Here’s the first post in what I hope will be a regular Last Week’s Shoot feature – just a quick post with some recent images and maybe the story behind them or some other verbiage depending on what seems appropriate at the time!

This time it’s my first shoot of 2015, having spent the first working week of the new year making some changes to my internal licensing system – so I wanted something easy to get started…

I decided to head out here in Knaresborough and shoot a little black and white project, with possibly an infrared style in mind.  I’d taken some images of gravestones in the churchyard last summer when I was trying out the new OM-D camera, so headed back there to have another look.  Some of the old weathered stones lend themselves well to black and white and the green steaks down the Beneath stone which stands on its own under a gnarled old tree worked quite nicely with the infrared processing, rendering near white.  As did the grass, making the image look rather wintry with snow on the ground (there wasn’t any).  Ironically, there is this week!

Around the back of the church there’s a long line of gravestones leaning up against the grassy bank, with further stones along the ground between the church and the bank making a narrow pathway, which is quite unusual.  The variety of shapes and inscriptions on the stones make them a very interesting subject and the lichen again works well in monochrome, especially with the infrared processing.

The gravestone shots were all done in moody overcast light which seemed to work best, but as I came around to the front of the church the sun came through and there was a patch of blue sky behind the church tower.  This is a subject I’ve photographed many times and I’d usually walk past it, but the idea of infrared processing turning the sky really dark seemed appealing and the composition with the winter tree seemed to work well.

Having tried this I thought I’d better have a look at the castle on the way home.  The sun was still breaking through the clouds and cast strong shadows on the King’s Tower, processed to a contrasty black and white with a red filter effect.

The tower is always a bit tricky to photograph in its entirety being surrounded by trees on one side and the Nidd Gorge on the other so there’s nowhere to step back to for a wider view, so I opted to stand under it and use the converging verticals along with the overhanging trees and process in an infrared style again.

I was quite pleased with the results – it was an easy shoot to do on foot from home with subject matter I was very familiar with, but it was nice to come back with some images quite unlike anything I’d already got.