Witley Court

Witley Court was once one of the great houses of Midlands. It has been built in 1655 by Thomas Foley on the site of a former manor house near Great Witley. Now days it is a spectacular ruin after being devastated by fire in 1937. The vast and rambling remains of the palatial 19th century mansion are surrounded by magnificent landscaped gardens, which still contain huge stone fountains.

Together with my college group we went to Witley Court to take some photos. 

I manly focused on long exposure photography. I took my digital and my film camera. For this trip I wanted to use infrared film. Unfortunately I had black and white film in my camera already. I didn't want to waste it so I shoot that first. Now I think it was a mistake as by the time I finished with black and white film I had not much time to use infrared one. Once I start using it I didn't have enough time to finish it. 

 I had few filters to use as well. I never really used filters before so it was a new experience. 

I didn't have proper filters holders so I had to hold it myself in front of the lens. 

This was a challenge as the exposure was nearly a minute so it was quite difficult to keep my hand still - lesson learned.

We were there for about four hours but I still felt little bit rushed. I haven't took as many photographs as my colleagues and at the end of the day I felt "unfulfilled".

I am not 100% happy with the images I produced  on the day. I guess I didn't manege my time well enough. 

My photographs from the first film are not that great. Even though I used manual setting and various filters they still didn't came out as planed. On the day I realized my film camera doesn't do "bulb" option. So my longest exposure could only be 30 sec and on that day that was too short. 

I wanted to take some photos with wide angle but the only lens I had at the time was 18-200. Although this lens fit onto my film camera but the frame of the camera was smaller than the frame of the lens. In result I got this black circle around my pictures.

I haven't finish my infrared film yet so there will be few more image (I hope) that I could share with you on my blog.