2008-07-13-024_1 Blenheim 'The Finest View in England"
*** 'Explore' #364 (briefly!) 31 Oct 2008***
**** 10,000 Views 20th Aug 2010 ****
This is the view that you see as you enter Blenheim from the town of Woodstock (you miss it if you go through the tourist entrance!).
It was described as 'The Finest View in England' by Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston Churchill), when he brought his American bride to Blenheim. King George III said 'We have nothing like this' when he saw it.
This view arises from the work of Vanbrugh, who built the Palace and the Grand Bridge, followed 50 years later by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, who created the lake and island.
It's an awkward scene to photograph well. It's just a little bit too wide from the Palace to the RH side of the Grand Bridge, I'm not a fan of letter box views, so this is about as far as I wanted to go; some bits of the Palace are missing.
The other problem that arises is that the Sun goes off the Grand Bridge by 11:00 BST, also the trees on the left of the lake are in deep shadow for much of the morning. They get the Sun in the afternoon, by which time the bridge is in shadow! So timing is very critical with this scene.
The light was brilliant, but it was clouding over; however I think clouds add a lot to a scene, even though you may have to wait a bit for the lighting you want.
I had to separate the sky plus lake from the grass and trees and work on them separately, on the original image the sky was too bright and the trees too dark. If you work in JPEG's this can be a bit tedious, it's less of a problem with RAW images.
I worked in 'Photo Studio', this came free with the camera. It lacks a lot of the functionality of Photoshop, but it's possible to do tolerable work with it (I think!)
Please note that this image is reduced from full size to a maximum 600 pixels. This is to discourage theft; if you are interested in using it please contact Getty Images.
2008-07-13-024_1 Blenheim 'The Finest View in England"
*** 'Explore' #364 (briefly!) 31 Oct 2008***
**** 10,000 Views 20th Aug 2010 ****
This is the view that you see as you enter Blenheim from the town of Woodstock (you miss it if you go through the tourist entrance!).
It was described as 'The Finest View in England' by Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston Churchill), when he brought his American bride to Blenheim. King George III said 'We have nothing like this' when he saw it.
This view arises from the work of Vanbrugh, who built the Palace and the Grand Bridge, followed 50 years later by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, who created the lake and island.
It's an awkward scene to photograph well. It's just a little bit too wide from the Palace to the RH side of the Grand Bridge, I'm not a fan of letter box views, so this is about as far as I wanted to go; some bits of the Palace are missing.
The other problem that arises is that the Sun goes off the Grand Bridge by 11:00 BST, also the trees on the left of the lake are in deep shadow for much of the morning. They get the Sun in the afternoon, by which time the bridge is in shadow! So timing is very critical with this scene.
The light was brilliant, but it was clouding over; however I think clouds add a lot to a scene, even though you may have to wait a bit for the lighting you want.
I had to separate the sky plus lake from the grass and trees and work on them separately, on the original image the sky was too bright and the trees too dark. If you work in JPEG's this can be a bit tedious, it's less of a problem with RAW images.
I worked in 'Photo Studio', this came free with the camera. It lacks a lot of the functionality of Photoshop, but it's possible to do tolerable work with it (I think!)
Please note that this image is reduced from full size to a maximum 600 pixels. This is to discourage theft; if you are interested in using it please contact Getty Images.