Wednesday 3^rd July 2019

A very hot sunny day – Skipton was heaving with people, and the benches in the churchyard in front of the church (where the old burial ground has been landscaped into a lawn, and benches placed strategically around the perimeter)were full of picnicers and people relaxing.

 But round the back in our enclosed space on the north side, behind the iron gates, our little team was beavering away as usual. 

While the others continued the work of checking the inscriptions against a list of formerly produced MI’s, Alan, Jennifer and myself tried to do some RTI photography. Of course, the bright sunshine was a small problem! Alan had seen a weather forecast that promised clouds as the day progressed, but they never came. So we concentrated on a couple of gravestones that are perpetually in the shade.

Alan also experimented with a horizontal camera bar that extends out from the tripod – it is a useful tool where there are obstructions such as walls or limited space in which to work, and the RTI bar can’t be set up. It also works well where only a small portion of the gravestone needs to be photographed. But it is a little unstable, and needs a very heavy weight to be attached to keep the tripod steady. 

After lunch we gave up on RTI and started taking a series of ordinary photographs of the ledgers. 

Jennifer swelters in the hot sunshine to prepare ledgers for photographing

But by 3pm it was so hot we were wilting and decided to call it a day.

Jane Lunnon