Synopsis: A trip to Killerton House and Garden (National Trust) near Exeter, to see the daffodils, except there were none, or at least there were very few, as we’d jumped the gun. Enjoyable trip all the same.
It was a lovely sunny afternoon so I suggested to Mum we take a trip out to Killerton House and Garden (NT), to see the spring flowers. Trouble was, we were rather too early, as the majority of the daffodils were simply flower stalks yet to come into bloom. Still, it was such gorgeous spring afternoon to be wandering around what is a most splendid garden even when flowers are not in bloom. The trees looked majestic, and there were a few rhododendrons in flower, along with the odd magnolia.
Killerton House, facing the formal gardens.
I have to confess to having something of an supplementary ulterior motive for this trip, as I was keen to further practice my current experimentation with HDR photo imaging. The gardens at Killerton would give me a new subject for me to explore. I tried shots of the flowers, the trees and Killerton House itself. It was this photo of Killerton House which proved the most successful (see photo right).
Idyllic Devon!
The problem I experienced using my main tone mapping technique of shooting multiple images which are then input into the process, this only really works if the subject of the photos are relatively static. Today there was a strong wind blowing across the valley and catching the exposed face of Killerton gardens which meant the various trees and flowers were bobbing about frantically. This motion resulted in really awful ghosting in the HDR images. I did however return to one of my images, that of a large spruce, and input a single image into the tone mapping process, and the results of this were significantly better (see photo left).
Whilst at Killerton I could see the possibility of using my other photographic technique ‘of the moment’, which is to take a series of photographs and stitch them together to create a sweeping panorama. There are a couple such photographs to be found in my photo set on Flickr (link above), but this photo, once again of Killerton House, was probably the best of the pair (see photo below).
Killerton House, facing the formal gardens.
Can you spot Mum?
I’m going to finish on a little teaser. What is the connection between Killerton House and Bude, Cornwall? A little clue: it has something to do with the Temple of Winds at Athens. That’s perplexing, isn’t it? (Answer).
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