No doubt if you are into Urbex you have already come across the story in the news at the moment about the X-Rays etc found at Law hospital in Carluke, near Edinburgh. Whilst I can appreciate that the X-Rays being there is not a good thing, talking to the press about it and making a national story of it is most definitely not the way to handle it. If he was genuinely concerned for the confidentiality of the information then he should have simply notified the NHS and not discussed it at all with the press.

Some guy who is seemingly new to Urbex (I’m basing this assumption on him only having two sets on his flickr, both of the same site) wanted himself a little bit of fame and glory by having a picture published by the BBC, and then managed to royally stick his size 9′s in his big mouth and get the local NHS in uproar about the site, have them searching it and will probably lead to a tightening of the security at this location.

To quote him directly: “Ring Ring, it’s the BBC on the phone. They tell me they want to do a photo gallery of the hospital using my pics, and it will feature info on urbex, a little about me and the camera, etc etc. I was naturally chuffed, absolutely ecstatic in fact.“ If you are into Urbex for the fame and glory, then you should quite frankly fuck right off and go audition for X-Factor or something if you cant keep your mouth shut and must have your little bit of fame. That majority of us are into it for the love of the buildings, their history, their architecture and the pleasure of being there and photographing it ourselves, not if we can get 5 minutes of fame by having one of our pics on a site.

More quote from this guy:

Throughout the course of the convo, he asks various questions. What type of camera do you use, how long you been into this, have I plans for any other urbex stuff, and finally, the question which resulted in my foot being jammed halfway down my throat, how many photos do I have.

I excitably tell him, ‘I have loads of photos. Some of them are totally unreal too, peoples X-Rays and stuff’. At that point his tone changed, and he put me on hold. About a minute later, he explains to me that he wants to “extend” the feature, but needs to get permission from his editor. I say cool, and we end the call.

Ring Ring, it’s the BBC on the phone, again. This time, a girl, a journalist, and she wants to interview me on the telephone. I agree, and after a few photography related questions, I get the security issues thrown at me.

Do you think security was sufficient?
Nope.

Did you ever see security inside the building?
Nope.

Do you think it would be easy for kids to access?
I guess so.

How surprised were you to find X rays and other personal files.
Surprised I guess? I would have thought it would have all been shipped to the new hospital, or destroyed.

Anyhoo! After several other phonecalls from the original chap who called (who apparently still wants to run the photo feature), and from some of his colleagues, I agreed to be interviewed on site…and whilst I think I have probably ruined this place for photographers in the short term, I hope maybe something good comes out of this.

I really hope for my own sake, the original caller does see some merit in the photos I took. It would suck to have been duped into what is simply a page filler due to slow news. The fact that my photos had nothing personal in them leads me to believe he was originally genuine, and it was my admission to the x rays etc which led to their story.

I am both excited that a wider audience MAY get to see my photos for what they are, and very nervous about any comeback from all this. I dunno if i have done the right thing or not, time will tell.

The amount of self involvement, excite at possibly seeing his name on the BBC with a photo and disregard for other photographers and Urbexers absolutely disgusts me, this is the kind of selfish retard that the hobby definitely does not need. Its thanks to selfish actions like this that sites are continually getting locked down, harder to access and in some extreme cases even bulldozed to prevent further access.

To realise the interview is now taking a completely different angle, and yet still continue to give information that will compromise the site is just idiotic, and then to compound this by going to do an on site interview tells me in no uncertain terms that this guy is more interested in his 15 minutes of fame than he ever was about the patients who’s records are laying at site.

I have previously been to Law myself on two occasions, took plenty of photographs there and thoroughly enjoyed the explore, but you don’t see me blabbing info to the BBC that could lead to the Urbex community losing the site. I have done interviews in the past with journalists about Urbex, and will no doubt do them in the future, but I’m quite certain that at no time would I be stupid and self involved enough to give any information that could compromise a site simply so that i can get my name in lights.

His Flickr page can be found here if you wan’t to go and leave him some comments.

~Shepy

UPDATE: Aww, it seems that poor Gary isn’t too keen on the attention he is getting from the urbex community on this, as he is actively censoring comments left on his flickr page about it.

~Shepy