Capturing Beauty in the Unexpected: Photography Tips for Ugly Places

I grew up in a post-industrial city; a city once home to over 1,000 trades and known as the workshop of the world. The Industrial Revolution was born on the same streets I would walk, and the modern world owes a lot of its existence to my hometown.

But, by the 2000s, all that was long-gone. Globalisation had steadily syphoned off the heavy industries to cheaper countries. New technologies and sciences replaced the old, dirty production lines, and slowly the factories, workshops and business closed.

By 2005, when I first picked up a camera, Britain, the world’s first industrialised nation, was now the world’s first post-industrial nation. The Birmingham I grew up in was full of industrial heritage and detritus. Old factories, canals, railways, smelting houses, blast furnaces, armouries and mines littered the landscape. Areas the size of towns lay abandoned and forgotten, weeds poking through Victorian brickwork blackened by decades of soot and filth.

It was in this world that I began to explore with my camera. First, because it was alien and slightly unnerving to me; a world of decaying chimneys and shuttered warehouses, where old factories now stood as cavernous cathedrals to lost industry. Most of these buildings were crumbling into ruin, their rafters home to pigeons and the factory floors devoid of contents save for a few relics here or there: a sign on the wall, an old shoe, a coverall left moulding on a hook.

There’s something oddly beautiful about these liminal spaces. They dominated the urban environment, but served no purpose. Redevelopment and a desire to cleanse the past were rapidly removing these wrecks, and I was both intrigued by the dereliction but also wanted to preserve it before the wrecking ball struck.

During the 1950s and 60s, after the Second World War, Birmingham had enthusiastically demolished large swathes of its Victorian grandeur and industry in the pursuit of modernity. Brutalist concrete monoliths had replaced ornate facades, and as the country changed, the Victorian elements slipped further into disrepair. A lot of history was lost in the process, never to be seen again. I wanted to capture what was left before a new wave of development pulverised it into oblivion.

Ironically, by the 21st century, Brutalism was also out of fashion and largely detested, whilst what remained of the Victorian architecture had become celebrated and desirable.

This left 21st century Birmingham in an interesting position; a city of crumbling Victorian industrial heritage mixed with unpopular Brutalist relics. Many of these buildings were beyond salvage, sitting on land where new homes, apartment complexes and schools could be built. It was inevitable they would disappear.

And so I spent several years wandering these urban hinterlands, areas in-between the city’s centre and suburbs, capturing photographs of neglect, decay and rot. My aim was to document and preserve these buildings in their final moments, but also capture a transitional time for the UK, as it evolved from an industrial powerhouse to a service-based economy.

I found the geometric patterns, jagged lines and broken silhouettes poetic and starkly beautiful. The remnants of 19th century ornamentation contrasted with the crumbling 20th century Brutalist structures nearby. Both architectural styles were dying, but separated by almost 100 years.

Now, in 2025, many of these structures are gone, consigned to history and buried under new buildings. Photographs are all that exist to remind us of this period when a wave of redevelopment swept through, clearing the cobwebs of history and making way for homes, shops and a ‘new’ way of life. Did we lose something in the process? It’s difficult to say, but at the time I felt it was important to document these spaces, existing in a no-man’s land between use and demolition, a broken link to the past but no longer serving any purpose for the future.

It's important we document and photograph our urban heritage. How many of us would like to look at photographs of the old London Bridge, or medieval Edinburgh, if only photography had existed to capture these things? That's why I took the time to explore these areas and capture imagery. It may not be classically beautiful or pretty, but these spaces are a link to our past and even in their ruin, offer an aesthetic merit which deserves to be photographed.

When working with 'ugly' subjects, there's a few tips you can follow to tell a story and create an image which has its own pictorial quality:

• Focus on Detail & Texture. Look for cracks, rust, peeling paint, or intricate patterns in concrete or metal. The remnants of a building's past tell a story and connect us to its former use.

• These ugly, forgotten spaces offer dramatic lighting opportunities. Sunrises and sunsets will cast long shadows while harsh, contrasty midday sun is great for monochrome, black and white images. I was especially drawn to silhouettes, mimicking the ancient castle or abbey ruins that litter the UK's rural landscape.

• The dull, messy, urban colour palette lends itself to a gritty, desaturated aesthetic, but the inevitable graffiti or abandoned work items inevitably add a splash of bright colour to use as a focal point.

• Eye-level views can be the least interesting, although symmetry and geometry will help to frame a subject, or create leading lines to draw your viewer in. Different angles can also emphasise lines or structures.

• Embrace the decay and capture the broken windows, doorways, or gaps in fencing. You're documenting a moment in time and although ugly or messy, eventually these places will be repaired, demolished or redeveloped, and it will never look the same again.