Urban Explorer Swept To Death While Taking Photos

A Pennsylvania woman's passion for taking photos of abandoned and obscure locations led her to her death.

Rebecca Bunting, 30, died Saturday after being swept away by flash flood waters from Philadelphia's Pennypack Creek, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. She had been taking photos inside a storm drain with her boyfriend at the time.

Police said a rush of flood water swept Bunting away. Her boyfriend was able to pull himself out and was seen by a witness screaming for help.

Dive teams tried to find Bunting, but they faced murky water as high as 10 feet in some areas and were unsuccessful. Bunting's body was recovered on Sunday. Police believe she likely died shortly after entering the water.

Bunting's friends described her as the ultimate urban explorer, or "bando" as they are called.

"She was the bando queen," Carly Weiss, a friend and fellow explorer told Inquirer.

Bunting's Instagram account is filled with images of abandoned and dilapidated spaces that had long been forgotten.

"She was always trying to get like really cool photos. She was really, really talented," her friend Cristen DeDomenico told WPVI in Philadelphia. "She could bring out beauty in any landscape."

Bunting is the sixth person to be killed in the creek in eight years, according to the Inquirer. 

Rebecca Bunting.

Those close to Bunting said they will remember the photographer, who was also a popular bartender, through her photos.

“We’re always going to have Becca’s photos and the photos we took of her,” Weiss told the Inquirer. “Becca is going to live forever because of this.”

Bunting addressed her own mortality in one of the last images she posted to Instagram, a photo of a sun setting beneath the trees behind a curved archway.

"If there is life after death, I want to come back as a sunset. Ain’t much else more beautiful than that," she wrote.

[Photo: Facebook]