St George's Round Church (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

This spring was the first time I've offered a course in Architectural Photography, and for the course's second field trip, we visited St George's Round Church. I'd been in the church several times before, but never with photography in mind.

Digital original, 21 frame exposure blend, three frame stitch

My favorite image of the session was of the church from the second floor looking towards the altar. Assembled as a three frame stitch from exposure blended images (24 exposures in total), it was one of my first new images assembled with the new HDR tool in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. In some ways I am humbled by the potential of this tool, as it accomplished in minutes what would have taken me hours in Adobe Photoshop. Impressive to say the least.

Digital original

As there were two field trips (one for each iteration of the course), I spent the first working with the 17mm TS/E lens, focusing on the space as a whole, and then shifted to a long lens for the second. To be honest, I thought I'd be focusing on small architectural elements, but when I discovered the wonderful layers of the curved ceiling above the columns, I made more than a dozen separate white-on-white images, all of which were really pleasing.

Digital original, 8 frame exposure blend

The last image (above) makes me think of some of Walker Evan's interiors of old southern plantations (which isn't a surprise, as the building was constructed in 1800, and the Palladian style also flowed into the American South.