Up the coast again

Another day, another trip up the A1 to a lovely house being brought to market. This one is Fay Cottage in the hamlet of Old Mousen, on an elevated bit of land looking out to Holy Island and the beautiful Northumberland coastline.

I had to re-visit to shoot exteriors, as the weather was pants as usual. There was zero chance of getting the drone in the air, and the heavy rain clouds destroyed any energy that the stone on the front of the house could display. I used the Hasselblad to capture all the detail and tonal range of the fascia in the end. It looks great using the tree foliage as a framing tool.

The interiors were lovely to the eye, but a nightmare to the camera - Deep, dark barn conversion rooms with single window frames at one end. This meant shooting natural light frames which completely blew out the windows and interior lights, then using powerful flash to bring the interior to life, and blending the two types of light carefully afterwards. I don’t know how those people who use the HDR technique could ever shoot these rooms effectively given the massive glare coming from the windows. The new AI editing services like Fotello market themselves as being magical, but in reality they don’t use HDR, they just digitally recreate a brand new room and are liable to materially alter the interior details in the process.

Upstairs, the bedrooms were full of colour, and the bedroom with the balcony had masses of easterly light coming in. It still needed a lot of fflash power to balance inside and out however. The shower room with the dark tiles proved to be the most challenging room despite it being the smallest. I had to shoot a fair few frames using hard, direct light at various angles so I could blend them, and remove myself from the mirror by using masks in Photoshop.

Have a look, and see what you think.