GES001 - St Paul's Church, Hammersmith
Although I've been doing bits here and there for most of my life, It was pretty small scale, mostly small building's rooftops. In 2008 a friend sent around some pictures of night shots by a chap called 'Downfallen'. I was instantly attracted to these photos and wanted to see these views. I found out there was a whole scene devoted to something called 'Urban Exploring' or Urbex for short, including a handful of websites. Mr. Downfallen posted on a site called 28 Days Later, and after looking through his posts, I spotted St. Paul's Church, up the road from me. I grabbed TheSpaniard, and bought a Canon 40D, and I was off.
Having only done buildings up to around 4 storeys before, the scaffold around the church was quite horrifying for someone with vertigo issues. We found the access point, while those inside attended to a prayer meeting. Quietly stepping along the planks trying not to make a noise. Ever mindful of getting a blast of smartwater from somewhere. The climb seemed to last for ever, up and up and up, layer after layer of scaffold. I felt quesy as we passed the bell tower, realising how far up the building we were. TheSpaniard had no problems.
On getting to the top, the views were amazing, as I clinged for dear life to the various poles and bits of church.
After conquering the heights it was time to conquer something else. How do you use an Dslr?! I didn't realise it's best to use the 2" timer, so pretty much all my pictures were blurred. I didn't know about apertures, shutter speeds, ISO etc. I knew you had to have a tripod, so put the camera on that. And pressed 'go!
We were above the tops of the turret
The Hammersmith & City Line tubes were all parked up for the night. On the bottom right corner (under the pulley) lies the Hammersmith Palais before demolition (explorered here).
Hammersmith Mall lay in front of us
And with that, it was time to descend. This time we came down near the A4 flyover side, and found it much easier than the endless levels on the Northern side. The back of a super huge Pom Billboard overlooking the Flyover.
Looking up it was tempting to hang around and enjoy messing about on the monkey bars, but it had been a draining night, so we hopped a fence, and left.
I do hope your eyesight recovers!
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