Tag Archives: St. Peter’s College

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St. Peter’s College Chapel

A series of unfortunate events resulted in my arrival at St. Peter’s College Chapel following no planning visit.  Consequently I was travelling with a much larger than normal selection of lenses and knew that I had been granted just ninety minutes access to the location.  Dating back to 1874, the Chapel (originally the parish church of St. Peter-le-Bailey) was pleasingly spacious and in uncluttered Gothic style, affording an open and clear line of sight to the imposing east window.

While I have permission from the College to photograph within the chapel today, I have not received permission to use the images as this has to come from the Bishop of Oxford: for every location a different and new obstacle!

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Dominic Price (2019) St. Peter’s College Chapel

However, just inside the chapel door within the south chancel, was an impressive Bossányi window.  Significantly, this was mounted only a meter or so above the floor allowing straightforward photography that would require no perspective control in post-production – this made a sensible starting point both for the photography and post-production.  Below shows one of the unedited photographs on the left and the completed image on the right, which necessitated just over ten hours of editing.  I am a little concerned about the intensity of the blues in my finished edit and wonder whether I have overdone this – perhaps I should have selected a longer exposure for those areas when piecing together the image?  Time will tell and I hope to have the chance to carry out a follow-up visit in a week or two.

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Unedited image (2019) The Head of Christ with birds – design [Ervin Bossányi, 1950 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]

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Dominic Price (2019) The Head of Christ with birds – design [Ervin Bossányi, 1950 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With no restriction on my distance from the window, I was able to put to use my preferred lens, the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, set to f/8.0.  The weather was not perfect, with light rain and rather heavier cloud cover than is ideal.  As a result, the 19 images necessitated slightly slower exposures than normal, ranging from 1/40 s to 2.0 s.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I do now wish that I had split the window in half when photographing it.  The narrow nature of this single light is such that the edited image is little more than 4.5MP in resolution, however, had I captured the bottom half and top half separately, the resulting image could have been closer to 25MP in size.  Should time allow in the later part of my research, it would seem appropriate to revisit with this in mind.

The editing of the east window images is still to come, but the chapel featured a number of related items that were of interest, being home to a number of Bossányi’s designs.  Uniquely, his design process did not involve the production of a vidimus: rather than sketches, he produced miniature transparent designs made to scale.  These exquisite designs were freely drawn on Perspex, the density of colour being achieved by gluing coloured glass fragments to the reverse.  The chapel has presented these designs within light boxes, with the collection including four designs for Canterbury Cathedral; seven separate lights for Washington Cathedral, USA, and the central panel of the Rose Window for Michaelhouse School Chapel in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.  This is a location I have passed thirty or forty times in my life, aware of the magnificent window, but never having the time to stop and visit.  The detail shows the Head of Christ and in his hand one black and one white bird: the artist’s unhesitating and unambiguous statement on racial equality.  Bossányi made a second version of this central light, because he was afraid that it might be destroyed in Apartheid South Africa.  That second light is stored in the vaults of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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Dominic Price (2019) The Head of Christ with birds – design [Ervin Bossányi, 1950 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]

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St. Peter’s College Chapel – East Window

A weekend of leave afforded me the time to tackle the large East Window.  Unusually, this is the work of two artists: the original window dates back to 1874 and was designed by Henry Holiday, but in 1964 the five main lights were replaced by a John Hayward design, leaving the original tracery lights.  My original intention was to edit just the five lights, but the tracery is so exquisite I opted to start there and complete the entire window.

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Dominic Price (2019) East Window tracery: before & after five hours of editing, low resolution GIF  [Henry Holiday, 1874 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]

While I was able to stand a substantial distance back, occupying the doorway to the chapel, the large size of the window did not challenge my telephoto zoom anything like as much as I was expecting.  A total of 20 images were shot at 176 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 1/40 s to 2.0 s.  The significance of the distance between camera and window was that there was only a minor amount of converging verticals image distortion to correct – I was tempted to ignore the need for this work, but it would have frustrated me every time I looked at the finished image!

I am not especially keen on the juxtaposition of contemporary art with pre-Raphaelite stained glass, but do rather like Hayward’s work – the fine detail tells an incredible and detailed story.  The intricacy of the design is such that the removal of support bars is an impossibility – a blessed relief since the image represented over twenty hours of editing and the removal of 40 support bars would have comfortably doubled that time (to little visual effect).

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Dominic Price (2019) Life of St. Peter: Chavasse Memorial [John Hayward, 1964 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]

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St. Peter’s College Chapel – Post-Production Visit

The final visit to each location allows me the time to compare the edited images with the actual windows.  Because the daylight colour temperature can vary so hugely, in reality these visits provide the chance to compare the relative tones and saturation of each image.  However, for the first time since starting this research, today afforded near identical weather and lighting conditions to the day I took the photographs (although my visit was almost three hours earlier).  As a result, I was able to carry out accurate and direct comparisons.

I was really pleased to discover that my edit of the Bossányi window was a perfect match to the installation in the south chancel.  Concerns I had had over the saturation of some of the blue hues was unfounded.

The edited five lights of the East Window were also very close to the appearance of the actual window.  However, the edited tracery lights were a stop or two darker than reality.  This may be in part due to the hour – although fairly overcast today, there is some evidence of direct light, and being three hours earlier than the time at which the photographs were taken, today the East Window will be subject to reather more light.  This will brighten and bleach the notable paler hues of the 140+ year old glass, when compared with the more intensely coloured new glass of the five main lights.  To that end, I am not going to re-edit any of the work from St. Peter’s College Chapel and will sign it off as ‘complete’.