Spoilt for subjects but fighting the light and pedestrians, we needed patience for this shot

YOUR PHOTO CHALLENGE: GO SHOOT… A chocolate-box scene

Off-top ic but in the bag

Just because you’re focused on one task doesn’t mean you have to switch off to other pictures. We spent some time ‘sketching’ with our cameras, photographing tourists and details that might otherwise go unnoticed

The next card plucked from our challenge deck was to shoot a chocolate-box scene. It’s fair to say that the Cotswolds, with its picturepostcard villages and rolling green landscapes, isn’t short of these. But we decided to head to the jewel in the crown, Bibury. The village’s worldfamous Arlington Row, a collection of 17th Century weavers’ cottages owned by the National Trust, is one of the iconic English countryside scenes – it even features inside the front cover of British passports. What you don’t often see in the countless photos of it are the throngs of tourists with selfie sticks, along with the occasional parked car and wedding dress shoot, all of which mean that photo opportunities are sporadic and you have to seize them when you can.

We had found our perfect spot and were set up by around midday, and although clouds intermittently blocked the sun, for the most part the sky was clear, with the cottages being lit from behind. Ideally we’d have revisited at a different time when the lighting was softer, lower and illuminating the cottages from the front, but that’s the nature of doing a two-day challenge like this… you just have to make do.

With our shots in the bag, we found a bite to eat at the local inn before hitting our final two challenges…

EXPOSURE 1/100 sec, f/11, ISO100 LENS Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8

Be ing patient at Bibur y Arlington Row isn’t part of a theme park. The cottages are people’s homes and you have to just sit it out when they’re going about their lives. We had the angle and settings, so it was just a case of waiting for that car to...