Such a serious look. If I were to visit that restauranyt then I'd probably reconsider..

These double exposures made me look twice to understand what's going on...

Great facial expressions!

As can be seen from 4 sec exposure time and moving clouds and plants from strong wind it was shot at night, between midnight and 2 am, scene was lit by distant city lights and full moon behind camera, with naked eye one could just barely see everything but camera shows much more. And I pushed lightness quite lot in these images to get bit different from other shots.

Great shots, light makes them radiant. First and third for me!

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Your Northern lights photos are great. We'll done. Those colours are vivid and the patterns really interesting. I didn't see any here in Austria, I guess with Estonia being quite a bit further north you'll see them a lot more often than we do. Lucky you :-)

I chose the title for exactly the reason you mentioned: the variety of people in London. They were simply looking at the information display to check the bus schedule.

These are great.

After my experience shooting the aurora earlier this year I know how difficult it can be to include good foreground details. In my case, it was a moonless, cloudless night and the corona of the aurora was directly overhead (really unusual for northern England) so it was hard work to see what I was actually shooting, but the addition of the moonlight and clouds really adds to the surreal look of these.

The barber bartender of Seville?

I'm partial to a bit of lichen myself and these are particularly nice examples. As others have said, #1 is probably the winner here with its mix of tones and nice composition.

Nice composition with strong leading lines and pleasant tones. I wanted to zoom in and take a proper look around, but this appears to be a very low resolution post (only 500x375 pixels).

The Well House

I was out walking with a friend last Saturday and our route took us through the grounds of a ruined hall. Little survives of the hall and most of its buildings besides the foundations, but tucked away in a corner of the grounds stands the old well house, essentially intact.

The hall and well house are thought to have been built in the in the latter half of the 18th century on the former site of a much larger and older hall that was demolished to make way for this one. Having passed through the hands of multiple owners over the years, the hall and its surrounding land was eventually purchased by the Liverpool Water Corporation in the early part of the 20th century to form part of their water catchment scheme and, in a tale familiar to anyone whose followed my posts about the ruined farms on the moors, subsequently demolished.

Surprisingly, the well house was spared and is periodically maintained and restored.

On previous occasions when I've visited this site, the well house has been securely locked, allowing only tantalising glimpses of the interior through its barred windows, but to my surprise, on this occasion the door was wide open, allowing a closer look at the gloomy interior. Being someone who almost always carries a camera when out on a walk, it was to my dismay that I hadn't actually brought one along this time, so I had to settle for leaving with nothing more than memories (highly chaotic and unreliable at the moment) and a few fuzzy snaps of the interior taken on my phone.

Naturally, the next day brought heavy rain for most of its duration, but the forecast predicted a break around 4PM, which would give me a few hours to return in a better equipped state.

As this was probably going to be a "one off" opportunity to get inside with a decent camera I took my best one, the GFX100S and the Fujinon 32-64mm f/4 lens (roughly 25 to 51mm in full frame terms) which would be plenty long enough for shooting inside such a small building, if a little tight at the wide end.

Unfortunately, I don't own a wide angle lens for the GFX (yet), but I knew I'd need something wider for such a cramped space. Ideally I'd have taken the Z8 and 14-30 f/4S, but there was no way that was going to fit in the bag with the GFX, but with a bit of rearrangement, I managed to stuff in the little X-T50 along with my rarely used Fuji 10-24 f/4 lens, not a lens I'm particularly fond of as I've always felt the corners were unacceptably soft due to digital distortion correction when used with the 24/26 megapixel Fuji sensors, but other than carrying two bags it was the only practical option.

The other thing I was concerned with was light. It was a really dull day and even on the previous day when it had been very sunny, there was not a lot of light inside that building, so I was going to need to pack some sort of artificial lighting. I settled on a pair of small Neewer LED panels I bought off Amazon for next to nothing some time ago after seeing them on a MarkusPix episode about cheap lights. These are lightweight plastic units, powered by the ubiquitous Sony NP-F550 equivalents that put out a fair bit of light for their size and last for ages on a single battery (I ended up using them at lower than 50% intensity and they easily lasted for several hours with plenty of charge remaining).

I used a pair of lightweight vlogging poles with integrated stands to support the lights. These are about 4-5ft high and fortunately I found dry places off the floor to set these up on, which gave them a bit more height.

I could have done with some sort of diffuser to spread the light source a bit, but I had nothing suitable for this, so I just had to make do with the frosting on the front of the LED panels, which sort of did the job.

Anyway, with all of that stuffed into a Billingham bag and a tripod under my arm, I set off into the rainy Sunday afternoon to take my shots and after almost three hours alone in what must be the creepiest building I've ever stepped into, these are the images I came back with.

Interior images are a mix of GFX100S + 32-64 f/4 and X-T50 + 10-24 f/4 mounted on a tripod, lit with a mix of none, one or two LED panels and natural light. As I was back walking in the area with friends yesterday, I took a few exterior shots with the Z8 + 24-70 f/2.8S, but there's also an exterior shot in this set taken with the GFX. I did test the polariser with the interior shots, but, due to the multiple light sources, it had very little effect, other than to extend the exposure time, so, in the end I didn't use it for any of these shots. All images processed from single raw files in Capture One Pro 23. X-T50 images will claim to be taken with an X-T5 as that's the only way I can trick my version of C1P to read the raw files.

