Today’s photoshoot took me to an authentic European-style castle. Little over a hundred years old, Squire castle stands tall in the North Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks with a picturesque backdrop of fall colors.
| Squire Castle |
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Feargus B. Squire, a wealthy founder of Standard Oil Company, the same one that made John D. Rockefeller the richest person in the world, built the gatehouse as part of a larger project during the 1890′s. He was a big game hunter, traveling the globe in search of new conquests and wanted an appropriate site to showcase his trophies.
This didn’t set well with Mrs. Squire; she was a city girl who hated the outdoors and preferred living in their Cleveland downtown residence. Rumor has it that during those quiet country nights, nightmares relentlessly plagued her and she quickly went insane, dying at a young age.
The construction plans for the rest of the castle were quickly abandoned and the gatehouse remained as a stone shell which today attracts visitors worldwide.
| Squire Castle | |
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Today, I wanted to capture all the different textures in the stone and used a small f stop, f18 to f22, to keep things sharp. I also shot with a low ISO (100) to keep the noise quiet in the colorful leaves.Noise often shows up as odd colored specks, actually off-color pixels, in photographs with very high ISO’s, especially when shooting contrasty scenes. The bigger you print your photo’s, the noisier they appear.
This is why some of the new cameras print great 4" x 6" shots at ISO 6400 but 8" x 10" images look thoroughly psychedelic. Should someone need a 30" by 40" wall size castle photography print, then I’m all set, any takers?
more soon
[Excerpted from Photography Insights, Volume 2, by Scott Ober, MD, Copyright © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]
