Project Development

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Dominic Price

Wycliffe Hall Chapel – Post-Production Visit

Today’s bright yet overcast conditions were perfect for the photography of stained glass, but with no access lined up for another week or two, my only practical task was to colour-check the Wycliffe Hall images. This was bound to prove difficult as the lighting was so very different from the blue skies and bright sunlight on the day that the photographs were taken.

Focusing first on the East Window, for the most part, colour and relative contrast were correct. Yes, the saturation was a little lower today, but that is to be expected and I do not think that the difference could warrant re-editing. The same could not be said for the West Window… John Wycliffe’s cloak is a decidedly awkward shade of warm grey lined in a contrasting red hue. When backed by a clear blue sky and bright sunlight the cloak seemed closer to a true grey. In today’s conditions, it was a definite mauve shade of grey, with the contrasting lining being somewhat subdued.

I have re-edited the image to reflect this, but am unsure which could be described as most true. To that end, I will give the Hall the option of either version. Looking at the animated GIF comparison below (2 second continuous loop), the differences are subtle, but to me, very important.

Dominic Price (2019) John Wycliffe [Artist Unknown, 1896 – Wycliffe Hall Chapel] Animate GIF to illustrate the (subtle) differences between the initial edit and the re-edit that followed the post-production visit.

Project Development

Posted on March 28, 2019 by Dominic Price

Christ Church Cathedral

I was made to feel incredibly welcome on my planning visit, but for this visit the terms of my photography were understandably strict within one of Oxford’s largest tourist attractions. I was not allowed to hinder the routine operation of the Cathedral, nor impede the tourists and most significantly must not slow the work of the restoration team. Sadly the internal lighting would have to remain on throughout my work.

Thus far, this is the only site that has required copy of my Risk Assessment and with the visit involving access to the scaffolding, within a construction site, I had to meet all PPE requirements (safety helmet; high-visibility top; safety footwear).

Today was the first day of school holiday for me – my first chance in a little while to refocus upon my MA. I could not start my work until after Holy Communion, which was due to end at about 8:10am. Notwithstanding, I opted to arrive at the Porter’s Lodge some 25 minutes prior to that so that I could plan, quietly. The weather was not entirely onside: just a few clouds and bright sunshine, so I was anxious about the severity of shadows that this would create, in addition to pools of light coming from the various plain glass windows. Once issued with a ‘Contractor’s ID’, I headed to the Cathedral and wandered the site confirming sight lines etc., to the calming accompaniment of the Common Book of Prayer 1662 Communion Service.

I did steal a panoramic photograph and have now spent three hours trying to get this to display in reasonable quality as a scrollable image… sadly no joy, even when using the full 75MP resolution! I will endeavour to revisit this predicament.

Dominic Price (2019) Christ Church Cathedral panorama

With Communion over, I was advised that I would have access to the scaffold for 45 minutes from 1pm – during the workers lunch break, to minimise movement and shake on the rig. I had the Cathedral to myself until 10am… almost. There were routine interruptions in the form of singing lessons for the choristers of Christ Church Cathedral School (where I spent a happy six months doing my PGCE placement some 26 years ago!), which precluded me being able to take some shots, but did allow me to focus on the surroundings.

Dominic Price (2019) St. Frideswide stained glass painting with light

It soon became apparent that the Cathedral has a significant problem with spiders webs particularly in and around the smaller tracery lights and panels of the various windows. They are an ever-present feature of stained glass photography and have cost me many hours of additional editing. Whenever possible I avoid editing lights that are heavily cobwebbed, but this may prove impossible here.

Cobwebs on a tracery light

By 10am, I could focus on some photography from the sacristy – an area high above the visiting tourists where they would not get in my way. I also opted to take a few interior shots of the architecture.

Dominic Price (2019) Christ Church College Cloister

Dominic Price (2019) Christ Church Cathedral chancel vaulting

With camera battery nearly drained, I discovered to my horror that my spares were still docked in the charger at home! With Oxford now awash with tourists, progress across the city was not fast, but I still made it back to the Cathedral in time for my 1pm appointment.

Access to the top of the scaffold was via three ladders. At each level it was quite a squeeze to fit myself, tripod and camera through the surprisingly small aperture. The upper level looked pleasingly room-like and felt fairly stable, despite being some sixty feet up.

