Helen Stephenson's Finchcocks Pictures

The picture above shows the rear view of the house: I don't have a good photograph of the front, and the best spot to take one from is out of bounds during 2001 because of the foot and mouth disease outbreak. Finchcocks is down a lane and visitors are being asked not to leave their cars until they are on Finchcocks property due to the proximity of grazing sheep.

The main reason for visiting Finchcocks is to see and hear their collection of keyboard instruments. Finchcocks have their own extensive website at http://www.finchcocks.co.uk where you can find details of their opening times and pictures of some of their collection. There are many beautifully crafted instruments with inlaid wood decorations there. My photograph is of a heavily gilded instrument. I was trying to be creative with the keyboard going out of focus as you look down it. The jury's still out on whether this was a good idea or not!

As well as the instrument collection, there are gardens at Finchcocks. The walled garden includes this pond with its intriguing wrought iron dome. This was the scene of a photographic disaster, as a piece of my camera equipment ended up in this pond when I dropped it! The full story of the mishap can be read if you click here. The reason for being so close to the pond is the image below: the wrought iron dome makes an excellent reflection in the pond water. The image is grainy due to being shot on 800ASA Fuji print film. This is a shot to be taken in May rather than August, as there is too much pond weed later in the summer and it obscures the reflection.

These images were also taken in the walled garden, where several budleia plants were attracting a variety of insect life. I used the Tamron 85-210 zoom in macro mode on my trusty Pentax KM body. The shutter speed was around 1/250th second and the aperture was adjusted to ensure a correct exposure on 400ASA print film.