Lakeside United Methodist Church

[Dennis Bishop]

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.





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.

[Wendy Kates]

Dennis, the shades and textures of the bricks are very engaging, and your idea of taking the image of the window from the inside and then working it into the exterior was thoughtful and creative. The contrast between the gray sky and the red bricks is striking. I'm not sure I understand how you produced all of the lines in the sky...can you describe that more fully?

[Diane Miller]

Wonderful! I never would have known the window was "arranged." Your patience and persistence paid off!

There is an odd stripe at the top that is probably a masking glitch.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I'm not sure I understand how you produced all of the lines in the sky...can you describe that more fully?

Thanks for your comments, Wendy. There are several plug-ins that can be used to make something that looks like light rays. I sometimes use Rays by Digital Film Tools or Eye Candy by Alien Skin. The one that most often gives the results I want is Red Giant Software's Knoll Light Factory. It allows me to dial in a number of effects, alter them, and position them anywhere I want. Sometimes I'll use all three plug-ins, but Knoll Light Factory is what I used here. I positioned the rays in the center of the stained glass window, so I needed a mask to remove them from the church. Because the lines were sharper than I wanted, I selected the sky and blurred it using Field Blur in Photoshop's Blur Gallery.

If you become tempted to try out Knoll Light Factory, be aware that the company mostly makes software for videos. Versions of Knoll Light Factory are available for videos and for Photoshop, so be sure to get the right one.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . There is an odd stripe at the top that is probably a masking glitch.

Thank you, Diane. I hadn't noticed the stripe. It's from the texture I used. In this case, I only really needed the color, so blurring it would've gotten rid of the stripe.

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks for all of this useful information, Dennis...I'll check into those plug-ins!

[Mitch Carucci]

Another "Wow" image! Great processing.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, the image is beautifully conceived and executed. I especially like the fact that you will conceive an idea for an image and let it germinate for so long until you get the perfect result.

[gary ellwein]

Love the rich color and texture of the bricks. Most impressed with the handling of the stained glass windows.

[Judy Howle]

Nicely processed Dennis. I like the bold color of the bricks, and the window looks great! I also like the light rays, you did a good job with them.