Dear All,

I have kind of set myself a theme, kind of like gahspidy and his cans :D . I love photographing churches, especially old ones. Here is a first try in that direction. Comments and critiques welcome.

Dzerzhinski

Dzerzhinski, I'm looking forward to seeing more of your theme. I actually drove around a church parking lot tonight looking at different angles for a possible re-visit tomorrow. I had a post a few weeks ago called "Headrick Chapel". I thought about an old Bell Tower/Church series myself.

Scott

DZ46
The tree shadows bother me here, unless that theme will be followed throughout the series. If so then you should concentrate more on the shadows, The left and right edges of the pix appear to be lighter than the center. That bothers me a lot.
Maybe a different time of the day or it just may not work with this view of the church.

Dzerzhinski (hope I spelt that right:p),

I personally don't mind the trees. It is a tad distratcing, but guessing by the way that you have the sun on your back, it would be hard to re-do those shots with the sunelse where. The only thing that does bug me though is how the shot seems to be tilting upwards from the left to the right side. It's somewhat distratcing, but I don't know if i'm just seeing things or if that was the way it was meant to be shot.

Great shot and I'd love to see more angles/shots of this church,


Jared

Part of the appeal for me, at least when I took the picture, was the interplay of shadows across the facade, and the stained glass window. Jared, the light was late afternoon, so I could have done the picture earlier. The tilt is probably when I scanned the picture in. Thanks for the comments.

Dzerzhinski

The tilt is probably when I scanned the picture in.


Ahhhh,

I understand now!:D

Jared

Interesting choice of theme. I've always enjoyed churchs as subjects for my own personal shooting. (Actually have been working on a paying project with elements from churchs for some time)

This isn't a bad maiden (??) effort. There are some features about religious buildings that one usually wants to try and separate (simple things like steeples, and apse coupling, and entry/foyer elements and so on) in images to present grandeur or decay.


The Metropolitan Church in the City has (may have been changed some) has some views that this photo (roofline anyway) reminds me of. This photo has too many elements going at once, between the tops of the columns, the multiple roof lines, the window, the facade texture and the sky/building silhouette interface. (got to fix this spell checker)

Shadows like the tree are often a reality of urban locations and can usually at the right time of day be made to be an important inclusion.

There used to be a great old adobe mission church up in Mill Valley (Fairly close, no?) that was sort of set off by itself with the ground falling away to the NE which provided for great sky backdrops. I have no idea what the parish name was or anything.

Look forward to seeing more churchs.

Best wishes - CDP

Love the shadows of the tree! It adds an ominous sense to the whole pic. The shadows also mirror the trees of the left and right edges of the picture.

I am however VERY disturbed by the perspective (vertical tilt) and also by the difference in the tonality of the sky (moslty the rigth edge). However, this is nothing that PS cannot cope with...

I would also boost the contrast a tad bit, but that's only a personal taste.

Only my 2 cents...

Cheers,

Steph.

Steph, here I emphasized the ominous aspect. I think it lends quite an atmosphere to it, quite gothic. I just like the mood in this picture, not necessarily the composition. Terry, I guess this is one of those that you either love or hate. Not easy to have a middle ground. And I probably will not continue the theme of tree shadows on churches :rolleyes: . Thank you for the input. :D Oh, and I corrected (or at least I think I corrected it) the tilt on the picture.

Dzerzhinski

Any more on this one? Would much appreciate it.

Dzerzhinski

there's one thing i like here, and this may be a bit far fetched for some, but there is a definite feeling of good and evil here. this beautiful church which has been marked by these black spindly shadows (roots of evil?), tendrils which seem to want to envelop the church. Obviously this is exacerbated by using black and white (the darker picture looks even more ominous due to that oppressive sky).
All that to say, it could easily prelude some darker moments if this were a shot in a horror movie.

just my 2 euro cents and another point of view i hope.

chris