One of the challenges of the Kilmainham photo project is trying to get a shot that no one else in the group is likely to get. For me, I look to my fisheye lens as giving me an opportunity to do this. It is the one lens in my kit that is most likely to offer a unique perspective. Where in my previous post I used this lens to include an element in the composition that just wouldn’t fit with a standard wide angle lens, for the photo above, the fisheye gives me a viewpoint on the gaol that is totally unique.
The mechanics of getting the shot were simple – I put the camera on the ground of the East Wing, facing up, having metered manually to keep detail in the roof as much as possible (the washed out sky was unavoidable that day unless I went the HDR route). I set the self timer to 10s, prefocused manually (with a fisheye it’s hard to get the focus wrong anyway), clicked the shutter release, and walked off out of frame into one of the cells. On my third attempt I had the composition I wanted, with the steps at the bottom of frame, and the chain across them nicely completing the sweep of the walkway around the wing.
For processing, I imported the Raw file into Aperture, boosted the contrast, tweaking the mid contrast and recovered as much as I could of the highlights in the skylight. A conversion to monochrome was a little trial and error with the monochrome mixer, and to warm it up ever so slightly I added a very slight sepia tone. The end result is the image above, which hopefully will make it into the exhibition.
Update: This image is one of 67 photographs on display at “Kilmainham Gaol in Focus 2009″ at the gaol from now until August 2nd, 2009.
Recent Comments