Houghton House Summer Event

As usual my cunning plan to arrive early for the First Summer Event of 2019 failed miserably, however it was great to arrive to a group of photographers waiting for the off!

Our trip to Houghton House was well supported with 10 members coming along including both seasoned experts and new members. The weather turned out to be better than we’d expected with some feint sun breaking through the clouds, and it not being too chilly.

From the car park we walked up to the main entrance with several people stopping to enjoy the view across the fields towards the house. Once at the main entrance everybody took shots looking down the long tree lined avenue, before walking down to the house itself, although several people did take advantage of the excellent views out over the Bedfordshire countryside, and the rather scenic horse.

Once at the house itself, everyone set about their own photography capturing the house from different angles, exploring the shapes and views from the different windows and doorways, and picking out some of the architectural details.

Having visited Houghton House myself several times I went with one shot in mind. A view of the house using a long exposure to show the clouds streaming past. Whilst I got a quite successful 30 second exposure using a 9 stop Neutral Density filter, unfortunately there wasn’t enough contrast between the clouds and the sky to get a successful image. However I raided my library of skyscapes and with a little Photoshop magic produced the following.

After about an hour and a half, everyone had taken the shots they wanted, however before we left we organised a couple of group portraits. Since I had a tripod the job fell to me, however rather than using the self timer, someone suggested using the interval timer feature on my camera and after a little bit of fiddling I got everything set-up and turned the resultant images into the GIF at the top of the page.

As usual following a successful shoot, a number of us stopped at a pub in Ampthill to enjoy a quick beer and a rest from the mornings activities.

Here, you’ll find a selection of our members’ images from the day.
If you’ve got shots you’d like included in the gallery just send them to me!