Members of the club’s landscape group met up at Framlingham castle in Suffolk.
Framlingham Castle is in the market town of Framlingham in Suffolk in England. An early motte and bailey or ringwork Norman castle was built on the Framlingham site by 1148, but this was destroyed (slighted) by Henry II of England in the aftermath of the Revolt of 1173–1174.
Its replacement, constructed by Roger Bigod, the Earl of Norfolk, was unusual for the time in having no central keep, but instead using a curtain wall with thirteen mural towers to defend the centre of the castle.
Despite this, the castle was successfully taken by King John in 1216 after a short siege. By the end of the 13th century, Framlingham had become a luxurious home, surrounded by extensive parkland used for hunting.
During the Second World War, Framlingham Castle was used by the British Army as part of the regional defences against a potential German invasion.
Today, the Castle is managed by English Heritage and run as a tourist attraction. It is protected under British law as a Grade I listed building and as a scheduled monument.
We met at 06:30 and the view of the castle from across the mere is a short walk from the car park.
We dispersed to take up our initial locations and began shooting.
The shot below is my favourite of the morning, of course due to the sun star which most of my fellow club members also bagged.
There were a couple of modifications I made to this image. Firstly, we had a bland sky on this morning so I’ve blatantly replaced it with one from Photoshop. Read my blog article on sky replacements here.
I also applied a filter in Snapseed to give the image a little more ‘mood’.
The other shot I quite liked was this one due to the split of the grass in the foreground. I’ve lifted the shadows on the grass just to emphasise the foreground.
Finally, I grabbed this shot of the church of St Michael. There’s nothing special about it but the morning light was lighting up the spire quite nicely.
We all had a really good morning getting out and talking all things photography.
The sunlight was disappointing and many members didn’t feel they had a shot worthy of output, mostly because of the sky.
We made our way back to the car park with everyone keen to come back another time but possibly at sunset where the sun would be behind us.
Onwards and upwards…