About Me

So, you want to know a little more about me? Well…as you probably know by now, my name is Linda and I am from a small country called The Netherlands. I was born in a city called Tilburg some 40 years ago and now I live in the southern provice called Limburg, have lived here for the past 18 years.

When I was about 7 years old my parents bought a camper van and that summer was our first nomadic trip. I remember that when I was younger I didn’t really like all the travelling around because I’d finally have some friends at one place…and then we would move to the next. But now…in hindsight I must say that this way of spending our summer has made me into the traveller that I am today…and I LOVE it.

In 2013 I went on a road trip with my mother and brother. We drove the length of the Route 66 from Chicago to LA, by car not motorcycle. During this roadtrip we visited some amazing places. At that time I only had a small digital camera and it was during this trip that I decided I really needed an upgrade.

So when I got back home after three weeks of travelling, I bought myself my first DSLR camera: a Nikon D5100.

I didn’t want to stick to the simple automatic mode and decided to join a photography class in the beginning of 2014. Since I live in the far south of the Netherlands, close to the German and Belgian borders…and since classes in Belgium were a lot less expensive than in The Netherlands, I made the choice to follow classes in Belgium. During one of the classes we were going on a field trip. The location we were going to was an abandoned railway station with some trains. I had no clue what to expect so I googled the railway station and ‘abandoned’. That resulted in not only pictures of the station but Google also showed me photos of abandoned castles, houses etc. etc. I was triggered to search some more and soon I discovered a whole ‘new world’ and it had a name: Urban Exploring. Hours I spent looking at photos, reading about the do’s and the don’t and with the research I also found my first few locations. The next morning I spoke with my best friend and asked he how she would feel about going to do something with me that was not really legal to do…she first looked at me funny but when I said ‘I want to explore some abanoned buildings in Belgium’ her eyes lid up and she got real enthousiastic. A few days later we were on our first trip to Belgium.

And that is how the adventure of travelling the globe to capture abandoned places started! In the beginning I stayed fairly close to home. Exploring countries like Belgium, Germany and France. In the fall of 2015 I met another explorer (Leon – check out his flickr page here)  at an expo and we clicked…had the same ideas about doing research, searching for locations and places we both still wanted to visit. Our first trip together was a week to former DDR to see if we could get along. Two months later we got on a plane for a trip to Bulgaria with a quick jump across the border to Romania. Since then we have been to some amazing countries together. To mention a few: Japan, Taiwan, Armenia and Georgia. As well as places closer to home: Italy, England and France for example. We still have a lot of countries on our wishlists so I hope we can tick of some of them over the years still to come.

Okay so what else is there to know about me? Some random facts:
– I work at a holiday resort
– I have one brother who is 10 years younger than me
– I don’t like gardening … and I actually have  a semi-big garden :-/
– I drive a red Kia Picanto
– My fave colour is black
– I live with my two cats Joep (on the left) and Lotje (on the right)

Guess that you now know a bit more about me and how I became an explorer. If there is anything else you would like to know, feel free to contact me: info@lvsproductions.nl

You can of course also follow me on INSTA or FLICKR to see the latest pics of my adventures.
Thanks for reading and safe travels!