Featherstone Castle

We took a trip to Featherstone Castle, an old grade 1 listed  haunted Castle in Northumberland.
This is a link to a Webpage about the Castles History! Clicky (:

As I love everything Gothic I was really looking forward to sleeping in an 11th Century (haunted) Castle for a few nights! I must say though, I'm very open to spirits and felt nothing apart from maybe a little chill for a few seconds in one of the higher  up rooms. Anyway! back to the real reason we went...
We went to 'get to know each other' and 'get used to the equipment' Which I felt was quite successful (:

We used Reflectors ;

& Flash Guns(external flash);

for the first time, granted we all had to work together as a team and help each other if we needed a bit of help remembering things and what-not, but I found it helpful nonetheless having the extra practice.
 We also used the trip to get more used to Manual settings on the Canons, Which I definitely needed to get more used to as my own DSLR is a Sony A200!

 I found myself doing a lot of 'test' shots as I was getting used to the Manual Settings(and just out of plain nosiness for seeing things in different exposures really):

Me, Jessie and Katherine carried about eight mattresses from around the Castle Dorms, to make a kind of Princess and the P kind of scene to photograph each other on! However we didn't get around to shooting until around 18:00-18:30, so the lighting was poor and we found the reflectors becoming less effective as natural lighting from the small window diminished. Alas the idea was there!
We also collected different patterned blankets and pillows to add more texture to the images and paid close attention to the order we piled our mattresses (as there was different patterns on them also) we put the mattresses and blankets on at different angles and arranged blankets in a draping fashion to create a rugged dishevelled look. It was enjoyable to make, we just should of started it much earlier on in the day.

These next four images that I took are obviously too dark, but it shows the set up we were going for and a reflector in one of the images :P

 The Reflector helped even out the light in this a little^

 

I wasn't liking it being so close and not showing the whole bed so I changed positions a little and made the camera portrait on the Tripod. The whole new composition, to me made the Photographs look so much better apart from very poor lighting.

In my opinion using external flash would just give this set up a very artificial look, not really what I was going for. So I didn't use the Flash Gun on this.

We also made Camera Obscuras! Which was amazing and everybody should try it at least once in their life time. We used black paper and masking tape to black out completely the dorm, our window frames were very crumbled so it took us a bit longer than expected as there were small gaps of light getting through. It was worth the effort though. We used a craft knife to cut out a small hole in the black paper, in the middle and amazingly the whole of the outside of the castle visible from the window was immediately brought inside the room, we could see the sheep and clouds moving as we stood in awe, momentarily, pretty much proud of ourselves for succeeding. 
 Here's another onslaught of photographs!

(What the room looked like without said Camera
 Obscura)









The Images of the actual thing; 

 The first images of the Camera Obscura, we held up a white piece of paper, quite close to the small hole in the black paper, and got a really crystal clear vision of the outside surroundings. We also bent thee paper in different ways to create abnormal angled views of it.

Without the piece of paper!; 

With the two above we found our selves holding the shutter button down for 60-70 seconds (counting out loud!) to get the correct exposure to show the Camera Obscura well.

 

The two Photographs above we introduced movement as we thought it was quite a sinister-looking setting. The first we told the model to move faster than the camera picked up in the 60 second exposure, so in the second image, we got our two models to do a different movement every 20 seconds, this was more successful than the first try.

We got a Flashlight, and wrote out the word 'CASTLE' just to experiment more with the long exposures! The word 'CASTLE' was just because we were inside a Castle.

This was to show a fuzzy mixed-up thought pool in the models head, as often when laying down or going to bed, people will be thinking a lot about everything that's going on in their lives. Although, it wasn't too successful as you can see Bonnie's feet!

These last three images were based on the Castles history of being haunted, we wanted to produce eerie looking photographs to relate to the female spirits that apparently roam around the castle.

Using Reflectors, I used a Reflector to bounce light from the window back onto the darker side(Izzie's right side) Next two Images:

These two images show slight Split Lighting, in a natural way.^

Here's some example of us using External Flash, Me being the model, Bonnie taking the Photographs and Izzie holding the Flash. Me, Izzie and Bonnie were working together to determine the best ways to use External Flash, we ended up using the Flash from a low angle pointing from my left, giving a not so dramatic effect. 

 

 

I felt a bit hindered as we had to share one camera between three + and found it hard to get a 'turn' to learn how to use the equipment well and take photographs, although I'll remember to bring my own Camera next time we go on a trip to prevent such things happening!

Also I took a disposable camera! So I'll have plenty of Candid shots to see when I develop it.

Overall, it was a good experience.

-Ashleigh Sawyer