Brining Photography Weblog

Crown Inn Refurbishment

Following on from the wedding of Helen and Mark (see below) Lucas, the proprietor of the Crown Inn at Pishill, requested some publicity photographs of the barn used for the reception.

Over the past few months the venue has been tastefully refurbished and redecorated to provide a wonderful venue for a wedding ceremony and / or reception. 

In addition to using three Bowens Gemini flash heads to balance the lighting in the room as usual, I thought I'd try a bit of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography to see how that turned out. For those who are new to this concept, it involves taking multiple images at different exposures for the highlights and shadows in a scene and then combining them into one image in post-production.

With the barn, I took five separate images exposed for, in turn, the extreme highlights, highlights, mid-tones, dark tones and shadows and then combined them using the Photomatix plugin for Aperture.

The result? Not too bad actually. I think with a bit of time to really finesse the images this HDR lark could be a useful alternative to humping a shed-load of lighting kit around. For the moment though, I'll play safe and do both.

 Exterior of the barn and pub at the Crown Inn

 Image created using the Photomatix HDR plugin for Aperture

 Same view (nearly) but using additional fill-lighting


 Another go with the HDR plugin

SHE BAR (Part 2)

Some time ago, I was commissioned to photograph a new restaurant which had opened in Kenilworth - namely the She Bar and Brasserie. At the time, the road outside was being altered into a new one-way layout (which many people still seem to ignore!!) which was scheduled to take 2 weeks thus rendering any external shots out of the question.

Two MONTHS later, when the work was finally complete and the front of the restaurant wasn't adorned with JCBs, traffic cones, and men in yellow jackets, we had reached the height of summer - i.e. days and days of incessant rain!

Eventually, in mid-September, I managed to catch a dry spell in between yet more rain to shoot the exterior, as owner Mahmut was desperate to finish the new website which can be viewed at www.shebar.co.uk

For more information or to make a booking, call 01926 850957