The Crows Nest: Bodiam Castle Star Trails

February 10th, 2022, brought me back to Bodiam Castle under completely different conditions than my later 'Curtains' shoot. That night, a low mist had settled over the moat, creating this haunting atmosphere where the castle emerged from the fog like a ghostly fortress. The title 'The Crows Nest' comes from how the castle's towers rise above the mist like a ship's crow's nest above the sea, with star trails wheeling in the sky like celestial rigging.

This was an earlier attempt at capturing Bodiam Castle—built in 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge in the Rother Valley of East Sussex. The mist that February night was both a blessing and a curse. It created incredible atmosphere, but it also meant constant vigilance against moisture forming on my lens. I had to carefully position myself where the mist was low enough to show the castle rising above it, but not so thick it would obscure the stars.

I used my Samyang 14mm ultra-wide lens at f/2.8, capturing 349 frames of 25 seconds each over 151 minutes—two and a half hours in the cold February night. At ISO 800, each exposure balanced the illuminated castle, the glowing mist, and the stars above. The mist added diffusion to the castle's lights, creating these soft halos in the moat's reflection.

The challenge was maintaining sharp stars while the mist swirled below. Any moisture on the lens would create star diffraction, ruining the trails. Between sequences, I carefully checked and wiped the lens, standing there in the damp February air beside Bodiam's moat. But the effort was worth it—stacking 349 frames revealed these star trails 'crowning' the castle, while the mist gave the medieval fortress this otherworldly quality.

There's something magical about photographing castles in mist under star trails—it connects three different kinds of mystery: the historical mystery of medieval England, the natural mystery of fog, and the cosmic mystery of our place beneath the stars.

When you look at this photograph, I want you to feel that atmosphere—standing beside Bodiam Castle's misty moat on a February night, watching 151 minutes of Earth's rotation traced in star trails above Sir Edward Dalyngrigge's 1385 fortress, where medieval towers rise through the fog like a ship's crow's nest above the sea in the East Sussex countryside.