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Having taken many, many photos of Caernarfon Castle from the outside, my wife Liz and I finally made it through the entrance gate and spent a fascinating couple of hours exploring the nooks, crannies, towers, stairwells, courtyards and hidden corners of this magnificent pile.
Of course, given such an opportunity I went mad photographically speaking, and snapped everything I thought would make a good image at the time.
Thank goodness for digital, as I would have wasted a whole lot of money on film and processing had I been behaving like this in the 'good old days'!
Back home a few weeks later and a review of the shoot in a calmer, more analytic frame of mind, revealed that ninety nine percent of my images from that afternoon weren't worth a light, especially those I'd shot from outside standing in the exposed central courtyard.
Fortunately for me, I'd also taken a number of frames from within the walls themselves, and although shot in technically challenging low light / high contrast situations, it was these interior photos that had much more mystery and ambiance to them than the bland snapshots taken outside in plenty of light.
This view of a spiral stone stairwell, lit by diffuse light coming through a narrow embrasure, was particularly attractive to me, with a lovely combination of shape, form and lighting.
Mind, you, I had to push the ISO quite high to keep the shutter speed within reason for an unsupported hand held shot, and dial in a lot of negative exposure compenstion to preserve the highlights, leaving the shadow detail to be pulled back out in post-processing in Lightroom.
So it was quite tricky to achieve this final image in the form you now see it.
Filename - castle caernarfon interior 03.jpg
Camera - Nikon D3100
Lens - 18-55mm zoom @ 48mm
Exposure - 1/20sec @ f5.6, ISO800
Location - Caernarfon, North Wales
This image - 533x800px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - -2ev exposure compensation used to preserve highlights.
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