Tudor England

I like to think that historical pictures are one of my specialities in the photographic and HDR worlds and it certainly is my ambition to use my imagination to present scenes from our past. Opportunities I have had in the past such as attending civil war battle reenactments are certainly a way that I can capture a bit of historical magic and I'm constantly looking for other ideas to present history in photographic form. HDR processing helps enormously as well because for me it has always been the artistic look HDR can give to photos rather than 'capturing the entire light range' that makes HDR so special. It really helps give pictures an extra dimension and although of course I love standard photography, HDR provides more opportunities I feel to create an artistic look.

The location in today's picture is again within the grounds of Hever Castle, with the focus of this one being the Tudor Village that lies behind the castle. Now this part of Hever Castle does not actually date back to the Tudor period (1485 - 1603 for the historian buffs like me) but was created in the 20th century to house extra guests that would be staying at Hever Castle. You're not allowed to walk round it either, nowadays I believe it is specially reserved for weddings and other events. Therefore, I got this picture while stood by the castle, whilst looking towards the Tudor Village. I found it quite intriguing that there was a boy who was in and out of this boat by the village and felt this would look good as part of the picture. I'm sure he works for the castle but luckily was not wearing any kind of uniform that would look out of place in this picture.

Processing wise, this is an HDR picture taken from 3 shots and after a lot of painstaking work, I merged in a texture from a rock that I also pictured from within the grounds of Hever Castle. In the final image I did think about going a bit lighter on the texture but then I lost the authentic historical look of the buildings, which I was not prepared to sacrifice, therefore I kept the strong texture look in.