JULY 2005 – Cardoness Castle in Scotland. Photo © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com
The story behind the image
Our trip to Sctoland in 2005 was still young. We had slept the first night in a nice B&B in Dumfries and were now heading west for Portpatrick, a beautiful village at the west coast.
When we approached the town called Gatehouse of Fleet we decided to take a look at the first of the many castles to come during our trip: Cardoness Castle. It was built around 1470 by the McCulloch family as a six-story tower house. It featured heavy stonework with few, narrow windows which is typical of defensive structures of that period. Situated on a small hill, the castle provided strategic views of the surrounding landscape. (I just had a funny vision of the family head going through a brochure for various castle types with a salesman of the construction company, and finally picking one, saying: “I like this six-story house, but with the defense features.”)
The photo was quite difficult to take, because the afternoon sunlight was coming from the top left of the frame, putting the wall of the ruins into shadow. Other perspective were not as nice, though, so this one was what I wanted. The green also seemed to be overwhelming for the film, and so I do like the composition but am not a great fan of the colors.
Of course, I could turn it into a black and white image to get rid of the weird green-yellow bias. Like this:
This black-and-white variant certainly looks more like your typical grim medieval castle but reduces the nice and well maintained garden to a mere grey sea.
Design ideas
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | 19-JUL-2005 |
| Location | Gatehouse of Fleet, Scotland |
| Camera | Canon AE-1 Program |
| Image Source | Slide Film |
| Digital Image Source | EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 48 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 4487 x 6583 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
Zanzig.com Photo Hub 