Long Exposure | Stephen G Hipperson

I went out to All Saints Church, Bolton Percy, North Yorkhire on Monday evening – as part of a small group’s ongoing, once a month meet. It’s unusual to be able to get into a church in the evening, however, one of our group was able to contact a key holder and we had a free run at the place until we finished.

The church was fairly dark, darker than many churches I’ve been in at the close of the day – I prefer not turn the lights on as this can wreck any atmospheric lighting from big windows.

Despite the overall lack of light, partly caused by the significant amount of black oak woodwork, there were patches of lovely light and this is what I concentrated on.

Along with the usual stainglass windows there was a modern window (Millenium, I think) which was stunning when the light got behind it.

When I visit churches and other buildings I’m always on the look out for something which tells of the activity of people, something a little less formal or obvious. I really liked this pile of books piled up on a choir stall.

Most of the exposures in the church were 10+ seconds with a small aperture.

Near to the church was the flooded area of a small river, unfortnutely I wasn’t quick enough to get the last of the useful light of the evening as the sun had already set – but I think that some of the others managed to get something.

On Saturday I had a trip out to a new venue for me, namely Hackfall Wood, North Yorkshire I guess the best way to describe the location would be to call it a section of wooded river valley with some added man made structures in the form of Grade II listed buildings. See below for website details.

For the most part I spent my time exploring the site with sporadic sessions of photography when either the lighting seemed right or I could play with technique – which amounted to the longest exposures I could squeeze out of my kit using a polarising filter.

I also used the polariser to cut down on the bright reflections from foliage which allowed me to enrich the greens more than normal, especially when shooting into the sun (contra jour).

Trees and Bluebells

I liked the contrast in lichen growth of the repaired wall with the existing.

Moving Water
Unfortunately we don’t have the huge amounts of moving water like many of you have in your areas, so we have to make do with streams and the like.

Close up

Tropical Beach….
Of course not, but I tried to capture that sort of feel to these three. The colour of the water is real, it contains significant amounts of peat, typical for the area.