High Contrast Images from Ely Cathedral

Unusually for any event that I organise, yesterday's CCC Points of View took place in hot bright sunshine so it was ice creams rather than hot chocolate on the wish lists. When the images are all in for judging, I will share some of my efforts at the topics, but here are a few images taken in the Cathedral  mostly using light and shadow in the design. The third image is an in-camera double exposure - one of the topics and quite a few Members were trying this for the first time with their cameras.

Green Men at Ely

We visited Ely yesterday and spent a long while in the cathedral hunting Green Man symbols. A Green Man is a sculpture or other representation of a face surrounded by or made from leaves. Branches or vines may sprout from the mouth, nostrils, or other parts of the face and these shoots may bear flowers or fruit. There is a lot written about the origin of Green Man sculptures, many believing it is a pagan artifact derived from the ancient Celts' worship of the head. There is a trail leaflet that says there are over 70 Green men and animals but we only found  6 of the listed 12. Sadie and Meredith also enjoyed looking at the Christmas Tree and Great-great-great-great grandfather's plaque as Bishop of Ely .

 

Ely Cathedral

I very much enjoyed showing Bill and Barbara around Ely on Thursday - always good to have visitors who appreciate places. A few shots from the trip - the exteriors show how the light can change within an hour or so. Interior panorama is 16 shots. Images taken through the ceiling mirror - first one 15mm fisheye, next two 10mm lens. All handheld - some at 1/6th second so not critically sharp but amazing what modern cameras can do (Fuji-XT10)

Ely and CCC Points of View

 A really grey and chilly day for our annual Points of View competition, this year set by Helen in Ely. She set us 5 interesting topics: Cathedral (outside), Water, Curves, Monochrome, Funny Face. Generally I found that I only had one or two images that worked for a topic but here are a few extras for the Cathedral and for Curves. 

Ely Cathedral - How Not to Do It

 After much thought and lots of advice from various compact system users of different varieties, I decided to trade in my Sony Nex for a Fuji XT-1, partly on the quality of the images that I had seen and also the good battery life (very short battery life is the worst feature of the Sony Nex - they need to address this). Add to this the fact that  Phil and I can now share batteries, lenses. So it duly arrived and, as we were in Ely anyway, a test run in the Cathedral. Well you would have thought with all the teaching I do, I would have checked a few things - like was it on RAW - No, was the long exposure reduction OFF - No and was the colour space Adobe RGB - No. So some unrecoverable highlights, jpeg artifacts and some with too much noise reduction. But focusing works fine and pleased to see battery not showing any reduction in power after a couple of hours shooting.

Ely Cathedral - Infrared

A few infrared images from Ely Cathedral.