This is an in-camera multiple exposure of two ICMs. It’s another hotel corridor and the ICMs are both made with downward swipes but, for the first one, I turned the camera upside down (it’s always easier to do the upside-down one first if you are doing a pair, as I have discovered to my cost!).
The starting position for the second was then carefully aligned with the first using the camera’s preview in the viewfinder. I was trying to do something interesting with the fire exit sign in the ceiling.
I think I used Lighten blend mode in the camera for this one. The processing was mainly sharpening and a bit of tone and colour work.
Thanks for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Saturday and 100x :)
Tags: contemporary curtain family futuristic glass items graphic design illuminated indoors insubstantial interior design luminescence no person urban Abstract Blur Dark Design Light Reflection architecture art artistic bright city line modern music neon shape intentional camera movement ICM wobbly camera Multiple Exposure 100 x: The 2023 Edition 100x:2023 Image 47/100 2023 Part A Creative Photography creative photography
© All Rights Reserved
St Mary’s Church, Tetbury.
Most crosses in protestant churches tend to be bare, symbolic of the risen Christ. Crosses in Roman and Orthodox churches, in contrast, tend to depict the suffering of Jesus during the crucifixion. Both aspects are a necessary parts of the whole story.
For most churches, by convention, the altar is placed at the Eastern end of the building, not because of a need to face Jerusalem or anything like that (which would be curiously Eurocentric in any case!), but simply because it faces the dawn. The idea is that in the first service of the day the priest and congregation would have the reminder of the prospect of Christ’s return - the new dawn.
Not all churches and cathedrals can be built this way though because of location constraints. In a rather amusing manner, this is got around by calling the altar end of the church the liturgical East in architectural terms, whatever its geographic orientation.
At its core, Christian belief is centred on a simple substitution: Christ’s life for our deaths. So Jesus (a name that means God Saves) died on the cross in our place, and we can share his life. So that's why the cross is important to Christians and Easter the most important Christian festival. It’s more significant than Christmas even though you wouldn’t have one without the other.
I’ve always wondered why Good Friday was good, when to my mind it is the most sad and painful day in the historical narrative, commemorating as it does the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Hardly good, one would think. But the day’s name goes back a long way - the good has an old English meaning of pious or holy, so it’s good in the sense of holiest (or most set apart and distinctive, which is what holy tends to mean in a Christian context).
This image was taken at the beginning of February, one of a series of shots in this grandly beautiful town church which, incidentally, has one of the tallest spires in England.
Taking pictures inside churches is a real challenge, especially in dim light towards the end of the day as this one was. The modern consumer camera sensor, and our LCD screens for that matter, can handle about 5 EVs of brightness level (dynamic range). In contrast (excuse the pun) our eyes can accommodate about 21 EV of dynamic range, given a little time to adjust. That’s a huge disparity, especially when you consider the EV scale is logarithmic… sigh...much for the hope of photorealism :)
One approach would be to merge a series of differently exposed captures together in an HDR image. But doing that without a tripod was beyond me…
Much tweaking of Curves and brightness layers ensued. Still not ideal but I rather like the dark interior look.
So, on this Good Friday may I wish all my friends, of differing faiths and none, a happy weekend (albeit a little strange!) and God’s blessing on your lives.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Easter! :)
[Handheld in suffuse ambient sunlight.
Developed in Capture One with careful tweaking so as not to blow out the highlights, particularly in the blues.
Selective enhancement of the window colours to counter the relatively intense backlighting.
A heavy adjustment to the keystone perspective to get the verticals vertical (the window is very tall).
Processed in Affinity with more light and colour work in Curves, and the use of a gradient mask to brighten the top.
The result was quite noisy, particularly on the dark walls, but that was fixed using Nik Dfine 2.]
Tags: altar architecture Christianity church cross Interior stained glass Tetbury window Easter Good Friday
© All Rights Reserved
Paeony.
Well I thought you might like a rest from reflecting today (the Macro Mondays group theme) so I processed a paeony from last year (it’s been a while since my last one after all :) ).
Which is another way of saying I didn’t have time to implement my profusion of superb ideas (as you’d expect of me) for MM ;) (Don’t take me seriously, please, because I never do.)
This was an experiment. What I liked here with the original was the flow in the petals and the way they trapped the yellow stamen. I love paeonies for their random petal shapes and crinkly-wrinkliness, so I wanted to bring that out in the processing…
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! Happy Pink Paeony Monday :)
[Handheld in daylight on the old camera.
Straightforward developing in Photolab 2 with no sharpening.
Then processed just in Topaz Studio 2 with a very light touch manually building a stack of filters to try and keep the realistic look but enhance what I enjoyed in the flower. (Do say if you think it’s too much - this was an experiment!)
So we had (from the bottom up) AI Clear; Precision Detail; Precision Contrast; Sharpen; Abstraction (masked to exclude the yellow); Smudge (very light); dark Vignette. All trying to be lightweight. Sounds a lot but really each stage was a minor change to the image.]
Tags: nikon d90 crinkle flower paeony peony petals pink texture
© All Rights Reserved
This is an image I took a while back of part of an artwork in a sculpture garden featuring the creations of local sculptors.
The composition of the single image relies entirely, I guess, on the focus, the texture and the simple graphic quality of the shadow. I rather like the abstract minimalism of the result.
But then I was distracted by a little-used filter in Affinity, the Affine adjustment. When I was using the software with this image on the iPaddle, it kept suggesting a possible result using this filter. And so I thought I would try to produce something with a little more graphic impact than the original minimalism. The Affine filter allows you to replicate the underlying image horizontally and vertically, and also to rotate the result.
Rather than make a decision (!) I thought I would publish both and see which one you prefer. They say different things...
Thanks for looking. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Donnerstagsmonocrom :)
Tags: Donnerstagsmonocrom Monochrome Thursday sculpture affine filter monochrome black and white B&W
© All Rights Reserved
… let’s all hope we have a better year as a world next year. Wishing you every blessing :)
Cambridge is a wonderful place for trying panning shots of cyclists as there are lots of them wheeling about. Another benefit is the place has lots of tourists or dodgy blokes with cameras, so it’s easy to fade into the background.
Here is another one from the set I took earlier this year which is my first real play with this approach. The hit rate for these shots turned out to be higher than for most ICMs. They’re great fun - recommended.
Another one in the backlog for my 100x project on Motion.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the picture. Happy 100x :)
Tags: hurry fast cyclist Action wheel Motion bike race biker Blur competition road man vehicle street seated ride sport transportation system People 100 x: The 2021 Edition 100x:2021 Image 84/100
© All Rights Reserved