On Sunday my family went up to the Festival of History at Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire. It’s run by English Heritage with which I’ve been a member for over 20 years.

The event is all about living history & there are many re-enactment groups who put on static displays. Many of them also had displays in the arenas showing mock battles, marching & drill displays, jousting, etc.

There was around two thousand years of history represented by the thousands of participants from Romans, Normans & Saxons, up through the medieval period, English Civil War, Boer War & both World Wars.

I ended up taking just over 800 shots. I ran out of time & didn’t get many of the groups & periods there.

I was struck my the involvement of the participants. It was interesting to see people so involved in a hobby as expensive, if not more, as mine. The basic uniform & kit for a World War II soldier can be well in excess of £1,000 & that’s just the personal items. Some people have tanks! And the knowledge of detail in their chosen period these guys have is incredible, many are experts in their field.

My chosen task for the day was to take shots depicting the people & equipment in their natural surroundings. This mean shots which didn’t include members of the public looking round the displays, battlefield photos which didn’t include speakers, fences, hot dog stands etc.; not as easy as it sounds given the thousands of visitors. I think I did OK & came away with lots of stuff I’m really happy with. (although in a few shots I had to clone out a plastic carrier bag or the roof of a caravan in a nearby field)

Many of the shots are pseudo-HDR. That is High Dynamic Range processing but with a single exposure rather than several shots taken at different exposure levels. I think it gives them a more gritty look. Some of the shots have had the colour desaturated to add to the overall feel of the photos.

Here you can see the difference between my normal processing & the processing for many of the shots taken at Kelmarsh.

More shots to follow.