My World of Staircases

Staircases, spiral staircases...

I have never thought that photos of the staircases will be some kind of my trademark. These days many of my friends and other people when they talk about my photos they always mention my spiral staircases. I remember it started around 2011 when I visited a friend of mine who lived in an old building with beautiful but dirty staircase. The only camera I got at that time was my mobilephone camera so the results were not as I was expecting.

But some time later when I purchased my first ultra wide angle lens I came back to take some photos of this staircase. I think that was the moment I fell in love with them. Today every place I travel I always try to find some nice staircases with different shapes, I might not be able to see museums, exhibitions, but I always travel with the list of adresses hwere I expect to find some nice stairs. Sometimes it happens that they are in private areas, or they don't exist anymore. Or the condition is so bad I avoid to climb to the top.



Many people often ask me : How do you find them? There are many possibilities. I got in touch with people from all over the world who are also "staircases freaks" so we can share information and locations. Very often when I visit the town I just sneak here and there and it happens I find some nice ones. It is even more valuable when I take the photos of the stairs not many people took before, when I discover something that is not so popular already. Something that is not like spiral stairs in Vatican Museum. Photos taken there can be found everywhere.

Also carrying the right lenses help a lot to photograph stairs with different perspective, reveals some new unique views, sometimes a simple staircase turns into a beautiful form just because it was taken from the right angle.

I try to find staircases everywhere. Sometimes it is dissapointing when you see a tower or the old lighhouse where you are almost sure that there is a spiral staircase inside, but then you find out it is not like you were expecting. When I visited Estonia last summer, there were only 3/10 lighhouses with spiral stairs. Most of them were just plain stairs, very narrow, almost impossible to photograph. Happily I found some nice ones like the following one:

Many people ask me for the location specs for the staircase. Usually I don't mind sharing info because it is always nice to see different results from other photographers taking photos of the same locations. There are few exceptions , there are some I love to keep for myself, It makes those photos more "unique" when the location is not over explored.

The whole gallery of my staircases can be found at:
https://blaminsky-jaroslaw.pixels.com/collections/the+world+of+stairs