Author Archives: Dominic Price

Project Development

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Dynamic range

Human eyes have the fantastic ability of being able to handle a vast dynamic range -possibly well over 20 stops.  Thus a stained glass window can appear stunning to the naked eye with a range from almost clear glass to dark vibrant blue.  Sadly even the best cameras will only capture a small segment of this.

Dominic Price - Positions & Practice Oral Presentation

Each of the ten segments above is separated by 1/3rd of a stop.  It is clear that the white areas become washed out when overexposed by no more than 2 stops, but the blue areas require at least 3 stops more light in order to become visible.

The Photography Show 2018

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Away from the exhibits…

The Photography Show always provides opportunity for experimentation with the assorted photographic sets.  I stepped away from my normal practice to shoot Panasonic’s Formula E car:

Canon have yet to announce their full-frame mirrorless body, so I was drawn more to their display of flowers:

Project Development

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Three dimensions?

Outside access to the Chapel of St. Nicholas windows is not easy, so I have never DCP_5730 ce lrpreviously viewed them from that perspective.  However, closer examination of one of the windows dew me to venturing outside.  It appeared that the glass was layered.  Certainly not immediately obvious, but there are sections that clearly have more than one layer of stained glass, producing a three dimensional feel that is most apparent on this tiled floor section from ‘The Lord is my refuge and fortress’.  However, trying to photograph this effect as intended, is close to impossible.  The best I could manage was to demonstrate that there is a lower layer of lead.

From the outside, such features are evident on only two of the four accessible windows, but are significantly more obvious (and more abundant DCP_5720 e lrthose windows than is apparent from the inside).  Some of the double layers are in vivid, dark coloured locations – perhaps two layers of glass are necessary to achieve the deep blues, for example (although it is worth noting that not all vivid blues areas are double-layered).

Seen in its entirety from the outside, with the benefit of some highlighting, the images below show the extent of the double-layering.  When overlaid with a mirror image of the edited window, it is clear that this feature exists only in the darker areas or vivid colour.

IMG_2823 e cut out lr  IMG_2823 e cut out (with reverse view) lr

UPDATE: November 25, 2018

Further research reveals this process to be ‘plating‘ – a stained glass technique perfected by L.C. Tiffany in the early 1900’s.  Plating is the process of layering glass, one piece over another, to create shadows, contour and add depth to compositions.

Project Development

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Harris Manchester College Chapel

IMG_2833 ce (low res)Dedicated in 1893, the College Chapel originally had plain glass windows, but this was gradually replaced by the current stained glass between 1895 and 1899.  They are all by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, making the chapel the only room in Oxford to be lit entirely by Morris/Burne-Jones glass.  So complete is this décor that even the organ pipes were painted by Morris & Co..

The orientation of the chapel is at odds with tradition: it is normal for the chancel and communion table to be situated at the east end of a chapel or church, but HMC Chapel was built with these at the west end.  For simplicity, I will refer to the actual compass bearings in this post.  My initial visit coincided with extensive cleaning work to the exterior of the roadside college buildings.  As a result, the east end window was under protective wraps.  This will be something for another visit.

12 impressDCP_5735 ce lrive pre-Raphaelite windows illuminate the chapel with each being composed of multiple lights.  The west window, installed in 1895, was the first to be designed and is far to complex to handle as a single image.  On this initial visit, I selected a small percentage of the window – just two representative lights:

At the top is a beautiful rose consisting of a circle depicting the Nativity of Jesus (BJ 285), surrounded by six angles: an obvious choice for photographing, not least because it contains no support bars, making post-production more straightforward.
HMC - Rose - Final (low res)

Central to the west window is a light depicting Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd (BJ 399), in crimson, bearing a lamb.
HMC - Jesus - Final (low res)

Additionally, I photographed the second window, installed in 1896, depicting Generosity (BJ 398), in the person of St. Martin, dividing his cloak to shear with a beggar; and Courage (BJ 397), portrayed as a soldier, St. George, with shield and spear.

The complexity of design within St. Martin’s patterned cloak and armour was such that I failed to be able to remove all of the support bars – while I was able to edit out the 4th bar down and significant parts of the 1st and 3rd bars, 20+ hours of effort produced unsatisfactory results for the parts remaining, so the final image depicts the light complete with bars.

It is entirely coincidental that each of the lights photographed were designed by Burne-Jones.  On a subsequent visit, I must endeavour to capture one by Morris.

Project Development

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St. Luke’s Chapel

Formerly the church of the Radcliffe Hospital, the chapel is now deconsecrated following the extensive redevelopment of that area.  Situated on the stunning Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, it now forms part of the University’s ‘Conference Oxford’ portfolio and is available to hire internally (within the University) as a small venue for meetings, receptions, small exhibitions and dinners.

Despite its diminutive size, it contains an impressive number of beautiful pre-Raphaelite stained glass windows, but their view in several instances is inhibited by the redevelopment of the chapel.  Additionally, access is far from perfect and on a subsequent visit I will need to attempt to engage the services of the University IT Support who have exclusive access to a mezzanine level (akin to an organ loft) that would provide a preferred vantage point.  Currently both images below are for reference only, the results of minimal editing.