Dominic Price (2019) Christ Church Cathedral restoration work – looking east toward my tripod and camera

Dominic Price (2019) Christ Church Cathedral restoration work – looking west

The view from the top was worth the effort and afforded a superb view of the East Rose Window – revealing to my amazement that the bottom of the window is cropped by some trunking (not visible from the ground), which will require some careful editing.

Dominic Price (2019) Christ Church Cathedral – view from the upper level of the restoration work scaffold

With over 400 images in the bag, I now have a mountain of editing ahead of me, but am welcome back whenever I like.

Project Development

Posted on March 30, 2019 by Dominic Price

Christ Church Cathedral – The Catherine Window

The Catherine Window – postcard

The Catherine Window was the first I photographed on Wednesday. Sadly this could not be captured appropriately in a single image as it was in part obscured by a sanctuary lamp hanging from the ceiling.

Designed by William Morris and executed by Edward Burne-Jones in 1878, it is also referred to as the Liddell Window, this features a central light of St. Catherine that was modelled upon the then dean’s daughter Edith Liddell (sister to Alice, the inspiration for Charles Dodgson’s work Alice in Wonderland). St. Catherine is flanked on either side by angels: to the left representing Victory and to the right representing Sorrow.

I photographed separately each of the main lights as well as the three tracery lights that feature angels playing musical instruments.

All three of the tracery lights were heavily covered in cobwebs which added significant additional editing time.

For each of the three images below, 28 images were shot at 400mm using the Canon EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens, at an aperture of f/8.0 and exposure times ranging from 1/500 s to 1.0 s.

Dominic Price (2019) The Catherine Window tracery light Angel (left) [Edward Burne-Jones, 1878 – Christ Church Cathedral]

Christ Church - Angel - cymbals (low res)

Dominic Price (2019) The Catherine Window tracery light Angel (right) [Edward Burne-Jones, 1878 – Christ Church Cathedral]

Christ Church - Angel - pipe 02 (low res)

Dominic Price (2019) The Catherine Window tracery light Angel (top) [Edward Burne-Jones, 1878 – Christ Church Cathedral]

I will tackle the more demanding main lights in a few days!

Project Development

Posted on April 1, 2019 by Dominic Price

Christ Church Cathedral – East Rose Window

From the top of the restoration work scaffold there was a perfect head-on view of the rose window which allowed for its capture without the need for any post-production correction of perspective. More importantly, this afforded something not possible from floor level: a view of the window in its entirety, or so I thought…

Dominic Price (2019) Christ Church Cathedral – view from the upper level of the restoration work scaffold

While necessitating only minimal post-production editing, the addition of a recent piece of pipework or trunking across part of the rose seems inconsiderate in the planning of such work. A detailed look at the window also revealed, to my dismay, a latticework of support bars. Every light was split in half by a radial bar and then further subdivided twice more, with a total of thirty-one support bars in the entire window – far more than is sensible to remove in editing.

Dominic Price (2019) Detail of the East Rose Window – trunking ad support bars

I was intrigued that the design seemed not quite to fit in the available space – most noticeable in the text, with characters missing either in part or entirely. I wonder if the tracery design differed from that which was finally produced? The image below reveals a partially missing ‘T’ from the word UTERUM; the next light has a partially missing ‘R’ from REX and the third light has a completely absent ‘C’ from CHRISTE.

Dominic Price (2019) Detail of the East Rose Window – cropped glass

For the completed image, I did go to the trouble of removing the support bar that halved the roundel, but opted to leave all others in place having estimated that this would have added 15-20 hours of additional edit time. This does grate with me, so should I revisit the editing of this window, an initial step will be to remove the support bars that cut across each of the ten angels.

Dominic Price (2019) East Rose Window [Clayton & Bell, 1875 – Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford]

The rose depicts Christ the King surrounded by adoring angels. The text surrounding the roundel comes from the Te Deum:

Tu rex gloriae christe
Tu patris sempiternus es filius
Tu ad liberandum suscepisti hominem non
horruisti virginis uterum

You, Christ, are the king of glory,
the eternal Son of the Father.
When you became man to set us free
you did not spurn the Virgin’s womb.

To produce this image, 21 photographs were taken at 214mm using the Canon EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens, at an aperture of f/8.0 and exposure times ranging from 1/15 s to 4.0 s.

