publicenergy

I was fortunate enough to be shown around Bestwood Winding House today by a friend prior to restoration work beginning later this month. I was very impressed with the place. Considering it closed in 1971 it seemed to be in very good condition. A group of ex-miners have been giving up their time to maintain the place – I can’t imagine what state it would have been in had they not been doing that for the last few decades.

More information about the place: Leaflet from July 2004 open day

More photos: My Flickr set

After taking photographs inside, I think I’d have been more successful if I had a separate flash unit. Long exposures and tripods are fine, but there are problems when you have very dark and very bright areas. A flash would allow you to shorten the exposure and even out the lighting differences. On camera flash is usually fairly horrible because it leaves shadows leading away from the camera view – you can get around this a bit by toning down the flash power, but all of these things are working around the problem. It would be easier if you could light up the scene from somewhere other than the camera’s viewpoint and avoid flash reflections. Experimenting with flash is on my photographic to-do list for this year and today’s experience has reinforced that really.