces in a house, hotel or any other kind of building. It’s a place where my imagination can go wild. When I stand in an abandoned bedroom I’d like to think ‘what happened here?’. People used to sleep here, been intimate with each other, had discussions and laughter etc.

Sometimes even personal belongings have been left behind as you can see in the pictures, for whatever reason. Since the bedroom is such a personal space and the memories / history of that space is being consumed by nature, I decided to create a set of a couple I ran into while exploring.

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The Decay Archives Are Perfect For Large Scale Compositing

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Some of the most popular packages in our Image Manipulation Store are the Decay Archives. It makes sense. Those packages contains over 230 backplates of lost and forgotten places, dilapidated buildings and other such rotten magical locations, which work extremely well for composite work.

We got many questions about bundling those package so we had no choice but to oblige. This resulted in our most complete bundle yet: The Complete Decay Archives Bundle.  It is a comprehensive package which holds everything you need as far as decay goes. (it even includes the newly released 08 and 09 Decay Archives).

As far as details go, this packages is a A Whopping 40 Gb(!) Download (split into digestible sized files) with 290 backgrounds and 60 textures in high res TIFF format files. Best thing, we are selling it at a reduced price of $260 instead of $305 if you bought the different packages separately.

But wait! for the next three days, we will provide an additional 15% off both decay bundles (the complete set and the six pack). just use coupon code 15offdecayYAY on checkout.

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Images From Desolated, Disaster Stricken Chernobyl 30 Years Later

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When I am thinking of sad places, Chernobyl always comes to mind. A place that was vibrant with life, up until April 1986. Then Reactor number 4 of the power plant exploded causing the evacuation of more than 350,000 people over the span of huge area and over 15 years.

Today the city is mostly a ghost town, aside from a few remaining residents.

Rebecca Litchfield is no stranger to the Soviet Union in general and to Chernobyl in particular. She has done two trips to the area, one in 2012 and one in April this year. The photos she brought back are some of the saddest I’ve seen.

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Melancholic Conceptual Artwork In Decaying Buildings In Belgium

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One of our UK favorite artists, Rebecca Litchfield, recently returned from a photography tour in Belgium. Why you may ask, because Belgium has some of the most amazing abandoned buildings in the word, and Rebecca has long relationship with old and decaying buildings. But while her previous big project – soviet ghosts – was focused on the buildings and their decay, this time she was accompanied by model Jen Brook and they produced some of the most melancholic and inspirational photos I’ve seen.

Armed with a full set of Elinchrom Quadras a Mamiya Leaf and an EL adapter (to make use of Elinchrom’s modifiers) Rebeca visited a few abandoned houses and churches and even a derelict spa. The results really show what a dedicated team of creatives can accomplish in a short amount of time if vision and preparation is there.

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Photographer Illustrates The Beauty In Abandon And Decay In Stunning Urbex Collection

How is it that when an average person spots the decrepit remnants of a building that is long past it’s days of glory, they find it repulsive, spooky even. But, when a photographer like Rebecca Litchfield (previously here and here) comes across such remains, they are capable of seeing something much brighter, more beautiful than most humans are capable of. What makes that gift truly remarkable is that, in Litchfields photographs, she is able to capture the beauty she sees in a way that easily translates decay into beauty to even the most untrained eye.[Read More…]

Photos Of A Soviet Union That Once Was

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Fine art photographer Rebecca Litchfield was commissioned earlier this year to photograph the abandoned buildings of the former Soviet Union and its Satellite states. In a long trip spanning over 10 countries and a year of many individual trips, Rebecca shot buildings in Eastern Europe, The Baltic’s, Ukraine and Russia.

This was not a random roaming around, Rebecca shares her goals which were pretty specific, while leaving space for creative freedom.

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