Friday, 18 September 2009

Pitstone Windmill

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After a short trip to France, I returned home to the UK. September and October are excellent months to take night pictures as the sunsets are often colourful and provide beautiful muted light. One of my favourite places close to my home is Pitstone Windmill, an ancient post mill dating from 1627 that's believed to be the oldest in the British Isles. This was a working mill until it was destoyed during a gale in 1902. It was restored by volunteers and is now open to visitors on Sunday and bank holiday afternoons from June to August.
The windmill was dark and I wanted to avoid it becoming a silhouette in the picture. I lit it up from the side using a flash Canon 580EX Mark2 mounted on a lightstand and remotely controlled by a Pocket Wizard. As the windmill is quite big and the flash wasn't powerful enough, I set the aperture of my zoom, Canon 24-70 2,8L, to F4 to allow the dark wooden detail of the post mill to become visible. The flash combined with the sunset created this beautiful effect.

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