Week 9: Independent Reflection

It is a good thing that I have a holiday coming up as my contributions to the research project have occupied the past week solidly.  I chose only to visit two locations as well as conducting some experimental heresy on the stained glass windows of Henry Holiday that I photographed earlier this month.

At all three locations visited in July, I opted to photograph in its entirety multi-light windows.  In situ these always look mightily impressive on account of their size and their complexity.  Sadly in post-production these become a nightmare particularly when it comes to the removal of support bars.  The William Weatherley window in St. Edwards Chapel was proof in point: not a huge window, consisting of just three lights with reasonably straightforward artwork.  It took just over five hours to complete the initial editing and then a further 14-15 hours to remove the support bars (illustrated in the before and after GIF below).  I am happy with the results and hold fast to the idea that this makes for a better image, but where time is precious, it can be tricky to justify spending so much additional time on a single image.

I have experimented with two areas of extension work in recent weeks.  The first was conducting extensive digital restoration on a roundel flanked by angels, which although each is a small light, took just over ten hours once the initial editing was completed.  For enhanced clarity below is the roundel on its own:

The next area of ‘extension’ was in the creation of contemporary images reworked from a very large sequence of close-up photographs of stained glass windows.  I am not convinced by the images, but they are growing on me in mould-on-cheese way.  While I definitely prefer the structured 12×12 grid, I quite like the way that your eyes travel around the more abstract image.  I am sure that I will experiment further with such imagery, but it stands clearly separate from my research project proposals.