For once I set out to do some landscape type photography hoping the sun wouldn't be too bright! my target was the stone 'room' at Steve's out door sheep pens. I've photographed the inside before but always had to push the ISO up and struggle to deal with exposing for the view through the window. The plan was to use a tripod and blend two exposures.
When I got there I remembered my camera will do this automatically, saving the two raw files and a blended jpeg. That worked OK. At least it looked OK on the back of the camera. When I got to the PC I tried blending the raw files, but preferred the jpegs. Then, just to see what would happen, I boosted the exposure in one of the darker raws. With very little fiddling I ended up with the result of the three I liked best. And no noise as I'd shot at base ISO. It's witchcraft!
That's the end of the technical stuff. I have posted pics of the 'room' before but this is a set that, with explanatory text, might make the book. A fire was lit to heat the bowl which was used to boil up a winter dip mix. This went on until the 1970s. I have a suspicion that there might have been an earlier use for doing something similar for 'salve', which was an old method of protecting the fleece in winter. It was a mixture of Stockholm tar and butter which was laboriously applied by hand to each sheep. It could take 40 minutes per sheep!
In the autumn, the fell sheep were salved. A mix of tar and fat was rubbed into the skin along a strip where the fleece had been parted. Then a strip was parted an inch further along and again and again for perhaps 40 minutes until the animal was completely waterproofed and protected from disease and parasites for the winter.
https://www.duddonhistory.org.uk/washfold-background/
The location.
Front view from the pen area.
Inside. Not sure if this looks over-processed.
The fire place.
The bowl.
Then I went to look at another feature that I'd shot before, but not from this side. A stone 'through the wall' trough. Again I used the loathsome (and broken) tripod.
I did photograph sheep. The results are pretty mediocre.
