decay

There are 9 posts tagged decay (this is page 1 of 2).

Rusting Street Signs

Train your eye to pay attention to broken bricks, peeling paint, untamed gardens, rusty metal… What can you find on your own?

rustysignsSource: Thomas Muther Jr.

I’ve been thinking about exploring our local area. People want to jump into urban exploration. People ask for locations of abandoned sites so they can skip the steps of exploring and finding anything on their own. That’s not urban exploring. Skipping the adventure and waving a photograph to prove you were there… is bland.

I think you can start exploring in your own town, right in your own neighbourhood. Look for old, derelict, ruined and interesting things. Look for history in man made objects. Think about simple things taken for granted, like street signs, mail boxes, doorbells, milestones, and so on.

The Silence of Abandonments

urban exploration quote

Urban exploration for me is as much about the abandonments as it is about the inner exploration. The silence of the abandonments gives me time to reflect; urban exploration often becomes a meditative state. Seeing the decay of the past allows me to reflect on the possibilities of the future – Chris Luckhardt

Alltop in Decay

Alltop – Top Writing News.

Looking at Alltop, the Writing section which my site is a part of, is sad. I was so pleased and proud to be one of the sites asked to join originally. But, now that is tarnished as Alltop seems to be yet another website which has been sold and left to fall into linkrot.

On this Writing category page there are three sites which obviously are no longer active. Two are the same site, a double listing, even. No one seems to be looking, fixing or caring what happens the Alltop.

I’m sad to see another site crumble in the dust of making a buck.

I don’t blame site owners. If you put all of that into getting a site off the ground and were successful you might play with your laurels a bit and then be happy to take a great offer. Money enough to let you sit on your laurels and not have to work so hard again, if ever.

I know, in part, why people buy a site which has gotten big and I can understand that they don’t have the stamina or passion or whatever to keep it from falling apart. But, why do some of them deliberately buy a site and then abandon it?

It happens far too often.

I like photographing abandoned houses because they are sad, lonely and maybe I wonder about the story behind them too – they mystery. It doesn’t seem the same with abandoned sites. They fall apart in the wrong way. There is no romance to it, just decay.

I Remember BlogChalking

This is what I found from the Wayback Machine. The original link which most people refer to does not end with the .com. There wasn’t much left of that BlogChalking at that domain. But, I was pretty sure it had been a .com too so I looked, and found it.

Looks like it had it’s final days in 2006. From there it was abandoned, no updates. I took a screen shot from earlier (2003 which is the year it began according to the site), better times. Then another two images show the last final stages of decay from the Wayback in 2011 (but no changes to the actual site since 2006).

Daniel Pádua, the man from Brazil who began BlogChalking, died of cancer in 2009.