Churches

I have decided to call this page Churches. I know - radical remains my middle name.

So in mid April 2008 I decided to add a few of images.

These were taken in Shropshire during 2008's Easter period (early this year) - something about moveable feasts. Anyway, all three are beautiful buildings and I drove past them in nice, changeable light. I had to run an errand to Much Wenlock.

In case your wondering, the new images on the gallery start with the one with the Tudor building in the foreground (the 16th Century Guildhall in Much Wenlock).

The next image I'm pleased with. It is a church attached to Benthall Hall in Shropshire. The hall is very close to Much Wenlock so I thought I'd pay a quick visit. It was closed. People actually live there, so fair enough. Turns out the church was worth a look. I saved the image and then thougtht I'd add a border in honour of a recent judge (who doesn't like them).

To add to the effect I coloured it to the roof using the "Color Picker", anyway, I had to resave the image and had to downscale it to get it under the 100k and this has introduced noticable artefacts on the web image. So the joke is on me. Always add your border before you hit final save to jpeg!

Driving back I detoured to the village of Harley, which also had a nice Church. Spent over 90 minutes around the church. Here is one of many snaps.

When adding images to a page, don't forget to read the very helpful instuctions that appear. I forgot to uncheck a box about hiding attributes. Scroll down to see the attractive addition to my page.

(The rest of this page remains unchaged, to save you reading unneccessarily.)

Name, location and denomination are not important to me. I simply hoped to create images (not all taken outside), that are aesthetically pleasing to me.

So far I have only taken a few shots I am happy to process and publish to the web, but I hope this collection will expand with the advancing seasons.

For those that are interested, the churches are in Cookham, on the Thames between Hurley and Marlow, Hughenden and Boxford near Newbury (note to satnav manufacturers, Boxford is near Newbury, not in it).

For the Cookham shots I was drawn to the Church by the light that was falling on it (I was standing at the end of the road leading to Cookham Lock). It was bright, clean, Autumnal sunshine, complemented by the odd passing cloud. Having exhausted all angles outside, and wishing to avoid shots featuring another photographer, I ventured inside. (The photographer had seen me taking pictures, gone home, collected his camera and returned. We then played a game of, “no, after you, I’ll wait”. He was tripod-less, so I reckoned I was safe on the inside).

The interior shots were a little hit and miss. All were digitally captured as JPEGs, tripod mounted, using mirror lock-up and three-second shutter delay.

The first shots were terrible. Allowing the camera to make its own exposure decisions just did not work. To be fair it was very dark, and so were the photos. I then selected manual mode and dialled in a reasonably small aperture. In true scattergun fashion I then just increased and decreased the exposure times until I got images that looked ok on the back of the camera. I just wouldn’t have attempted this with £6 worth of Sensia.

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Foreign, and often exotic, religious iconography is popular in photo magazines and competitions. Yet rarely do we see anything from the interior of a British church. These interiors aren’t lacking in beauty or religious significance but there seems to be a reluctance to either take or publish such images. I don’t say this to provoke any debate, but it just seems that church exteriors are extremely popular with photographers, but rarely do any of us seem to venture inside. I may be wrong.

I visited Boxford one Saturday in January, encouraged by a positive weather forecast (January 06 being amongst the greyest on record).

“If you’re looking for picture-postcard images get along to Boxford. The thatched cottages and the gabled watermill should be tackled with a wide-angle lens to take in the bubbling stream, or you can make a study of the church with its brick and flint tower. Use a polariser with colour film to intensify the sky.”

Colour what?! They weren’t my words but those of the 1996 location guide supplement from Practical Photography – perhaps it is worth something now.

So, Berkshire’s answer to Flatford, bathed in winter sunshine, beckoned. I leapt out of bed shortly after ten and left Maidenhead, squinting in the brightness. Travelling via Newbury High Street in the sales rush I was eventually able to spend three hours meandering in the gloom that had descended on West Berkshire.

Don’t get me wrong, Boxford is a very attractive village, and probably spectacularly expensive to live in. It is most likely that the lack of light and sheer number of ‘PRIVATE – KEEP OUT’ signs in the surrounding countryside, coloured my judgement.

Returning to the car the clouds broke a little and the church with the brick and flint tower was at last illuminated. Noting that the place would look quite different with leaves on the trees, I ended my trip with a couple of shots I was happy with.

-- MikeKiely - 10 Mar 2006