My first attempt at a church

jbswear

I keep passing this church, and usually only at night. I keep saying to myself, "Self, that would make a nice shot."

Only when I actually stopped to take the shot did I realize what a difficult shot it is.

Imagine you're behind the view finder. Immediately to your left is an intersection, not 20 feet away. I had to take this in B&W because the low stone fence in front of the church is green from the signal.

This pic has had almost no post processing. I'm looking for advice on framing the shot more than processing it. Any help is appreciated! Just noticed that on this shot, the ISO is at 400...That explains the washed out bricks. Dangit.

Oh, and if somebody can tell me how to attach the EXIF info, that would probably help too!



Here's the closest I can come to EXIF by clicking on properties in DPP, then copying and pasting....

File name
IMG_1046.CR2
Camera Model Name
Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi
Shooting Date/Time
2/7/2007 22:35:02
Tv(Shutter Speed)
6Sec.
Av(Aperture Value)
F5.0
Metering Modes
Evaluative metering
Exposure Compensation
0
ISO Speed
400
Lens
EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length
31.0 mm
Image size
3888 x 2592
Image Quality
RAW
Flash
Off
White Balance
Tungsten
AF mode
One-Shot AF
Picture Style
Monochrome
Parameters
Tone Curve : Standard
Sharpness level : -
Pattern Sharpness : -
Contrast : 0
Sharpness : 3
Filter effect : None
Toning effect : None
Color matrix
-
Color Space
sRGB
File Size
9260 KB
Dust Delete Data
No
Drive Mode
Single-frame shooting
Owner's Name
unknown
Camera Body No.
520107195

Seneca

Very nice. There is a church here by my house that I've been wanting to shoot too. It's a little old fashion cottage church. I'll get around to doing it...as soon as I get another tripod. Good job.

episodic

Seneca wrote:

Very nice. There is a church here by my house that I've been wanting to shoot too. It's a little old fashion cottage church. I'll get around to doing it...as soon as I get another tripod. Good job.

I really like this shot. Thanks for sharing

toferbaseball

Very nicely done!

Awais Yaqub

loved it very cool

Pupator

Since you asked for advice, here's my take.

The shot looks a bit crooked. Does your camera offer grid lines so you can try to compose it a bit more straight? (Or maybe my head is crooked!) (Edit: looking at this with a grid overlay, it is leaning just a *bit*)

I'd like to see it a bit more evenly lit - or at least not so dark at the top. Try using exposure bracketing and blending the images for more even light distribution.

This might not work - but try one frame zoomed in more. Forget the road and have the church sitting right on the bottom of the frame. See if that gets rid of some of the dead space on the sides.

This is a good subject - we have a church like this but a bit bigger here in Charlotte - and I'm sure your next try at this will produce awesome results. Be sure to share them!

Stan

All I can say having tried this alot before christmas, is that churches are not well lit for photography. The lighting blows out some while under exposing others. There are three ways of dealing with this, the first is to bracket the exposure, exposing both exteremes to allow for a merge in PS or an HDR. The second method is to use a gradient filter to lower the highlighted area, while allowing correct exposure in the poorer lit areas. This can be done in PS though if the highlights aren't blown. The third is to use Shadow Highlight in PSII which works well.

As a quick try: If you don't like it I'll remove it


As for the lean, if you shoot wide angle on a tower from a low angle you will get distortion. Unless you use lens correction in PSII.

here is one I started with



and after lens correction

frg

I like it, very nicely done

jbswear

Thanks for all the advice, guys!

It's exactly what I was looking for. I did shoot a few with the church filling the entire frame, but didn't think that it would look good with out something to frame the church. I'll go back and try again.

This time I'll shoot in nothing but ISO 100.

I actually was hoping for the 'uneven' lighting. I liked the way the base was well lit, while the top faded and seemed to reach away.

My camera does offer gride lines, I think. I really should put them in.

I don't have much experience with pp editing, heck, I don't even have much experience in photography! I'm stumbling through the bundled software that came with the camera, and downloaded the GIMP last night, so I'll see where I can go from there. Right now I'm more interested in doing as much in-camera processing as possible, to minimize pp time. Also, if I learn to rely on the camera and my skills, I won't have to 'cheat' so much to fix my mistakes...

I might be able to head out and try again tomorrow night. If I zoom up and fill the frame with the church, I should be able to shoot in color, as the church isn't lighted from the turn signal like the low wall is.


THANKS!

Pupator

jbswear wrote:

Also, if I learn to rely on the camera and my skills, I won't have to 'cheat' so much to fix my mistakes...

Glad to hear you're giving it another shot, but FYI, nothing about post-processing is cheating. If it is, then using any development techniques in the darkroom is cheating too.

So don't worry about having to post process. I know you may not want to spend much time doing it, but the goal is to make the best images possible, not to have the best un-processed data on your memory card

jbswear

Pupator wrote:

Glad to hear you're giving it another shot, but FYI, nothing about post-processing is cheating. If it is, then using any development techniques in the darkroom is cheating too.

So don't worry about having to post process. I know you may not want to spend much time doing it, but the goal is to make the best images possible, not to have the best un-processed data on your memory card

Oh, I know. I agree completely. I didn't mean it quite that way. I guess if I can learn to take a better picture, I won't have to play with the image so much in pp and save myself a bit of time and hassle!

NicoleB

I like the lighting on the shot, gives it a bit of a ghostly feeling.
I would probably leave a bit more room at the top, if possible.
Keep them coming !