This afternoon a photography opportunity not to be passed up was taken – a visit to Wrights Hill Fortress located in the Karori hills high above Wellington city. The Fortress was constructed during WW2 and consists of an underground network of tunnels, operation rooms and three gun emplacements. The Wrights Hill Fortress Restoration Society has more information on their website, here.

Although the afternoon was rather gloomy and windy, the low levels of lighting provided a superb opportunity to use off-camera directional lighting and also to demonstrate how the colour red in an item of clothing brings life and interest to portrait photography in such a situation. I think this works quite well.

The top two images are composites of 5 exposures layered on top of each other to create a far greater dymanic range than would otherwise have been possible in the conditions. They were taken from two different locations outside the fortress.