The east window is incredibly elaborate, consisting of 15 lights depicting ten individual scenes from the bible.  Sadly this is backed by a protective mesh that detracts significantly from the visual impact of the window.  On this preliminary visit I captured the window in a single frame, but realise retrospectively that it will be better represented by photographing some of the individual scenes.
DCP_5829 ce lr

The west window is a magnificent rose, but the bottom is obscured by the mezzanine level.  Access to that level will allow the capture of the full window, but I am wary that such photograph would have to be taken with a very wide angle lens aligned precisely with the centre of the rose.
DCP_5857 ce lr

Technology moving on…

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120MP APS-H sensor Canon

In 2010 Canon first revealed that a CMOS sensor was under development with a pixel count equivalent to the number of photoreceptor cells in the human eye. At approximately 60x that of Full HD, it would have a resolution of 120MP. By 2015 this was a working reality on display at CP+ Camera & Photo Imaging Show, designed for rather more industrial applications: monitoring, video production, aviation and space.

The 29.2mm x 20.2mm sensor contains 120 million pixels at 2.2µm pixel pitch, and is capable of 9.4fps – a video resolution of 13.2K that would eclipse current 4K standard!

Canon have at last released a short feature on the sensor’s capabilities:

 

 

M1 Wk8: Web-Gallery

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The best camera is the one that’s with you

This is somewhat rushed, with the weight of the Oral Presentation heavy on the shoulders.   This site does not currently showcase my project so far – that is tied up in bureaucracy, nor is it necessarily in the style I want, but this trials a few concepts.

I have opted to do something that I have never done before: publish images captured on my iPhone.  I do not always travel with a camera, but have a mobile ‘phone with me all the time.  Proof that the best camera is the one that’s with you,  this brief gallery shows some of the highlights of a recent skiing holiday to Ellmau, part of the SkiWelt in Austria.

LINK

Project Development

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Multiple Exposure Blending vs High Dynamic Range

Unlike the more consumer-oriented EOS bodies, the Canon EOS 1DX Mark II and its predecessors do not offer an in-camera High Dynamic Range (HDR) feature. As a result, the solution I worked towards in order to capture the high dynamic range found in stained glass windows was Multiple Exposure Blending (MEB).

Which ever process is used, a final image is created from a series of bracketed photographs (bracketing referring to taking a set of photographs in which one setting in the exposure triangle (ISO – Aperture – Shutter Speed) is changed. For each window I photograph, 20 images are captured each with a fixed ISO (50), fixed aperture (f/8.0) and varying shutter speeds (at 1/3rd stop increments).

It is possible to have HDR Software apply an algorithm to blend portions of the mages together through tonal mapping, but I much prefer the manual approach of MEB. By using layers in post production, I am able to select the optimum appearance of each glass element within the stained glass window and merge them together into one ‘optimum’ image. While this method is both time-consuming and skill-intensive, it achieves the most accurate results:

HDR - originalOne of twenty bracketed images, unedited.
HDR - EditedThe final image after Multiple Exposure Blending.

M1 Wk9: Introducing Critical Theory

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Forum: What is Critical Theory?

I am more than a little critical of critical theory, happy in the knowledge that so much goes on without deep philosophical and ideological consideration.  A surprising number of photographs are taken purely because the protagonist wants to capture a particular scene.  As a result, I am amused by the approach of photographers who perhaps play to theorists. Richard Alan Cohen is very open about the reasoning behind his photographs, and specialises in a niche area of marine photography.

The image blow, part of his ‘Waterlines’ series, could be interpreted in very different ways:
Waterline
Waterlines 2017 © Richard Alan Cohen Photography Link

  • The seascape: a starry night above a moonlit rough sea.
  • The weathered waterline of a boat hull.

Extreme close-up photography and the production of abstract images can, and often does grate.  My background using microscopes and stereo field microscopes in geological labs has undoubtedly led to an appreciation (in the broadest sense) of textures and surfaces in abstract.  Richard Alan Cohen photographs the waterlines of boats, capturing what is actually a fascinating interplay between the sea and hull paint.

For those who have not worked on and around boats, in addition to the normal marine hull paint, below the waterline antifouling is used – marine paint specifically designed to impede the growth of barnacle, algae and marine organisms.  Antifouling is copper-rich and reacts differently in seawater to normal hull paints.  Consequently, the weathered surface of a boat hull at the waterline demonstrated a fascinating array of colours: hull paint and antifouling are usually different colours, but some of the hull paint will have reacted and decoloured with the UV of sunlight, while that nearest to the waterline will have been washed constantly with seawater, producing a different discolouration. The antifouling below the waterline will have weathered uniformly, but the very top will have reacted both with UV light and seawater, creating different a colour.  As a result, this small area of a boat hull is fascinating at both a scientific and visual level.

Richard Alan Cohen chose to photograph this contact zone not to build a portfolio of abstract images.  He does not try to hide the origins of his images, but composes them in a way that leads the observer to create a seascape in the mind’s eye.  There is a satisfyingly holistic nature to his work: he is photographing the waterline of boat hulls to produce an abstract image meant to be interpreted as a seascape.