Exploring Abandoned Homes… with Alpacas
09/08/25
It was a little bit of a cloudy day, but there was still enough light around for an impromptu photography adventure. Evelyn of Peacock Photography and I had planned to visit a number of abandoned homes just down the road from my place. We’d both been eyeing these houses for the longest time, and this was the day we finally decided to do something about it.
As a warm-up, we headed into town for some street photography at the Armidale Farmers’ Markets, which were being held in the mall due to the recent wet weather turning the parklands into a swamp. I decided to shoot with my 1974 Nikon Nikkor 35mm, a lens I really enjoy using, though it’s not a focal length I’m particularly used to. Unfortunately, I didn’t capture anything especially interesting this time, mainly due to the market’s small turnout, but that’s okay, things improved from there.
We managed to get into two of the three homes on the block, and despite the eerie atmosphere (and the surprising amount of llama poo scattered across the floors and carpets), I came away with a lot of photos I really like. I feel vintage lenses are especially well-suited to capturing locations like this, and 35mm seems to be the perfect focal length for the job. The mood outside the homes was incredibly eerie, overgrown lawns, chickens and llamas wandering about, and only hints of what lay inside visible through the windows. I really wish I knew what had been left behind when the properties were first abandoned, and what (if anything) had been dumped there later on.
The feeling inside the homes was very different from the exterior. Normally, I find abandoned houses feel pretty creepy once you’re inside, but these felt more liminal. There were no burned walls or graffiti, just carpets full of dried-out llama droppings, an absolutely bizarre sight. The relative intactness of the interiors created a very different sense of abandonment than usual, as if the only thing that had affected these spaces (besides the llamas) was the passage of time.
My absolute favourite subjects in the homes, however, were the windows glowing in the darkness. High contrast, somewhat haunting, yet still magical, I absolutely love how these shots turned out, especially the ones with vines and leaves hanging over them.
Will we ever revisit this location? Probably not. I think we were pretty thorough, and I don’t know what we could do differently to change the images. Maybe in a drought the environment would look a little different, but generally speaking, I think we got all we could out of it, without bringing models into the mix, at least. That said, it was a fun morning that resulted in some really interesting photos, and I hope we can find more locations like it down the road.
