Portchester Castle

Located at the northern end of Portsmouth Harbour, Portchester Castle was built on the site of a former Roman fort at the sourthern most point in Portchester. The castle was believed to have been built by a local baron at some point in the 11th century, but was taken under royal control in 1154.

Portchester Castle was controlled by the monarchy for several centuries and was a favoured hunting lodge of King John. During the medievel period the castle was used as a dismembarkation point English Kings during several military campaigns to France, and in the last 2 centuries of it's active life was regularly used as a gaol for POW's in the Second Anglo-Dutch War and also the Napoleonic Wars.

Whilst Portchester Castle now is a shadow of its former self, it isnt derelict by any means. The majority of the external walls are fairly intact and there is a large keep at the north west end which is open to visitors for several months of the year, and several public events and exhibits are hosted within the grounds throughout the summer months.

This scene was photographed from close the the entrance of Port Solent Marina, with the intention of including much of the shoreline as the tide was pretty low at this time. Ideally I would have liked to use an aperture between f11 and f16 but the weather wasnt great and the low light meant a slow shutter speed, which is always difficult when shooting handheld. I didn't have a tripod as we had originally gone out to shoot wildflife at Farlington Marshes and Portchester Castle was really a bit of an afterthought.

As I already mentioned, the weather wasn't great and I could not get sufficient detail in the foreshore without losing focus. I took off my 24-105mm lens and put the 100-400mm back on to shoot some wading birds, and decided to just fire this one off. Somehow I had managed to set my aperture to f20, but did squeeze off 3 bracketed shots at 1/200 of a second. These shots were merged in Photomatix and then I employed my painterly workflow to create the shot you see above.