“I’ve been doing this since my teenage years, so a long time now. I got into photography through astronomy, which I practiced with a club. The ever-present clouds of my native Lorraine home quickly pushed me toward something else: the decaying industrial sites that dotted the region. I later took a long exposure (pun intended) to raise my children, then picked this dusty road back up – digitally this time.”

Our ‘What’s in your bag?’ community spotlight series features readers sharing their favorite gear and photography, including from past DPReview collaborators. See below for what Lester has to share.

What’s in Jean-Pierre’s bag

Jean-Pierre Zanotti

Favorite cameras(s): Fujifilm X-T2, Fujifilm X-T3 and Fujifilm X-T5

Favorite lens(s):

• Fujinon 8mm F3.5, 16mm F1.4, and 56mm F1.2
• Viltrox 9mm F2.8 Air and 13mm F1.4

“I gradually converged on Fujifilm back in 2014, after going through Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Sony along the way. For what I shoot, it simply delivers the best overall image quality. For years, the Fujinon XF 10-24mm F4 was my main companion – most of the images here were shot with it – before I moved on to fixed focal lengths that suited me better: the Viltrox 9mm F2.8 Air and 13mm F1.4.”

Must-have accessories: “An ultra-light rain jacket, folded down small, since some spots are one hour or more on foot – there’s no turning back to the car if the weather turns. And obviously, food and water.

If I had to pick one favorite thing, it’s the X-E5 paired with the Viltrox 9mm – that combination handles the tight, cluttered interiors I shoot in better than almost anything else in my bag.”

Any more unusual accessories you carry?

Jean-Pierre Zanotti

“Does a folding Silky saw for clearing branches count? It’s amazing how quickly vegetation reclaims the abandoned areas I photograph, sometimes literally blocking the way in.

I also carry an inflatable LED light stick and a small 3.5×3.5-inch LED panel for pitch-black spaces. That said, I rarely actually shoot with them: artificial light tends to look wrong in this kind of photography, so they’re mostly there as a distant fill when nothing else will do, or just so I can see where I’m walking. I still bring a Nodal Ninja panoramic head occasionally, but modern ultra-wide lenses have improved so much that I rarely need it anymore.

For abandoned buildings, bring a sturdy 5-meter cord to haul camera bags up high places. And bring with you a hard hat, Petzl headlamp, tough clothing, high boots, clear safety glasses to keep debris out of your eyes, a dust mask and flexible yet sturdy gloves for handling broken glass.

All of it goes into a Lowepro Flipside Trek BP 350 AW, and I love it: lightweight, genuinely tough and with enough real capacity to fit all the gear I just listed.”

What about abandoned buildings is so interesting to photograph?

Jean-Pierre Zanotti

“What draws me in is anything that still holds real photographic potential – and that potential rarely depends on the place being spectacular. Sometimes the most striking shot comes out of the plainest room: a bare corridor, an empty doorway, where the light and the composition just happen to align. I live in the south of France, with Italy just two hours away, so a lot of what I shoot comes from there.

The most memorable trip I took was an entire day, alone, in a former psychiatric hospital in Italy. It’s one of those rare places that has everything at once – strong photographic potential in nearly every room, an unusual density of objects and traces left behind, a history that’s genuinely unsettling once you start reading into it, and an atmosphere that’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it.

Spending a full day there, completely alone, gave me the strongest sense of time travel I’ve ever had on one of these expeditions. It’s still the single most impactful place I’ve visited.”

What’s changed since the beginning?

Jean-Pierre Zanotti

“I’ve practiced street photography for years, as I’ve seen others in the DPReview community do. I think it’s shaped how I see these places, even though the two couldn’t be more different on the surface – one is pure instinct, the other pure patience. What connects them, I think, is an interest in people, whether they’re right in front of the camera or long gone.

There’s nothing mystical about it: a room still holds the shape of the lives that were lived in it – how furniture was arranged, what was left on a shelf, which door got used most. Reading that is, in its own way, still photographing people, just at one remove.

Really, it’s less about the type of place than what happens once I’m inside. Silence is the first thing that hits – a total absence of noise that’s genuinely rare to experience today. The light is almost always diffuse, filtered through vegetation that’s reclaimed the space or through windows boarded up to keep intruders out. Whatever the building was – a factory, church, hospital, home – it all triggers the same immediate shift into another time.”

Taking a moment to plan a shot is a common theme among veterans. What does this mean for your photography?

Jean-Pierre Zanotti

“Some of these sites are so overwhelming that I get a kind of shooting frenzy – the urge to photograph everything at once – and that’s exactly when concentration goes out the window. These places are abandoned, but that doesn’t mean private or safe, so there’s no coffee break to fall back on; you just have to force yourself to slow down.

Then it’s a checklist: setting to the lowest native ISO, tripod fully deployed and stable – no exceptions, ever – bracketing almost as a systematic precaution, manual focus with focus peaking, and a thorough blower cleaning, since dust becomes a real problem on wide-angle shots against the light. I step back from the tripod to avoid transmitting any vibration through the floor during long exposures. Then, a careful check of sharpness before moving on. All told, a single shot can easily take five to ten minutes to set up.

If you’re tempted to try this kind of adventure, take real precautions and don’t be reckless. Accidents always happen exactly where you least expect them – never where the danger looks obvious.

Jean-Pierre Zanotti

And on gear: don’t let it become an excuse. I’ve made large prints I’m genuinely proud of with a Canon PowerShot A70 (bought new for $449) and a secondhand $50 Panosaurus head, and shot excellent large-format results with an old Olympus bridge camera and a wide-angle converter. The gear in this article helps, but it was never the reason any of these photos worked.”

Jean-Pierre really enjoyed participating in this spotlight article and would love to hear what you think of his photography and to answer any of your questions in the comments below.

You can check out Jean-Pierre’s other work at jpzanotti.com.

Editor’s note: This article continues a series, ‘What’s in your bag?’, highlighting DPReview community members, their photography and the gear they depend on. Would you like your photography to be featured in a future installment? Tell us a bit about yourself by filling out this form.