{"id":2052,"date":"2009-04-03T12:25:51","date_gmt":"2009-04-03T10:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/?p=2052"},"modified":"2010-05-30T22:57:54","modified_gmt":"2010-05-30T20:57:54","slug":"the-abandoned-village-of-doel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/2052","title":{"rendered":"The Abandoned Village of Doel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This weekend I went on my first outing with my new photo club.\u00a0 I was a bit nervous as I didn\u2019t know anyone other than my friend Heather<\/a>, but I liked the fact that it was a smaller gathering.\u00a0 I\u2019m more comfortable in those kinds of situations and thought it would give me a good chance to meet some of the other members.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, I was really keen to visit the location they had in mind \u2013 The village of Doel<\/a> in Belgium.<\/p>\n

Heather and I drove down together with two of the men from the club.\u00a0 It was very relaxed and I enjoyed chatting with them and getting to know them a bit.\u00a0\u00a0 We also learned some about Doel and how it came to be in the state it is in today.<\/p>\n

The village of Doel is 700 years old and due to the need to expand the harbour, it had been chosen to be demolished in 2007 and was supposed to be completed by 2009.\u00a0\u00a0 In mid 2008 the residents of the village were given notice that they had to be out of their homes by September 1, 2009.<\/p>\n

Many have left already and their houses are in various stages of decay.\u00a0 It was so interesting exploring this village because you never knew what was behind every door.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the houses I went into felt like they had been abandoned for decades, with moss and ferns growing in the middle of their livingroom.\u00a0\u00a0 Others had an eerie feeling, as though the occupants were rushed out in some sort of evacuation, leaving evidence of their day to day lives laying around everywhere.<\/p>\n

As far as the photography goes, it was an interesting day.\u00a0\u00a0 I tried to learn what I could about exposure, but I usually found myself confused while trying to balance aperture, shutter speed etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Granted, nowadays the camera does a lot of it for you but it was a good time to experiment a little as most of the houses were quite dim and didn\u2019t have the best lighting available.<\/p>\n

Overall it was a really great day.\u00a0 It helped me feel a little less intimidated by the level of photography the other members were doing and learn a bit while I was there.\u00a0\u00a0 A day out in the sunshine certainly didn\u2019t hurt either!<\/p>\n

If you live in the area and are interested in this kind of Urban Exploring, you should definitely check out Doel.\u00a0 Do it soon though, there\u2019s no way to know how long it will still be around!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend I went on my first outing with my new photo club.\u00a0 I was a bit nervous as I didn\u2019t know anyone other than my friend Heather, but I liked the fact that it was a smaller gathering.\u00a0 I\u2019m more comfortable in those kinds of situations and thought it would give me a good …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,39],"tags":[308],"class_list":["post-2052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-photography","category-travel","tag-photo-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2052"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4961,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions\/4961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}