1. Nestling Amongst The Trees

You could easily miss the well house as you walk through the ruined hall site because it's tucked away from the main path and largely hidden by trees. Perhaps this is how it survived Liverpool Corporation's demolition team over 100 years ago?

2. The Forecourt

At the front of the well house there's a small forecourt. The overflow drain from the well runs along a channel beneath the door and out into this area, but where the water is supposed to go after that is anyone's guess. On each day I was there, this was running continuously. Isn't that open door inviting? Well, no, not really, but we're going in regardless.

3. Full Frontal

This is the full front aspect of the building. It's looks somewhat out of order here as I took this just before I left last Sunday, having closed the door behind me as I left.

4. The Fount

This is the centrepiece of the interior. A central fount decorated with the carving of a lion's head, surmounted by two small greek style pillars, with a water collection tank on either side, these don't seem to be particularly deep, maybe 10", so I'm not sure how practical they would be when filling a bucket.

Apparently this is all fed by five separate springs that collect in a pool at the rear of the building. Like many natural springs, it's claimed the water has healing properties, particularly for sight, although I think you could probably expect blindness if you got any of this murky stuff in your eyes judging by the number of flies laying their eggs in it.

5. Central Details

In some of the descriptions I've seen, it's claimed that these decorative features were rescued from the original hall when it was demolished and rebuilt in the 1700s, then included when the well house was constructed alongside the new hall.

6. Lion's Head

The carved lion's head has seen better days and is missing most of its features in 2024. It's difficult to determine where the water is coming from inside the building, but originally, it would have spewed from the mouth of the lion into the pool beneath it. There are also slots in the stone above each of the side tanks where water appears to drip in. It's difficult to imagine this ever being free flowing, but maybe it's just silted up due to a lack of maintenance?

7. A Wider Look

This was as much as I could fit in with the X-T50 at 10mm and pulled back as far as I could get without including the front door in the shot. I don't know if it's the extra resolution helping with the digital distortion correction or that I had the lens stopped down to f/8, but the corners look much better than I remember them being the last time I used this lens.

At the bottom of this image you can see the pool below the lion's head and the start of the drainage channel beneath it that runs along the centre of the building and out under the front door. You can also see the stone benches that run along either side of the building. These were useful for keeping my gear off the muddy floor and also gave me a bit more height for the lights.

8. Back to Front

Looking toward the front of the building from the back. This shot gives a better view of the drainage channel that was constantly running during my visit. On a drier day I might have been scratching my head wondering what it was for, but there was no doubting its purpose after the downpour we'd just had earlier that day.

9. Window Light

When I visited the previous day with just a phone, there was direct sunlight outside this window and the bars were casting nice, sharp shadows on the interior walls. With this being such an overcast day, there were no details in the shadows, just a bit of diffuse light attempting to disperse the gloom of the interior and doing a poor job at that.

10. Door

The detail on the door fascinated me. From the outside, it's just an old door, but here, in this dank room cloaked in shadows, it's telling a story. Probably one that should involve more wood preservatives.

11. Door and Window

It feels like I've stepped back in time when I look at this. It's funny, but I'm (just) old enough to remember the kitchen door in my mum's auntie's house looking like this, all pitted and rotten, with daylight shining through the ragged gaps underneath and stone slabs on the floor of the ancient terraced house that was pulled down a few years later. None of the decorative splendour of those hinges though.

12. Return Of The Lion's Head

I don't use artificial lighting very much, but after a while, I started getting a bit more creative with it. Noticing that my two light setup was flattening details, when I set this shot up, I shut off the one behind me and moved the one in front closer and to the side of the fount to really bring out the details in the sculpture, well, what's left of them, by almost backlighting it. It certainly looks more dramatic like this than when I originally lit it.

I've not been able to find any pictures of this sculpture when it was intact, although, I'm sure I found some low res ones years ago when it was in a bit of a better state, but this is what it looks like in 2024. It's a bit of a shame as most of its face has either fallen off due to erosion or been chipped off due to vandalism (my money is on the latter sadly).

13. The Exit

Things were brightening up outside as I prepared to leave, well, apart from the onset of sunset that is, but I liked the way the yellowing light was illuminating the door. I took a couple of shots of this composition, the first, one focused on the door, then I focused again on the distant vegetation. At this point I noticed a lot of flare in the image and wiped the front of the lens to remove any slight condensation that may have built up. This got rid of the flare and I took another shot, however I completely forgot to take another focused on the door, so the only one that shows the door properly is ruined by flare and I'm left with this one where the texture of the wood is blurred. Still, it looks okay if you don't scrutinise it too closely and those ferns in the distance are pin sharp.

14. Out Back

When I revisited yesterday, I nipped around the back with the Z8 and grabbed this shot. The pool where the five springs collect is directly behind the building on the other side of that bush in the bottom right, although I suspect I was stood in one of the springs judging by the running water around my feet. It's interesting to note the apex roof here in contrast to the vaulted stone ceiling on the inside, I wonder if there's anything hidden in the cavity between? The roof looks like it needs a bit of attention though, if they're not careful it could start getting damp inside.

Wonderful and amazing images 🙂

What a fantastic set of a curious relic.

Just seen this brilliant set. I really enjoyed the text and pictures.

So atmospheric. Can't believe it took you so long to use the word 'dank'. And there must have been a magic amulet somewhere in there.