Article

Area Project - Lincolnshire

The area project of this example is a county, and we have chosen Lincolnshire, but it could just as easily be a town, city, walk, region or country, which variation it is for you will depend on your interest, time and budget commitments. Before starting it may be worth thinking about what you are hoping to achieve and therefore what it is you need to photograph or produce to meet this aim. So start with an outline, and this could include such items as:

• County History

• List of Top Highlight attractions

• List of Local attractions

• Location Guides

• Festivals and Events

• Links to local websites such as tourist information, accommodation, restaurants and cafe's etc

Next carry out some research and identify sources of information currently about. For example:

• The county pages and location guides on Photographers Resource

• Tourist Books

• Tourist leaflets from tourist information offices, motorway services, the attractions themselves

• Internet Research for Websites

• Most counties have websites devoted to local newspapers, and many have local portals connecting local services and other items in the area.

Once you have identified your aims and the sources for the location then you are ready to outline the stages required to achieve your goal. These might be:

• An outline of what you are putting together.

• A list of places you want to be able to include and therefore photograph.

• A shooting list of the images you want to get.

• A time plan of when you can get the images, when editing will be required and other tasks will need to be done prior to completing the task.

• Ways of cutting costs when collecting the images.

When putting together a list of top attractions, in this example for Lincolnshire, we take on all these activities in order to create the list and creating location guides on some of them. Amongst our other pages we already have large listings of some attractions in Lincolnshire, so this is a good start point and then the further elements of research enables us to create the Top Attraction list. Some of the pages we already have include:

Open All Year - this lists Historic Houses and Gardens in the county which are open all year, so are a good source for finding locations which can be photographed during the winter months, as well as the summer.

Lincolnshire Railways    - lists all known historic railways in the county.

Lincolnshire Gardens     - all gardens which are open to the public, but from other sources and links within the garden section you can also find details on the annual National Garden Schemes, for gardens open to the public for some days in aid of charity.

Lincolnshire Windmills   - There are a large number of windmills in Lincolnshire and many of them have sails, and many are tourist attractions open to the public, with some also still working.

Lincolnshire County in Photographers Resource, county index.

Doing initial background research on the county first enables us to find out what areas we should do further research on, and during this research we may also come across ways of cutting costs, for instance in the case of Lincoln they have a Lincoln Time Travel Pass where for one fixed price you can visit 1000 years of history in the historic sites of Lincoln, including Lincoln Cathedral, Medieval Bishops Palace, Lincoln Castle, Museum of Lincolnshire Life and Ellis Mill (windmill). They are available from Lincoln Tourist Information centres or in advance by telephone. Adult Pass £9.99 valid for 3 days, or a Family Pass (2+3) valid for 7 days costs £20.00. See  www.visitlincolnshire.com for details.

Lincolnshire Background

Lincolnshire is situated on the East coast of England and it is said to be England's fourth largest county and has a wealth of attractions amongst it's coastal resorts, such as Skegness, the fen lands, vales and wolds. It also has scenic coastline to countryside and peaceful villages, historic churches, cathedrals and other buildings, stately homes and gardens, open hills, and marshes where seabirds gather. It is an agricultural area growing foodstuffs and horticulture growing flowers, and it is home to the Red Arrows, flying display team.

It's capital is Lincoln, which has a triple towered cathedral with many carvings in wood and stone, and a Medieval Bishops Palace. It also has a castle, begun in 1068 by William the Conqueror, where you can walk along its walls and get views of the city and surrounding countryside and is one of only two castles in England to be built on twin mottes.  The castle also houses one of only 4 copies of the Magna Carta in its Victorian prison building. There are also other structures which show off Lincoln's medieval heritage, including the High Bridge which crosses the River Witham, and supports medieval half-timbered buildings and two surviving Norman domestic buildings offering a glimpse of life at the lower end of the social scale. There is also the Museum of Lincolnshire Life and Ellis Windmill. There are many windmills, many still working and they have a specific tourist leaflet on them with a map and details on each of them, see our list of Lincolnshire Windmills for more details on individual ones.

The Georgian market town of Spalding is the flower capital of Lincolnshire with many farms and nurseries growing them commercially, but it also hosts an annual flower festival in the spring, where the flower parade held in May is a major attraction for visitors, and the highlight during the Autumn is a Pumpkin Festival.

The town of Brigg is home to one of England's great horse fairs which takes place every year in August and dates from the 13th century.

Some of Lincolnshire's attractions include:

• Burghley House stands in a 300 acre deer park landscaped by Capability Brown, and home to the annual Burghley Horse Trials held in September each year.

• Tattershall Castle was one of the first major buildings in the country to use red brick.

• Belton House, near Grantham, surrounded by formal gardens and parkland.

• Grimsthorpe Castle dates back to the 13th century and has been a family home since 1516.

• Boston has the truncated tower of St. Botolph's church, known locally as "Boston Stump."

• Crowland, a Benedictine Abbey contains remnants of monastic buildings, with 5 tiers of statues on its west front. Also in the town, Croyland, also has a triangular bridge, which used to go over the waterways that existed prior to the introduction of roads.

• Julian's Bower - a medieval turf maze in the village of Alkborough.

• The Viking Way, long distance path, connects Lincoln to the Humber Bridge.

For the wildlife enthusiast there is:

• Donna Nook a great place for seal watchers' as it has one of the largest and most accessible breeding colonies of Grey Seals in the UK.

• Gibraltar Point Nature Reserve provides a habitat for native and migratory birds, and is a popular gathering point for nature lovers and bird watchers.

• Natureland Seal Sanctuary in Skegness, there is another seal sanctuary in Mablethorpe.

• Butterfly & Wildlife Park in Spalding.

For more attractions that we were able to find and more location guides to some of them on this site, take a look at our Lincolnshire Top Attractions List or the County page.

Now we have shown you how it's done, why not have a go yourself at doing a guide to your local area or county and remember you could use the templates we have on here to create location guides for us and others to be able to take advantage of what you found.

Having done the research you're ready to schedule when you want to get out and take photographs and other stages, we have more detail on the full process in the article A Project For This Year with some other ideas for projects, perhaps utilising what you take in a number of ways see the Possible Year Projects article.