I’ve been a supporter & member of English Heritrage for many years now, so I try to attend their events whenever I’m in the area or they are near me.

Wrest Park is just across the border in Bedfordshire, for the last few years they’ve held a St George’s Day Festival within the grounds. This is normally a popular event & features many re-enactment groups from all periods of British history. It’s a terrific opportunity for photographing people in colourful outfits. They also have a bird of prey demonstration.

This year was a little disappointing; there were less than half the normal re-enactment groups & the field they use for their living history camps was a little empty compared to last year.

One of the groups there were representative of the British Infantry at the time of the Zule/Boer Wars. I spoke at length with one of the guys who are incredibly knowledgeable about their particular period of history. I was interested to speak with this particular group since I found out through the course of my family history research that my great-great grandfather fought with the Royal Scots Fusiliers at one of the famous Zulu battles.

I played around with some of the settings in Lightroom to come up with the processed appearance of the troops firing their weapons, I quite like the result.

There were other periods represented. A small group on horseback did some jousting in the main arena. On the way out we came across a film crew from Ceebeebies who were filming a group of mediaeval musicians playing music while some very small children & parents danced. The footage is due to air on C-BBC just prior to St George’s Day in 2010.