Somebody asked me the other day if I was running out of Spiral Staircases. No worries, plenty more to come. This one was built in 1776 and is one of 4 in Somerset House and is at the eastern end of the Embankband side. The Stamp Stair is so called for the practice of stamping newspapers, which once occurred in this part of the building. It gives an impression of Hogwarts. There is an intricate iron banister higher up which changes to a much more workaday bar pattern as you descend to the servants’ level. I had tried shots before but due to very low light levels was never happy enough with the result to post. For this shot I set up a Tripod on the basement level.

The picture was taken with a tripod with a Sony A550 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10 mm. I I took 3 shots for HDR processed in Photomatix using detail enhancer. I copied the minus 2 image in as a new layer and used a layer mask to apply that only to bring down highlights. Further processing using Topaz Clarity and the mono conversion with Topaz B&W Effects. .