Dave - Curious about this, what you have given as the title of the photo is ostensibly totally obscured? The real focus of the image is the stain glass window and the rays eminating from it...some of the roof and other architecture. Save for some rim light around the base and the top of the opening (creating a strange floating "halo") - there is no understanding of it...the material or shape of the basin of the baptismal font. I don't know if this image can be salvaged...but it needs "clarity" (maybe position of camera...I would have tried to get closer to the basin...and perhaps lower to get more of the roof peak). It seems like a good scouting shot for later work perhaps /B
An explanation is needed - I called the image the Christening Font, because the day I shot this image, there was a really heavy storm blowing in and the skies were leaden and dark grey and it was also less than an hour before sunset, so I knew what light there was, would be quickly disappearing. I have been shooting this little church every time I go to Mull, which is about 5 years now and knew pretty much exactly what I wanted to do this time. Unfortunately by the time I had managed to sneak away from our hosts on my own and arrived at the little church, the light was so low inside (as in pitch black and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face until my eyes adjusted after about 20 minutes) that I quickly realised that there was no way I could see to focus on anything other than the feeble light shining through the stained glass window onto the edge of the font, yes I know, I should have taken my head torch, but I didn't and without hunting down the fuse box in the pitch black, there was no way I could find where to turn on the lights. So the only thing I could use to guess my hyper-focal distance, was that leading edge of the Christening Font, which even then was only barely visible and hope that the rest of the scene would be sufficiently sharp. I then used f/22 and ISO 100 (even though neither of these were the optimal settings in the circumstances, I just wanted to make sure in the limited time and light I had) to keep the noise down as much as possible and hoped there would be enough DoF at such close range, to get the whole scene into the shot as I was having to imagine it would turn out. It then came down to experimenting with using longer and longer shutter speeds in the limited time I had left with the receding and feeble light and this shot took approximately 13 minutes using bulb mode, with me sat on a pew in the cold and the dark in a small church, on my own as the wind and rain howled outside. I manage to get three shots in just under the hour BTW. I would have loved to be able to reframe it and perhaps include the top most portion of the arch, but I couldn't even see the arch, so had to base the shot on what I hoped would be in the final capture based on how I remembered it was laid out the last time I visited, but because the outer edges of the shot are so dark, I don't think this really matters, as we normally look into the lighter areas and not into the shadows.
So that is why I called the shot the Christening Font, because that is what I was having to base the entire image upon. But I suppose no one but me would know this, so perhaps I should have explained more fully
But either which way, I am very happy with the result, when the situation really was dictating that I should get nothing at all and I am also happy knowing that I could not have done better under the circumstances, so I apologise if anyone feels that the image is lacking in any way and can only say that this was the best that I could do
Dave
