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| Unimpressed with the lack of staying power the ribbons on my shoes have... |
Folks, I was wrong.
There was something very British about my experiences that I honestly don't think I'd have gotten away with anywhere else in the world. Why? Because British people are polite. This is not a fallacy, we generally are. This means we're also too "polite" to approach someone in costume taking pics of themselves at abandoned sites.
It might also be due to the absence of the "tourist" effect. Sites like the one I visited, quiet ruins in the middle of nowhere, only tend to be visited by people local-ish to the area or people interested in history. Both these types of people tend to keep to themselves, and don't approach a costumed stranger. But you can bet that they'll look/stare.
This runs in opposition to people who visit a city, and are usually from different countries. The only reason these people approach you is because they already have their camera out, and they want something interesting/unusual to put in the slideshow presentation to the family back home.
People who visit ruins aren't usually there to take pics (barring actual photographers). Modest ruins like Haughmond and Moreton Corbet aren't "must see" sites for tourists. They're not in or near cities, are very out of the way, and are only really significant to local rather than national history. I don't mean this as a slight, I love these places, but they're not connected with royalty or any "famous names" and so they tend to be overlooked.
All the more for me then.
I had the week off work and had purposely kept two recently finished costumes waiting in the wings so I could do them justice, rather than the rushed affairs in my back garden. I found two suitable sites within 30 miles of where I live.
The first of these sites, and the place I chose to be Camelot, was Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire. The site is about 5/10 minutes from the main A road, and is down a wee gravel path from another relatively main road, and was really easy to get to. Someone actually lives on the site. Their house is just inside the wall to the grounds and someone inside has green fingers because there were a LOT of various plants outside.
The abbey was bigger than I'd assumed from the pictures I'd seen, and I don't know why I was so surprised, abbeys were rarely modest affairs, especially in an area like Shropshire with Shrewesbury only a few miles away. It's all in ruins, although most of the archways, and one building is intact, left to the bats and birds. The views are amazing from this place, you can see for miles, it would be beautiful for its own separate shoot as there's too few good pics of it online.
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| Again, completely zoned out during the shoot and have no idea what this building was... |
I arrived at about 10am in the morning and was the first one in the car park, which gave me room to dress. My advice is to put on as much as possible to drive there in, so I had my corset and petticoat on. The corset wasn't tightened as this would be a bit too uncomfortable to drive in. All I had to do was tighten it and put on the dress. Sounds easy if it weren't back laced, but my car's windows were just as good as a mirror. With everything put on I marched inside and set up.
The only bad thing about the shoot was that I was so determined to get great shots that I didn't take in anything else about the ruins. I can't even remember what the room in the above picture was.
This was the first place I took pics of Gwen's gown, and it was just marsh underneath. I'd barely been there 5 minutes and my shoes were soaked through and my hem wasn't much better.
The bad thing about going taking pics of yourself is the constant traipsing back and forth to the camera to see if you got the angle right, or the focus, or the pose works. Unfortunately my camera is not an advanced enough model to have remote photography from my phone, which would save me these back and forths. That is something to be mindful of when purchasing a camera.
It had rained the entire day before I went, and because it's September nothing dries quickly, so all of the grass was wet, and the grass was literally everywhere. If I'd known it'd be so bad I would've worn wellies underneath!
Pretty much as soon as I took the first few pictures a few people arrived. I wasn't trying to hide myself, not that I could've, but I just got on with it as I normally would. There was what looked to be a couple, one had the dog and went off himself, whilst his wife escorted an old lady with a walking stick around the grounds. Can you believe that they avoided the above hall, arguable the biggest room in the entire grounds? Not one of them walked through or came inside, even mistakenly.
This made me conclude that if you look busy people won't bother you. They didn't stay long, but considering I was there for nearly 2 hours time distorted.
I moved around the site, always finding a better place to get shots. It was as I was shooting video at the back of the site where there was a passage of sorts that I had my first onlooker. He was standing in a field at the side of the abbey boundary just looking at me. A younger woman joined him and both stared. I decided to ignore them, and when I looked around again they were gone.
It was only as the shoot was drawing to a close that more people began to arrive, understandable since it was nearly 12pm. A few families, of older people because it was a weekday, came in. It was probably 5 minutes before I packed the camera up that an older woman wandered in to where I was taking photos and apologised before immediately turning around and walking out. It was like she thought she was interupting something really important, like when you accidentally walk in on another meeting at work.
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| Thank God they're easily cropped out... |
This had made me think. In my mind, I'm noticeable when in costume, I'm a source of fascination, something unusual that you don't necessarily see every day. Because of this I assume that people will want to speak to you. But if you're on your own, dressed up, with a camera, perhaps people assume you're doing something important, like working, and so don't bother you? Or maybe they just really don't care about costuming the way I do.
I suppose it's always intimidating to approach just one person who's in costume by themselves and obviously not part of a specific event. I mean they couldn't possibly have known how I'd react, and I was younger than them by a good few decades.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't disappointed by this lack of attention, in fact it was great! I think if it'd gone the other way, being bombarded by other people, I probably wouldn't have done it again and been confined to my back garden for the rest of my days.
The next day was Moreton Corbet castle, and unfortuantely I wasn't so lucky as with the abbey, weather wise. It was at the same time better and worse than Haughmond. Unlike the abbey, which is down a small road and surrounded by sheep fields, Moreton Corbet is flanked by a farm, and a currently being rennovated church. In other words, people.
What was worse was that the car park was really just a gravel lay-by from the single-track country road. I was exposed, and I hadn't put on my stays because I'm an idiot and decided back-lacing only stays were a good idea. I had to get dressed from my skivvies beside the road, with no cover from the house opposite. Thank God historical underwear is covering. It helps if you have cycle shorts underneath.
It was also so cold! I don't know how I managed to lace up my stays my hands were beginning to shake with the cold. I eventually got all the layers on without a single car using the country road, and no one came out of the farm or the house opposite. I walked to the castle, and thankfully the builders rennovating the church tower couldn't see me from where they were, so no comments or jeers from them.
The first sighting I had was a group of joggers with their dogs stopping at the entrance to the field beside the castle, where they had full view of me. They all lingered and got their pennies worth before continuing their jog. And that was it. Not one other person came into the castle the whole hour I was there.
The bad thing was the rain and wind. The wind I could've dealt with, but the rain made me abort the shoot early because I didn't want my costume soaked, or the camera with water damage. I even hid in the only remaining covered over fireplace (it was friggin huge, I could stand up straight in it) hoping the rain would ease up.
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| Looking for a place where the wind won't get me |
It did 2 hours later, but obviously by that time I had left and gone into Shrewesbury, and was cursing my bad luck. The wind would obviously have still been a problem, and by the time I went back down that way going home the rain had started again.
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| Beginning to be unimpressed by the wind/rain combo assault |
All in all my shoots at ruins was completely painless. I genuinely think this is due to their overlooked status, though, and the fact that the part of the country where I live isn't a tourist destination.
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| A bit done... |
However, there are definitely plenty of ruined buildings all around the country that would be perfect to use for photoshoots, and will probably be less visited than other major sites.
I'd like to know other costumer's experiences of solo-photoshoots, or if I'm the only one driving around with my camera, and costume in an Asda bag.
