17 Apr Burwalls Centre Bristol for Jones Lang LaSalle
Burwalls House is a Grade II listed historic mansion currently used by the University of Bristol and is now up for sale. It is an academic conference centre and is very photogenic with lovely grounds and sometimes used for weddings. What a fantastic place it is. The location is amazing, perched high above the Avon Gorge, it must be the closest building to the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Formerly home to the Wills tobacco family, it is now on the market by Jones Lang LaSalle for a five million. It would be a really good reason to win the lottery and return the building back to an awesome residence. Set in grounds of five acres with various outbuildings and it own gatehouse, it is one of those special places that I am sure will not be on the property market too long.
The house was built in 1872 for Joseph Leech, a newspaper magnate and owner of the Bristol Times. The Jacobean style victorian property was designed by local Architects, Foster and Wood, whose work also included the Grand Hotel and Bristol Grammar School. During the war Burwalls was requestioned and accommodated the Heavy Anti Aircraft Regiment located to protect Bristol during the Blitz.
The photographic brief for sales particulars and brochure for Jones Lang Lasalle required a front cover image square on of the front elevation. The lawn in front of the building sloped steeply away from the residence which called for an elevated mast shot. Normally we are able located the mast for this shot directly from the vehicle. In this instance I don’t think Jones Lang or the University of Bristol would have appreciated us driving across the manicured lawn! So we set up the smaller tripod rig and raised the mast, not to the full height, but approximately 12 metres to raise the camera to the required position. The camera is controlled remotely on a pan and tilt head and the image captures are reviewed instantly on a laptop computer.
Often final images are stitched from a combination of photographs to provide the ideal exposure and composition. Elevated images shot from the mast are usual candidates for this treatment. Obtaining the precise composition required is sometimes difficult when the camera is controlled remotely from the bottom of the mast. Capturing a few exposures is often the most efficient way to ensure that we have the shot in the bag. The above combo shows the three images that make up the front cover shot, indistinguishably stitched and enhanced for that perfect photograph.
The full address for the property is: Burwalls Centre For Continuing Education, Burwalls, Bridge Road, Leigh Woods, Bristol, BS8 3PD.