July 2009        Photographers Resource - Monthly        Edition 67

Historic Houses of England, plus National Trust and
 Photographers plus Landscape Photography
plus Depth of Field

• Feature 1 - Historic Houses of England

• Feature 2 - The National Trust and Photographers

• Photographers Diary

• July Wildlife Photography

• Swan Upping

• Photographic Feature 1 - Landscape Photography

• Photographic Feature 2 - Depth of Field

The  Pontcysyllte Aqueduct  (Pontcysyllte Aqueduct Gallery ) we covered last month has just been made a World Heritage Site, BBC report. This is the UK's 28th World Heritage Site joining places like Stonehenge and Blenheim Palace  There are around 900 across the world.

The Industrial revolution started only 300 years ago in 1709 at Coalbrookdale Shropshire,  now Ironbridge, and  Heritage, as a major business, has only taken off over the lasts 50 years. Many people well below retiring age can remember visiting Stonehenge when you could just stop your car and walk around it, before fences and entry charges were introduced.

Many photographers will remember when you could just walk around any property owned by or for the public and take photos, no fences, photo rights, or monopolies set up to benefit some picture library owned or run by some organisation or government organisation, with commercial deals done where a commercial company can offer the prints for sale....  So how has this come about, do you remember giving away your heritage, and who has the right to tell you that you can or cannot photograph properties that we all own, and what you can and cannot do with your own photos...  Read more at The Heritage Takeover. 

In this edition we are looking a major Historic Houses in the UK and asking are the National Trust photographer friendly, as well as some photography topics.

1. Major Historic Houses of England

A new article, Photographing Historic Houses,  takes a look at the considerations when considering photography outside or inside one of our historic houses.  We also have an article asking Can flash damage anything, looking at the use of flash in places with aged or sensitive objects.

This is one major area that has been very thinly covered up to now within our location indexes, there are several reasons for this, firstly there are very many of them and secondly quite a lot are owned by the National Trust and many photographers don't look on the National Trust as friendly to photographers. We are looking at the National Trust in a separate feature below.

This month we have been involved in a major task to index all the historic houses that are open to the public, this includes properties owned by the National Trust, English Heritage and privately owned properties. So far we have identified over 1200. Because of the large numbers we have concentrated on England initially and will come back to do Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland later. It is likely we have not found them all, so if you spot any omissions or you see tourism leaflets on your travels on other houses that are open to the public then please let us know.

Like most of our lists these have links from the titles in the left column to our location guides and further along the line a number of links to other sources of information on the internet. While we cannot yet include every location in detail, we can take you to the information, and help you also identify which ones may be of interest to you.  We have produced the list both by county and in straight alphabetic order for the whole lot. This is within a new Historic Houses section and has its own index page Historic Houses  within the topic indexes as well.

Other articles we have that cover, in part, this area are:-

• Always open   a look at attractions, many historic houses that are open throughout the whole year.

• Major Heritage Sites Open All Year is a list of these.

• Making Buildings Stand Up Straight looks at overcoming the problem of buildings sloping backwards.

• Making People Disappear looks at ways to take photos and get rid of all the people from your shots.

• Membership originations looks at the organisations that you can join and the benefits each provide. See Membership Benefits of Organisations.

We also have an extensive amount of information on Gardens open to the public, with listings alphabetically, by county and many location guides, some of these properties also provide an opportunity to photograph houses on the same sites.

In the reference sub section Controlling Costs, you can find information on the various ways to reduce costs, from joining membership organisations to tourism passes and travel schemes.

If you have a Tesco Clubcard then take a good look at Tesco Clubcard Deals, as these can save you a lot when visiting some of the historic houses, for example Blenheim Palace and Longleat, where, in each of the places £5 of Clubcard vouchers gives you £20 of entry tokens. You can also join and pay for English Heritage or CADW membership at a discount. You can use Clubcard rewards for entry to National Trust for Scotland properties but not to purchase membership.

We have some places covered in existing location guides and have added this month the following houses:-

2. The National Trust and Photographers

We as photographers, although very numerous, are often not treated well by government run organisations and the like, in most countries, so finding the National Trust here in the UK not by many to be considered photographer friendly, may not come as a great surprise. The National Trust is not a government agency as such,  but an organisation that technically is a charity, but is something unique, managing properties and other assets left to the nation, plus some taken in lieu of death duties by the government. Its funded largely by membership fees but has other incomes including a large slice from government agencies, councils and the National Lottery. The problem for photographers is that they also run both a commercial picture library and a print business and want to monopolise these areas. Many other organisations also have their own picture libraries, but tend to handle the way they deal with photographers differently. The National Trust are said to be in the process of changing this to become more photographer friendly. On their website it even says you can take photos inside their properties by arrangement where the photos are not being used commercially. In the article National Trust and Photographers   we look at this in depth and try out an experiment to see if we can take photographs in National Trust properties as they say.

from everywhere, a little like the Monopoly game, every time the year goes around, they get more money, from members, from government agencies and by bequests and more. Even in these difficult times, when most are struggling, the NT's formula should hold up well.

