Dennis Bishop
10-01-2015, 10:51 PM
Lakeside, Ohio, was founded in 1873. Their first church was built two years later by a Methodist Episcopal congregation. It's a white frame building, which now serves as the Lakeside Heritage Society's museum. (I took some photos of it this summer to document in a grant application the need for repairs to the roof and siding.) The congregation outgrew the small chapel 25 years after it was built and bought an existing brick building nearby. Ironically, the old wooden building is still standing, but the brick one burned in 1929. The church in this image was built to replace that one and opened in 1952.
I didn't think about photographing the church until the summer of 2014 when I happened to see it with the cloudy sky behind it colored by the sunset. That finally led to this image more than a year later. There were two things working against it: There's usually good entertainment in the community's auditorium five days a week, so that limited the chance of being near the church with a good sunset. The other problem was that the stained glass window wasn't backlit at the right times. The summer of 2014 passed with no image. When we returned this past summer, I ran into a friend while walking past the church. He knew I wanted to get the shot and offered an idea for backlighting the window. He's a trustee of the church and in a position to help make the idea happen. I didn't use that idea, but his suggestion made me think about taking a photo of the window from inside the church on a sunny morning when it was backlit from the outside and photoshopping it into position. Meanwhile, my vision of the final image changed. I figured it would say more if the sky was dark and threatening. A few days after I took the window photo, there was a sky that could be coaxed into what I wanted.
155833
window -- Nikon D3s, ISO 1250, f/4, 1/400 sec (-3 EV exposure compensation), zoom lens at 20mm
church -- iPhone 5s, PureShot camera app, iPro Super Wide auxiliary lens
processing highlights
Part of a tree and some utility wires were removed, and the sky above the cross was expanded vertically a bit.
The window was adjusted in Free Transform with both Warp and Perspective.
Throughout the processing, many Levels and Curves adjustment layers were used separately on the church and the sky -- generally in opposite directions.
Basic processing was Topaz Simplify, Alien Skin Snap Art, and Fractalius. A Photomorphis texture was used for its effect on color and to add a vignette.
The light behind the church was done with Red Giant Knoll Light Factory (blurred) and a masked Curves layer with a radial gradient.
I didn't think about photographing the church until the summer of 2014 when I happened to see it with the cloudy sky behind it colored by the sunset. That finally led to this image more than a year later. There were two things working against it: There's usually good entertainment in the community's auditorium five days a week, so that limited the chance of being near the church with a good sunset. The other problem was that the stained glass window wasn't backlit at the right times. The summer of 2014 passed with no image. When we returned this past summer, I ran into a friend while walking past the church. He knew I wanted to get the shot and offered an idea for backlighting the window. He's a trustee of the church and in a position to help make the idea happen. I didn't use that idea, but his suggestion made me think about taking a photo of the window from inside the church on a sunny morning when it was backlit from the outside and photoshopping it into position. Meanwhile, my vision of the final image changed. I figured it would say more if the sky was dark and threatening. A few days after I took the window photo, there was a sky that could be coaxed into what I wanted.
155833
window -- Nikon D3s, ISO 1250, f/4, 1/400 sec (-3 EV exposure compensation), zoom lens at 20mm
church -- iPhone 5s, PureShot camera app, iPro Super Wide auxiliary lens
processing highlights
Part of a tree and some utility wires were removed, and the sky above the cross was expanded vertically a bit.
The window was adjusted in Free Transform with both Warp and Perspective.
Throughout the processing, many Levels and Curves adjustment layers were used separately on the church and the sky -- generally in opposite directions.
Basic processing was Topaz Simplify, Alien Skin Snap Art, and Fractalius. A Photomorphis texture was used for its effect on color and to add a vignette.
The light behind the church was done with Red Giant Knoll Light Factory (blurred) and a masked Curves layer with a radial gradient.