The Oldest Church in Town

Never is it lost on me that it has been a long time (over a month) since my last blog. I've been unmotivated and uninspired, and at the same time incredibly busy with photography work. I will post soon about what I have been working on project wise (interior design shoots), but for today I will post a picture from my latest trip to Poland.

As usual with my trips to Poland, there wasn't that much free time. There is normally a celebration going on of some sort, and this time it was about my Wife's sister, who was getting married. I turned 33 while I was out in Poland and taking a break from their hectic wedding plans, our hosts kindly took me to some old parts of Poland, which ended in visiting this Church in the town of Swidnica.

Not speaking as good Polish as I would like, I struggle to remember the history very well from my fleeting visits to places, but I was pleased to see when I looked this church up on the net just now, that it is called The Evangelical Church of Peace (what a name!) and is a UNESCO world heritage site. There is a great story to how this church came to be built, but I will save that for another blog post!

This is the main organ front, facing away from the altar, and from a photographic point of view, carries on my love of HDR photography. Luckily churches in Poland do not give you grief about using tripods, so I was able to take my time to get these bracketed shots, which made up this picture.

It would not be right to say hello and not blog again soon, therefore, I will be back with another blog post on Thursday.

Inside Castle Combe

Perhaps the latest I have ever blogged, but not going to budge from my set blogging days of Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Today's photo is from St. Andrew's Church, in the village of Castle Combe. As a couple of my recent photographs have been, this was actually taken more than 2 years ago in July 2011. Castle Combe is a very old English village, and as such has been used for many film and TV productions, one of the most recent being Steven Spielberg's War Horse.

From a processing point of view, this is the first photo I have processed using the new version of Photomatix - Photomatix 5. I am impressed with the different processing options available, but yet to explore it fully yet. I have also used High Pass sharpening for this picture. My normal method of sharpening is to use the sharpening tool in Lightroom, with the masking slider, to make sure it only sharpens the relevant aspects. I also like the Smart-Sharpen filter in Photoshop, but I find that High Pass sharpening works really well for interior pictures like this one, where you do not have to worry about sharpening aspects (such as clouds) that do not require sharpening.

I have another picture planned from Castle Combe to display on this blog, so that should be ready on Tuesday!

John Paul II Statue Krakow

Staying in Poland for the third picture in a row, today's photo is back in Krakow, the beautiful and culturally rich city in the south west. As I have written in a previous blog post, Krakow is heavily associated with the former Pope John Paul II, who indeed was Bishop of Krakow for many years before becoming Pope in 1978. He is honoured throughout of the city of Krakow, but I particularly like this memorial outside this mysterious church, which I cannot seem to find anywhere on online. Of course it will teach me to pay attention when I'm visiting, but then I am too busy normally taking pictures.

Fact: I had to wait at least 10 minutes to take this picture, due to a woman standing right in front of the statue, taking pictures on her mobile phone, and literally staring at them for about 2 minutes at a time. I have learned to be patient as a photographer travelling, but this this was a test of the highest order. She must have seen me standing there waiting to take a picture the whole time. Oh well, patience pays off and all that.

The Church with the Red Door

Say what you see Pete! Sorry it's a little case of 'titles-block' again, but I couldn't think of anything else to sum up this picture really. This picture is from the village of Datchet, just outside Windsor in Berkshire. I was about to write 'sleepy village of Datchet' then, but if you have spent a night there like I did last night, you'd have done well to get some sleep! Not only is it directly under a Heathrow flight path but the rail line that runs right through the centre of it is surprisingly busy at night as well! Having said all that, it is a charming little village and has existed for hundreds of years, even before the year 1000AD. Therefore, there are some historical sights to see around the village and this is the church of St. Mary the Virgin located on the right as you enter Datchet (if you arrive from the M4 direction anyway).

I've spent the weekend in the Windsor area and yesterday visited Windsor Castle. You can never bank on the English weather treating you well but it has been pretty miserable the last couple of days. Not bad when the effect you are after is quite gloomy like this picture but thoroughly annoying when you have about a 3 seconds to get a picture in the castle grounds before the lens becomes coated in raindrops. Hopefully I'll have some good pictures to show from the castle soon.

I mentioned the other day that I can now be found on Pinterest, well for HDR fans I have also set up a group called 'The Best HDR Photographers' and you can find a link to it here: http://pinterest.com/petehalewood/the-best-hdr-photographers/

Madonna Dell'Orto

I've decided to post an 'oldie' (it's not really that old) today due to being pretty swamped with none-photographic issues recently. I'm in the process of buying a property at the moment and will hopefully be moving in very soon. It's taking up a lot of my time anyway and rather than rush a picture together, I decided to post a favourite of mine from last year. I have posted this one on Flickr before but never as a blog.

This is inside the magnificent Madonna Dell'Orto church in Venice, not too far from the Rialto bridge. I took this picture using a gorilla-pod, whilst sitting on the very back bench of the church. It was one of the first pictures I processed on my return from Venice and though I did not choose to use it in my exhibition in October last year, it still remains one of my personal favourites. The paintings on the far wall behind the alter are truly spectacular and I think one of the reasons I like this particular photograph.