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Return to the House of Shadows
I've written here previously about my visit to the 'House of Shadows', the large derelict mansion out in the countryside. An ancient and lonely place, the oldest part of the house dates back several hundred years. Recently, I made a return visit to the place.
My previous visit was the first time there and the place was overwhelming - partly because of the scale of the place, and partly because it was really dark inside and I was alone; so on this occasion, my photography was much slower and more considered. And this time, too I had another photogrpaher with me. Having a fair idea of the photographic opportunities available, I knew the shots I really wanted and so I was able to concentrate on those.
The biggest problem - other than the risk of falling through the floor - was the contrast range in the light levels; outside, there was glorious sunshine, but I was inside a derelict mansion where it was mostly dark. Light coming in through the shuttered windows tended to be quite harsh in terms of contrast and it was not always possible to do anything about that. As a result, I bracketed most of my shots.
One of the benefits of doing this was that at the post-processing stage, I was then able to use some HDR software on the images before hand-processing the resulting final image.
For some of these images, I used a 'chiaroscuro' effect, a high contrast effect between the lowlight and highlights of the image, which resulted in a very 'painterly' quality to the images. The lower left images here is an example of this. For others shots, I did not use the painterly effect, instead choosing a more realistic look but with the same depth of luminosity, as in the upper image here. Because of the character of the house, a number of the images I made suited a darker and more sombre feel, such as the lower right image.
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