Compare and contrast

Right. So I went to some castle ruins in Baconsthorpe. It's a nice little quiet village on the way to Cromer. Down a (long) quiet little (very narrow) road, are some ruins of an old fortified manor house. It's erroneously called Baconsthorpe Castle. But I guess that has a ring to it.

Anyhow.

There isn't really much to see there, but it's a pretty nice place to sit down and pontificate to the nothingness.

I'm not so confident with colour photos, so I was trying some things with depth. The one above, I crawled half way down into the moat and shot upwards to get the grass in the foreground. The one below is kind of interesting with the varying degrees of light.

I'm glad I went out the day I did. The clear sky made the colour shots come out pretty nicely. I only took about 8 in colour though.

Using the film that I am, I was told I would get a quite a stark difference between the lights and darks. Even on a clear day the black and white pictures came out rather well.

Similar to the photo above. This one below is much better I think.

Obviously I can't hold a camera straight...

I really like the following ones.

I wasn't entirely sure how these would come out. I emphasise a substantial amount of trial and errors made, ended with these photos.

This one's nice. Shame about the fence though.

A little more colour

Carrying on with the colour theme, these are all from Peckover House and Gardens in Wisbech. The house has a pretty interesting history. It's an old Georgian house built buy the Peckover family who were Quakers, and had made their money in Banking. The house itself is nice to look around. It's not entirely open so you can't see it all, and it's been mocked up to look how it would have done more than 150 years ago. It's a pretty small place though, and they don't get a lot of money for the upkeep apparently. The funding for National Trust places have to battle it out with each other, the story goes.

The gardens really are the main attraction. I never thought I would take much interest in gardens in a photographic sense. At the same time, it's also pretty nice to sit down and relax. They do excellent cakes too.

If I were to line up two of the best (or at least favourite) photos I've taken, two of them are here below. The first is the one immediately below here. If I was interested in making them look a little better, I would probably crop the top of this a little. But it works.


This next one is pretty neat. It was just a solitary red flower amongst others. The high contrast film probably helps. I like how deep the red is.


This one is definitely one of my favourites. It's white on more white.


The next couple are just two that I like a lot. Whilst not consciously aware of it when I take photos, there is something about solitariness that I think makes for interesting scenes. You can kind of see that in most shots that I have taken. I like focusing on one thing amongst many, that stands out. Or even focusing on something unremarkable and making it stand out. It's not a unique idea, but it works for me in a big way.


Feel free to tell me what any of these flowers are. I'd be quite curious.

A little bit of colour

I prefer taking photos in black and white. I don't know why. I think I can picture the result much better with black and white. And yes, I know it's counter intuitive. I have deferred to black and white film more often than not when choosing from the rolls that I have before me.

Anyway. I live near some pretty interesting National Trust places. They have some nice gardens and what not. I know near enough nothing about plants and horticulture in general. But I have managed to take some decent shots of some colourful gardens.

The following few (six) are all from Oxburgh Hall. You can tell I was trying to be a bit of a poncy artiste in a couple of them.

I just like the orange in the one above. I have been using 400ASA film exclusively up until now. Not sure why, but apparently you get good contrasts. I think this is a good example of that.

Here is my attempt at using a high shutter speed. It was a fairly windy day, and you can kind of see the grass blowing. But I liked that solitary flower in the middle.

There were quite a few different parts of the gardens to take photos of. They mixed all the different colours really well. Good to take a photo of really.

When you walk in to Oxburgh Hall, past the ticket entrance, you get a really nice view of the building with a little garden patch out the front (sort of, it has a moat between the house and gardens). But here (above) you can see the house in the background (again, sort of).

Out of all of them, I tried the hardest on this. It didn't come out how I wanted it to. But it kind of has the right idea. You can see the different rows of colours which I liked.

Much the same as the yellow flower above, the wind was blowing harder in this one and pushed the flower further down when I took the picture. But I'm glad it didn't take it out of focus.

What is a summer without a barbeque?

This is the table from the previous post. But complete with what you would expect. I really like how the chilli sauce stands out.

A Pretty Common Activity

Smoking. Lots of people do it. It's something you see every day, and probably don't think twice about. Smoking, and it's associated mess is isn't pretty. But it is pretty simple to understand.

The picture below was taken at the end of an afternoon barbeque I was at. The table was filled with crockery, cutlery, and other such things. But at the end of it all, this is all that's left. A phone, sunglasses, and a pack of cigarettes.

I like this one. It's so simple. And again, such a common sight.

And a smoker.