I am curious as to how you were able to achieve such incredible detail, front to back, in this shot with a 50 mm lens at f/5.6. However you did it, it is very impressive.
Christian, Endre, Jane and Robert...Thank you all so much for the wonderful compliments. The topic being Churche*S* and not Church had me thinking of plural versus singular, composites, and exactly what is a church. I spent days working an image that was merely ok, when I remembered the gold crucifix outside St Mary's...and my favorite photogenic church...St Adalbert's. On my way to the crucifix I realized the shot I would create. The crucifix was shot this afternoon with a 12 to 24mm Nikon lens...with me literally at his feet. (It's life size in a clump of bushes...so I couldn't get any lower - shot at f4.0 and 12mm) Then I shot St Adalbert's was at f5.6 with a 50mm lens. The sky was days ago...
Here are today's rejects...I really thought this wouldn't be that tough a topic...but I been thinking about it ever since it passed "patterns in nature"...which was equally stumping me. I kept thinking...imagine if you lived in Rome, or Spain, France...England...the architecture...the centuries of effort to create such beautiful churches...and I'm just gonna have to make do with whatever I can find locally.
What I first thought when seeing this is how well this composition work, how the two parts of the roof and the two crosses (in the foreground and at the top) work with each other,how the lines point to the main subject, a great example of how to place picture elements. Color and detail is great too. Really good.
Thank you Tom and Anders! I hope I haven't spoiled the image by explaining how it was made. For me, photography is a 2D version of a 3D world. It's like the difference between writing to someone, and sharing a conversation over a meal. Reality is full of clues, and subtle hints (body language-smells-etc) that simply can not be "captured". But, a good image/photo can call upon common experiences to hint at those difficult to express ideas. Patty got it - I meant it to be "stunning". Being Presbyterian, we don't have JC on the cross, because of the accenssion. However, He is the reason "churches" exist.
Confess: you have a very big studio and set up everything there!
Fantastic lighting. Did you use shadows/highlights in ps? Colors and
composition are merely awesome. I like especially how the strong
symmetry is broken by the placement of the cross and the diagonal
in it. And the mass of gold is nicely balanced by the trumpet and the
small cross. The streak of light just tops it. Not to mention facial
expression and body language, but I guess that was easy on your
side
John and Marc...thanks! Oh, I didn't use shadow/highlight...I find it adds noise. Usually I adjust via curves...in multiple tweaks pointed at different parts...the highlights....midtones...shadows...and then paint the adjustments on using the history brush with various opacities....sometimes on an adjustment layer...others right on the image itself.