Project Development

Posted on April 7, 2019 by Dominic Price

Christ Church Cathedral – The Catherine Window Pt.2

Christ Church - St. Catherine Window - The Angel 'Victory' (low res)

Dominic Price (2019) The Catherine Window – The Angel ‘Victory’ [Edward Burne-Jones, 1878 – Christ Church Cathedral]

After a brief respite to focus upon the Peer Review Presentation, I refocused upon the Christ Church Cathedral archive. While this light is the most striking of the three from The Catherine Window, the removal of the support bars, which cover some notable fine detail, was always going to increase the post-production time.

Typically I anticipate an hour of editing time for the removal of each individual support bar, but in this case it took over six hours to remove the four bars!

Before progressing further with the remaining two lights it seems sensible to revisit the cathedral in order to compare this image (and those of the three tracery light angels), since the lighting on the day was far from ideal and for the first time ever I also had to endure internal artificial illumination. It concerns me in particular that the skin tones for this angel are notably different to those of the tracery lights, when logic would suggest that the skin tones should be fairly constant within a single window.

To produce this image, 15 photographs were taken at 241 mm using the Canon EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens, at an aperture of f/8.0 and exposure times ranging from 1/10 s to 1/125 s. As with all images photographed for my research project, it was taken using the Canon EOS 1Dx Mark II.

The photograph was taken perfectly head on, but at a slight angle (vertically) which necessitated a small amount of distortion correction. This is always applied as the final stage of editing, but for the purpose of the animated GIF below, I corrected and cropped one of the original images as well as the image prior to the removal of the support bars.

Dominic Price (2019) The Catherine Window – The Angel ‘Victory’: animate GIF illustrating the editing process.

Project Development

Posted on April 8, 2019 by Dominic Price

Christ Church Cathedral – The Jonah Window

I have not warmed very much to the van Linge windows I have witnessed thus far (New College Chapel and University College Chapel), but this window is fantastic – incredible detail and such vibrant colours for a work of art that is almost 400 years old. The fact that it does exist is something of a miracle: Christ Church Cathedral once housed a magnificent collection of windows by Van Linge, but almost all of them were destroyed not long after installation in the fury of Puritan iconoclasm during the English Civil War. Damage to this window is evident – the only calmes should be vertical and horizontal, but the web of other leadwork represents repairs to the panes of glass.

This edit is only partially complete as there is much cleaning still to do: once again this window seems to be home to many spiders and their webs feature heavily in the topmost light. It is a window that I would much like to complete editing, but then the same is true of most of those within the cathedral. Perhaps I can interest them in a the production of a publication as there is currently no guide to the windows (indeed, possibly no guide to the cathedral) once I have completed my Research Project.

Christ Church - Jonah and the City of Nineveh (low res)

Dominic Price (2019) Jonah and the City of Nineveh [Abraham van Linge, 1630 – Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford]

Project Development

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Dominic Price

Man vs. Machine – the merits of HDR software

In light of the nature of this research project, it may seem strange that today was the first time that I have ever tested HDR Exposure Merging within an image editing program. The test piece is a stained glass window I had recently photographed at Christ Church Cathedral and the images here show a small segment of that panel. The completed image of this panel (detailed HERE) required just over four hours of editing so I am interested to see what software can achieve in just a matter a moments:

Dominic Price (2019) Panel from Vyner Memorial Window depicting Timothy & Eunice [Edward Burne-Jones, 1871 – Christ Church Cathedral]

Edited by hand

Software-based HDR editing

It is interesting to note that I have opted for slightly greater saturation of colours and higher contrast (no surprise there) – however, this is an image that I have yet to moderate against the original. The one area in which the software falls down (arguably) is in its handling of the clames, with the lead being represented more three-dimensionally, whereas I have endeavoured to represent the image two dimensionally with the lead being rendered black.

The results are mightily impressive and for occasions when I require a quick, yet imposing solution for social media (or indeed for inclusion as a small part of a printed publication), this could provide a pleasingly simple solution. Of course, the digital removal of support bars can only be done by hand and that will add one or more hours per bar to the process!

Project Development

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Dominic Price

Hidden and Vanishing History

One of my earliest chapel visits for this research was back in May 2018. At the time I did not go to the trouble of editing the series of 60+ images, since I was displeased with the composition, with the background being so easily visible even at f/2.0. When given permission to take the photographs, I was advised that I would be the first person to photograph the windows. In a perfect world I would have returned for photo shoot at a later date, armed with a large sheet to mask the exterior. However, just two weeks after my visit the chapel was demolished… I was the first, last and only person to photograph the windows.

I have now edited the images, but although there is a striking elegance and simplicity to the six lights, I have no plans to print these because of the detraction of the cars. This is not beyond the possibilities of image editing, but it would be many tens of hours of work – time that I simple do not have at the moment.

