Savage Mill, MD

On Sunday, I excitedly met up for the first time with a group I'd recently joined which was involved in urban exploration. This involves exploring abandoned buildings usually of an industrial nature for the purpose of photography. Admittance may not be strictly legal, but these groups pride themselves on leaving no evidence of them having been there unlike vandals who enjoy trashing an empty place. Urban explorers investigate these buildings for the purpose of art.

The building we visited was Savage Mill in Maryland which is actually accessible to the public. We spent a couple of hours exploring and taking artistic photos, and listening to one guy who seemed to know how every single piece of industrial equipment worked. He was amazing and earned my immediate respect.

On this trip we also had a reporter from the Washington Post as our group is the only urban exploration group in DC, MD or VA. He was busy taking video and photo footage as well as chatting to many of us. His enthusiasm for the group was genuine which relieved me as I was in fear of us being regarded as 'a little out there'! I have to admit that my first impression of the group fitted that label, but that image soon disintegrated once I'd listened to them talking for a while.

After Savage Mill, we headed for a nearby bar having lost a few of our group who must have retained a similar first impression of the group. We spent the next hour or so getting to know eachother and then our organizer suggested another trip to an abandoned childrens' mental hospital nearby. Off we all went with our trusty WP reporter in tow. It was all very exciting as obviously we weren't going to go in the front gate which was guarded. I have to admit a twinge of disappointment when we simply walked through a wooded area to enter the grounds. I have to admit I had hoped for some scaling of walls or maybe some crawling under razor wire!

Once inside I forgot my silly expectations and was awed to be in such a cool place, literally. It was dark and a little chilly in areas and the rooms which hadn't demolished by vandals held an ambience of awe. Most of the building had been vandalized but each of the room's purpose was still evident.

In some areas, we had to find our way around with flashlights and we were instructed to do all of our searching with a partner in case of accidents. Most of us were taking photos, some with small compacts, some with monster DSLRs, and a few who gained my admiration, were using 35m SLR cameras. Some had even been discussing medium format cameras. These guys were serious in their art.
The photos above and below were my favorites, and I was really pleased with how most of mine turned out. I loved taking these kind of images, and the group were all happy to share locations they preferred as well as respecting someone's need to take a 5 minute exposure in the dark.


We had to be careful walking in some areas as there was a lot of dropped plaster with smashed containers on the floors and we were almost certainly treading amongst many environmently unfriendly products.

The above photo was admittedly staged but made a wonderful image, albeit a little sad.
We finished our inspection of the buildings just before sundown and carefully made our way back to the cars. It was an enthralling day and I'm anxious to go on another adventure with the group, hopefully sporting a group t-shirt with "Yay, Asbestos!" on the back!