Their slogan is 'The National Trust for ever, for everyone', while perhaps this is not an accurate description now, we are hoping it will become in the future, and are pleased to hear that they are working towards it.

What would Beatrix Potter think of the National Trust?

Beatrix Potter, the writer of illustrated children's stories, was a major donor to the  National Trust, so I thought I would try a little experiment to see if Beatrix Potter was brought back to life if she would be welcome in National Trust properties. Beatrix may have given her moneys and been a promoter of the trust at a time when it had far fewer supporters, but would she now be welcome to produce stories and sketches based on NT properties, and of course she would want to take some photos to base her drawings on. We put this to the test, and our experiment and results are detailed in the article What would Beatrice Potter think of the National Trust. 

Our research, tests and contact with the National Trust gives us hope, in the shorter term, that updated and more photographer friendly guidelines may make a lot of difference by later this year, and that there is a will to make progress.

1. Landscape Photography

Thornton Force, Yorkshire Gallery Link

Would you class yourself as a landscape photographer?  Do you know precisely what a landscape photographer is? We have attempted to answer this question in the article Landscape Photography.   Defining a part of landscape photography as photographing  pictorial landscapes, we cover in the article  Photographing Pictorial Landscapes  how to go about the type of photography that first springs to mind when thinking of landscape photography. Photography articles in the Gardens , Waterfalls Walks , Castles , Abbeys , Canals sections as well as Historic Houses section referred to above each looking at photographing these features.

2. Depth of Field

The depth of field is the distance that is apparently in focus at ay point. The amount that appears to be in focus is controlled by a number of variables. In the article Depth of Field (DOF) Explained,  we look at this in some detail, how to know the Depth Of Field, change it and what you can do if there is not sufficient depth of field. This is extended in a second article, Application of Depth of Field.  

In last months edition we looked at slicing, and how to take a number of slices and run these through special software to give us a controllable greatly increased depth of field.  Introducing Slicing,   is a good start if you missed this and leads into the many other articles that we have, including sets of slices for you to experiment with on this topic. Using this technique you can get any amount of depth of field you require.

July is now here and as you will now expect we have a new page for the August events that are of interest to photographers and an expanded July page. During the summer months there are loads of events, activities and photographic opportunities available to any type of photographer. Obviously we all hope to have good weather and the opportunity to get out and enjoy what is on and with the longer days it doesn't even matter if you're working as there is still time to get out and photograph the wild stuff in our countryside, woods, parks and more.

The main highlight of the Heritage Calendar this month is The Festival of History organised by English Heritage. This year it takes place at Kelmarsh Hall in Nottinghamshire on the 25th and 26th. This is two days of non stop photography with living history encampments and many battle spectaculars from the many re-enactment groups that take part. Other heritage events throughout the month include the Tewkesbury Medieval Festival, the Godiva Festival in Coventry or the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex a mixture of old and new.

On water you have the Henley Royal Regatta on the River Thames, the Spirit of the Sea at Weymouth a two week festival of regattas and festivals including beach volleyball. Other water events around the country include the National Hovercraft Racing Championships, powerboat racing, and the Eastbourne Extreme showcasing windsurfing, land yachting, kite buggies etc.

In the countryside there are many country/county shows including the last ever Royal Show at Stoneleigh Park, and the Royal Welsh Show nr Builth Wells. Equestrian events include jousting tournaments, horse driving trials, Arab Horse Show and the more unusual Langholm Common Riding at the end of the month.

In the air there are many vintage and new flying events such as the large International Air Tattoo at Fairford in Gloucestershire as well as Balloon Festivals in Basingstoke and Kite Festivals like the one held in Brighton and many smaller venues around the country.

 

If you want a more unusual event then why not take a look at the World Snail Racing Championships in Norfolk, World Pea Shooting Championships in Cambridgeshire or take a look at Bike Bog Snorkelling. We have also added another article to our wildlife diary taking a look at what you can expect to see and photograph during the month of July. Of course there is much more available than we can possibly put into any single article and don't forget when down on the coast or beach to take a look at the little creatures that take refuge in the rock pools or the jellyfish that get washed up onto the beach. So take a look at Wildlife photography in July  for more inspiration and what to look out for.

Dragonfly

During this month there is a major week long annual wildlife event that takes place on the River Thames between Sunbury Lock and Abingdon Bridge. This is the annual census of the population of Mute Swans, known as Swan Upping. We have pages which allow you to identify some of the more common swans found in the UK such as Mute's, Bewick's and Whopper as well as a list of UK locations where you will see captive swans of all species.

Photographing Historic Houses   

The Heritage Takeover  

National Trust and Photographers   

What would Beatrix Potter think of the National Trust

Can Flash Damage Anything

Landscape Photography

Photographing Pictorial Landscapes

Depth of Field DOF Explained

Application of Depth of Field 

England's County Lists

Historic Houses of England - Alpha Listing

Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire    

Witley Court, Worcestershire     

Moreton Corbet Castle, Shropshire   

Wrest Park, Bedfordshire     

Audley End, Essex   

Blenheim Palace Gallery

Witley Court Gallery

Moreton Corbet Castle Gallery

Witley Church Gallery