Cloisters of the Abbey

After all the excitement of Team GB's Athletics performance at the Olympics last night, I pushed back writing today's blog until this morning (normally I write it the day before), so that is the reason it is up perhaps a bit later than usual. Amongst all the Olympic hysteria currently engulfing Britain, I visited yesterday the village of Lacock in Wiltshire, in particular Lacock Abbey. The abbey is a fantastic place for a photographer to visit, not just because it's a great place to photograph but because of it's place in the history of photography. The owner of the abbey during the early part of the 19th century was William Henry Fox Talbot and he was enthusiastically into the recent development of photography. The earliest known photographic negative dates back to 1835, which was taken by Talbot at the abbey itself. Today, there is still much information and history about photography at the museum and when I visited yesterday, there was an exhibition of Michael Palin's travel photographer's work, of which contained some stunning images.

The abbey dates back to the year 1229 (I'm guessing that wasn't an Olympic year) and elements such as the cloisters pictured above have survived since around that time. There are quite a few HDR shots on the web of cloisters from various different abbeys and monasteries throughout the world, so I was excited to be able to get a picture of my own. Some pictures have a panoramic view of both sides of the central pillar and though I have taken pictures that could make up a panorama, I'm not too sure I will attempt it yet. Although it shows off fantastic technique, if the image isn't calling for it, then I wouldn't do it for the sake of it. In fact, these are great places to try out a few photographic techniques (not just HDR), so there will probably be quite a few pictures of Lacock springing up over the next few weeks.