Dominic Price (2018) The Crucifixion, St Hilda’s College Chapel, Oxford

Dominic Price (2018) The Temptation of Man, St Hilda’s College Chapel, Oxford

When the extensive building works are complete, there will be a new chapel at St. Hilda’s College, located within the new Boundary Building. I will make a point of enquiring about stained glass within the new building – these may be being rehoused, or perhaps something new is being commissioned?

Dominic Price (2018) Learning & Truth [Reginald Bell, 1935 – Somerville College Chapel, Oxford]

This notion of vanishing history is one that has been a backbone to my work. The demolition of chapels is not (currently) commonplace in Oxford, yet for buildings whose intention is always to welcome people, there is a pervading sense of vanishing history albeit to a lesser degree, with some chapels being more hidden than was once the case, thanks to declining congregations.

Focussing specifically on my research, the stained glass within places of worship can cause problems: On my planning visit to Somerville College Chapel (also in May 2018) I was confronted by an unexpected juxtaposition of huge window depicting Christ, within a nondenominational chapel. Further information about the window can be found in my original post HERE. At the time I was advised that some groups using the location had objected to the depiction of Christ and as a result the possibility of concealing it behind curtains was being considered.

I was minded of this just last week when carrying out a tentative visit to a very local chapel that has been undergoing restoration and improvement works for the past six months. The home of the Summertown United Reformed Church is an attractive chapel that features a stained glass east window clearly visible from my house. For a Presbyterian church, the inclusion of stained glass is unusual, so it was of little surprise on entering the building to discover that the east window is covered by an enormous curtain. The Minister commented that the windows had caused objections and upset in the past.

I am yet to see the window as my unplanned visit coincided with a snagging meeting between the Minister, architect and the foreman. However, I am intrigued as to what would have caused offence and also wonder why this chapel, purpose-built in 1893 would have featured a stained glass window in the first place. Sadly, such history may have been lost to time.

Project Development

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Dominic Price

Exeter College Chapel

University vacation can simplify access to the college chapels. With the weather conditions looking perfect this morning (bright but with uniform cloud cover) and groundwork already in place for a visit at a ‘mutually convenient time’, it took no more than a brief email to the Head Porter for me to be granted access to Exeter College Chapel. Pleasingly I had the chapel to myself for the two hours before its 11am opening to the tourists and was given the keys to the organ loft which my preliminary had visit suggested.

Access to the organ loft was via narrow stone spiral staircase and the organ loft could have been more appropriately termed an organ shelf: there was room for little more than an organist to sit at the organ. Notwithstanding, thanks to some clever tripod usage I was able to take several series of photographs both of the stained glass and the chapel itself.

Exeter College Chapel - Vaulted Ceiling and west rose

Exeter College Chapel - Vaulted Ceiling and Apse

Exeter College - The Crucifixion (low res)

Dominic Price (2019) The Crucifixion [Clayton & Bell, 1859 – Exeter College Chapel]

The enormous height of the lancet windows was such that I opted to photograph the facing window within the apse in two parts, requiring 28 photographs to be taken. With the lighting conditions just right, it seemed sensible to grab some additional lights at higher resolution, so I turned my focus to the tracery lights just below the vaulted ceiling.

With Easter soon upon us I also decided to capture a batch of one panel of the east window depicting The Crucifixion for me to use as an Easter card. This necessitated a batch of 15 photographs, taken at 400 mm using the Canon EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens, at an aperture of f/8.0 and exposure times ranging from 1.6 s to 1/10 s: significantly longer exposures than those required when photographing the Cathedral’s windows in the brilliant sunshine.

I will return to edit the full height lights at a later date. These I am likely to leave with saddle bars intact as the window comprises two lancet lights of thirteen saddle bars each.

Dominic Price (2019) Tracery lights of the East Window [Clayton & Bell, 1859 – Exeter College Chapel]

My original intention with the tracery lights was to concern myself only with the small rose (not least because this lends itself so well to posting on Instagram). However, invisible to the casual observer and only evident during editing is the smallest stained glass light I have ever seen, located just below the base of the rose. As a result, this led me to crop the image to include this tiny blue flower – something I may well review as it leaves the composition looking very unbalanced.

Dominic Price

PHOTOGRAPHY

Category Archives: Project Development

Project Development

Wycliffe Hall Chapel – Post-Production Visit