Last year Reading Prison, local-ish to me, was one of the casualties of a wave of Victorian-era prison closures, in continued efforts to house prisoners in modern facilities which aren't outdated by design.

Reading Prison is a three-wing panopticon style prison encompassing three floors of cells on each of the 'A', 'B' and 'C' wings. There was a large chapel accessible from the second level, however at some point in the prisons past this was converted into a sports hall but it retained it's beautiful windows and roof beams. Oscar Wilde was held inside here for a time and the door to his cell was on display inside the sports hall.

In September an art exhibition was installed inside the prison which was then opened to the public, to call some of it 'art' is a bit of a stretch though. After being much more popular than expected the exhibition was extended to run until the first weekend of December, so with it finishing tomorrow (December 4th) I realised that this weekend may be the only chance I ever get to see inside the prison walls. I had no interest in the art that was installed in various parts of the prison, obviously I was more interested in the prison itself and the plethora of graffiti left behind by ex-inmates in their cells.

These were all taken handheld as there was a no tripod rule, it was also very tough trying to get photos of the place with minimal or no people in frame either!

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Thanks for looking

wow, great shots!

Posted by l0wkey wow, great shots!

Thanks one of only a handful of (thankfully derelict) prisons I have seen the inside of!

Some real killer shots
Fab location and many keepers!

Lol, fuck the tripod; many times guerrilla style shooting yields more keepers once you get the hang of it. In structures like this, the brace and shoot technique works real good.

Use anything handy to brace the cam on and line up the shot! Walls, door/window frames, floors, railings, tables, anything that keeps the cam steady and gets the angle/height you need.
A small bush towel to firmly press the cam or lense against helps a lot to get a stable base and keep the cam clean and prevent scratches.
You can get clean shots down to at least 1/10th second like this. If any doubt about shake, shoot again; not much trouble to shoot off a couple shots once the cam's lined up.

Wow

Love all of these. Particularly loved numbers 10 and 11.

How nice it must be to go to prison.

The view in 8 is GREAT!

It's interesting to see "loads" in an official notice rather than "lots".

Great shots bud!! I bet you never thought you would be excited for a art exhibit lol.