Richard Huntjens is a 22-year-old photographer whose photography motto is,“Every picture tells a story, it depends on how the picture is taken how the story will be told.” He started taking pictures when he got his first quality Nikon camera at the age of 18. Since that day he was hooked. He lives in the Netherlands and loves to capture abandoned places and is what you would call an “urban explorer”. Urban exploring seems to be the newest trend in photography these days and the reason is quite obvious. These photographers sneak into abandoned buildings and capture the life that the walls were once filled with. They paint a picture of a once thriving beautiful structure and its slow decay back to the earth. This building that Richard stumbled across is something slightly different though. We are used to seeing incredibly old and dusty buildings that haven’t seen a foot step in decades or more. This building had been abandoned for some time but as Richard was walking past he heard an alarm sound. His curiosity took over and he went to investigate. While poking around he noticed that someone was still paying the power bill to this abandoned steel factory. Nobody bothered to check the alarm or even investigate. What Richard found inside was unlike any urban exploration we’ve seen and it’s somewhat creepy. Take a look.
The steel plant in the Netherlands had been abandoned for some time, however he heard an alarm going off inside.
Someone had been paying the electricity and maintaining the building.
The control room was eerily silent and very dated but it looked like someone had been in there working just a few minutes before Richard walked in.
The crane operators office was as clean as a whistle however nobody had sat in that chair for some time.
Richard has a saying when urban exploring, “touch nothing and leave only footprints”.
Most of the supplies and equipment had been removed from the offices however it looked as if someone was working a 9-5 there everyday.
The sheer size of the machinery was absolutely incredible.
You can easily see the building has been abandoned but why is the power still on and why is it so clean?
Another control room left abandoned with lights still flickering.
This must be quite an expensive piece of machinery because it was the only one covered to protect from dust.
It seems like this factory would be able to open its doors and start producing again tomorrow.
As you can see this was recently a thriving steel factory.
And now it sits pretty much vacant.
This is the testing lab he found full of all the testing equipment.
This is not cheap equipment.
These giant cauldrons melt down the metals.
One old, outdated computer was left running.
Even the cell phone left behind was an older one starting to collect dust.
More info: Richard Huntjens
Urban exploration is so intriguing to me. I love seeing whats not usually exposed to everyone. This story is a little different because the very short time between its abandonment and when these photographs were taken. Something like this would make me worry about getting caught. Especially if the power is still on and alarms are sounding. Either way, the pictures came out incredible and this is one cool abandoned steel factory, once booming with industry. I definitely may have to take up urban exploration as a hobby.