A weekend away - Stratford

Sorry for the Jpeg artifacts. These are a lot of pictures in not a lot left of blogger file space.

Stratford Upon Avon. What can you say? A town that seems to have Shakespeare wherever you dare to look. For all shots shown here, the ISO is 100.


Stratford is a beautiful town which, like Warwick, is peppered with architecture that looks as if it is threatening to throw a brick at your bonce should you so much as sneeze in its general direction. The day was going to be full of hard sunlight, loads of tourists and who knows what else.


This is a front elevation of Shakespeare's birthplace. The house he lived in is no more, but at least this one is still standing. You'll note that for the vast majority of the pictures you are about to see, the most that has been done to them is a little exposure tweaking and on a couple, some sharpening. Anything else, and I'll tell you.


Early starting is the key to getting buildings like these without anyone in the picture. I considered myself lucky to start shooting at 11:30-ish and it didn't take more than a couple of minutes patience before I got a clear shot at many of the buildings, and I was using this trick on many of the less popular buildings throughout the day. The lack of people is not a Gimp cloning trick; I just waited for a clear shot. There were a few times when this didn't work, but I got what I wanted for the majority of the time. In fact, moments after grabbing this picture, someone came out of Subway and stuck their advertising billboard in front of the building I was shooting ... talk about luck.


Once or twice I had to shoot over a car roof to get the positioning as best I could for the skewed buildings and street furniture, but it was definitely worth it. Again, with no tripod, the sun allowed me better hand held shots; more aperture allowed the street furniture to be present with the buildings.


The harsh sun, however, is a cruel mistress and you can easily see how a harsh shadow can completely ruin a shot. The occasions where something like this can actually benefit a picture have been very few and far between for me. Harsh sunlight has almost always been a barbed friendship.


Hall's Croft is the Jacobean Doctor's house and contains a patch of garden which grows the herbs and other plants that a physician of the time would have needed. For some reason, it wasn't packed solid with people and was a nice place to get a cup of tea; and also a nice place to photograph from the street also.


Back to business, however, and the harsh sunlight. The statues had no defence from the light and as you can see from this shot of Shakespeare himself, the light was a mess and it would have been a better choice to return here on a cloudy day; but alas there was little choice other than to press on.


The shadows in this kind of light are as fixed as the wrinkles in her dress. The only thing that would change them is the ticking of the clock. Here, however, as the sun rose, the shadow under the chin would have covered more space. I should have been here a few hours earlier and maybe I would have seen more of the face, but I did what I could.


Alas, poor Hamlet. Lit by the same harsh sun there is little else to be done other than to try and use shooting position and framing to create an engaging capture and put your own slant on another artists story. This was 1/125 at f8 and I had to apply sharpening. It was actually a fair old dance as I was one of a crowd of people, mostly tourists, shooting poor Hamlet.


I don't know what drew me to this shot; the sun is right at the top of the frame. 1/2000th at f5.6, the camera was in Program mode and made its own decision here. This is something that I'll do when shooting in to the sun as it tends to cast everything else in subtle shades of brown. Even shooting directly in to the sun I have had the camera turn white clouds in a blue sky, to interesting shades of tobaco. (if you decide to replicate this, PLEASE use live view, not the optical viewfinder.)


But on to the buildings and architecture. Harsh shadows can actually end up being part of a composition if you're on the right side of the subject, so don't count the shadows out, even if they are harsh and ugly. This was a very comfortable f8 at 1/250th.


The big bonus, however, are the clouds in a blue sky. Mix them with architecture and you can really kick off some great shots. f8 at 1/350th here and I was very lucky with the angle of the sun as by this point I had travelled most of the way around, "Holy Trinity," by that point.


Holy trinity is based on a Saxon monastery dating back to early 1200 and is on the bank of the Avon. We arrived just at the end of Eucharist on the Sunday and witnessed the large number of people coming out after the service.

The positioning of the sun, as it was starting to come down from mid-day, was giving just enough shadow to add definition to these windows and the brickwork. It was almost like filling the grouting in with a slightly thicker black marker.


Inside Holy Trinity would be where the next set of challenges lay but the powerful sun was actually going to help me out here. I would be pushing my hand held abilities to the max and not using any flash whatsoever inside the church. Still a working church with a solid congregation, any building like this is worthy of respect and it is always worth asking if there is a fee for people to photograph inside the building; in some cases there is, in some there isn't. Holy Trinity is one where there isn't a photography charge, but a donation is expected if you go to the part where Shakespeare's grave is.

The windows high up and powerful sun light really helped me out on this f4 shot at 1/6th of a second. Of course, the shake reduction system was active and I took three or four shots; one came out reasonably sharp. If the sun hadn't been out, then this would not have been possible.


The power of the light through the windows is visible here as the different colours on the stone work. The grave was shot at f4 and at 1/10th.


This, I believe, is a first edition bible which is chained. You can see how important it can be to practice low level light photography without a flash as the glass would have killed the picture. Like the organ pipes, this was f4 at 1/6th.


This is a 1:1 of the bible picture above, shot through glass, hand held on f4 at 1/6th on ISO 100 using the 50-135 DA* 2.8 lens; and if anything, this picture is a little worse by dint of the Jpeg compression. I think I took three shots of this bible. Not a bad piece of work thanks to the harsh sunlight streaming through the windows.


So, if the sunlight is too harsh for outdoor photography, then perhaps that is the time to seek some indoor locations to shoot.

Stained glass windows are a nightmare. This was taken at 13:13 with the sun starting to come down behind it. f5.6 in order to get the depth of the window from top to bottom, and I didn't quite manage it. I was on 1/30th of a second as it was and I think, had there not been more people around, I would have re-shot with f8.


This is also a 1:1 unaltered piece of the above picture. You can see the kind of detail that we can get with a hand held shot in low light. Practice, practice, practice.


Finally, I finish with the 14th-century sanctuary knocker. It took shot after shot as people continued to come in and out of the door. The position of the knocker was pure fluke as one of the church staff members happened to move the door position and I was on one side, squat down in the porch. Again at f4 and 1/6th, it took a number of attempts to achieve this picture. It has actually had a slight unsharp mask applied to it, but even so, I think it is a wonderful shot.