Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal – North Yorks.

Fountains Abbey is a magnificent Cistercian Monastery just outside Ripon in North Yorkshire and is a photographer’s dream. I spent a day there and managed to capture a few images!

The image of the cellarium was taken with the Nikon D800 and presented a couple of challenges. Firstly, it was a hot Saturday afternoon and the place was rammed with visitors. Secondly, the cellarium was very dark and lit by natural light coming through the windows. However, the light was very bright in places and somewhat uneven.

So this was going to be a long exposure and that meant a tripod too. Not easy with loads of tourists milling around!

Also, I wanted everything to be in ‘acceptable sharpness’, from the very close vaulted ceiling to the window at the end. I could try and focus stack the image. In the end I just opted for hyper-focal distance.

People were surprisingly respectful of my needs and stayed well clear of the area. The problem with long exposure photography when people are around is that they think you’ve taken the picture whilst you are, in fact, waiting for the exposure to complete! I get around this by making it look like I am still looking through the viewfinder even though I don’t need to.

How I got the shot:

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