Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Faces of the Civil War

Battle reenactment photography is probably no one's specialist photography field, but there is a great opportunity here to try and capture a sense of real history. My latest venture was to Basing House for a Sealed Knot reenactment, and though I took quite a few pictures, I wasn't that satisfied with them. The battle itself was quite far away to get any close up pictures this time, but it was always my intention to get more people shots as well, again to try and capture that sense of history.

The people involved in the battle were very willing photographic subjects, which not really being a people photographer, I am very grateful for. I shot and processed this as an HDR image, but masked in the original RAW images for their faces.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Elizabeth Reigns in Bourton

Nearly a month since I last blogged, and that fact isn't lost on me. I was going to write a blog about my lack of inspiration for blogging recently, but then I think that would only add to the problem. A change is needed I think, either in the style or approach of my blog, but until I figure that one out, here's a picture I took yesterday from Bourton on the Water, somewhere in the heart of The Cotswolds.

I don't normally moan about the British weather (it is what it is) but yesterday for me was the first truly warm day of the year. As a result, my wife and I took a trip to a few places round The Cotswolds, and with the warm weather came the bustling crowds. This made photography quite difficult, especially as people photography isn't really my thing, and also the blanket blue sky can make landscape photography rather 'boring'. A key feature of Bourton on the Watere though, are the several small bridges that cross the beautiful stream that runs through it.

It wasn't until several photos later of this bridge, that I noticed the 'Elizabeth Reigns' emblem on the bridge, and realised that this might be a good look with the feet walking over the bridge. I had intended this to be an HDR shot, but in the end went for a single RAW image, processed in Lightroom.