It was always going to happen eventually; the Bridge Hotel fire

10.30pm, a freshly opened cold beer and Laura says to me 'the Bridge Hotel is on fire'; word spreads fast on Facebook.

A quick bike ride later and I was there.

The hotel has stood empty for a few years now, take a look at my various blog posts for more information. 

Since my 1st trip inside for an explore, I've said that someone will burn it down, it was inevitable.

The vandalism, the destruction and now this.

It was quite the spectacle for this small village, there were crowds of people enjoying the show.

Considering the size of the fire crew it must of been quite the battle.

I'll let my images tell the story.

It certainly is.

Urbex and fire

As a child I loved playing with fire, I even have a nice scar on the back of my right hand from when hot plastic dripped on it while playing with fire with a friend at the age of about 10. I told my mum I had fell over, she didn't believe me considering I smelt like cooked meat and my skin had clearly been badly burnt. I actually forget the scar is there and now as I approach 30 years old it is barely visible.

You already know that I like exploring abandoned buildings.

Why not combine fire and urbex.

And by that I don't mean ive started a career as an arsonist.

No, I mean playing with fire artistically and then checking that all the sparks and molten pieces of metal have been extinguished before leaving the site. Before starting we also did a recce of the area and made sure there was nothing around that was at risk.

It was a great experience and some great shots have come from this night with my friend Stuart.

For this shoot I used a Canon 5Dmkiii and 24-70 lens. All shots were taken between f/13 and f/18 and were 30 second exposures at ISO 200.

Stuart and I have already said that we now need to find the next location for urbex and (a little bit of controlled) fire.