One of the things I can do with this blog is track who is visiting it and how they get here, and an interesting thing to see is what search terms people use on Google that result in them clicking through to the blog. One of the most popular search terms that gets me hits is “1968 VW Beetle” and it brings many Googlers to the post I wrote about Paddy’s restored VW Beetle, which I had first seen on a visit to Donegal. Today’s photo was taken on that same weekend.
During that weekend a group of us stayed in Dungloe, and on the Saturday we took a drive out to Mount Errigal, stopping to take in the views of the valley below, but not going as far as climbing the mountain itself as it was cold and windy, and basically we couldn’t be bothered. We started to look for food, but stopped en route to a lunch spot at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Dunlewy, which has Mount Errigal as its backdrop.
The church and its graveyard were photogenic – in as much as a graveyard can be – but my eye was drawn to the stone round tower that crowned the church, and from particular angles, how the light brought out the texture in the stone.
Very often when lighting photographs you want to get the camera position tied down first, and adjust the position of the light sources and the subject afterwards, but this image is an example of where that’s not possible. The church wasn’t for moving, and the light source (the sun) was doing it’s own thing, so all that I could do was adjust my position, and compose the shot accordingly.
I chose to zoom in on the top of the tower, and capture a shot of it against the vivid blue sky, which had just enough clouds to make it interesting. I walked around until I got a nice angle relative to the light – to bring out texture in a subject you want lots of sidelight which just skims the surface of the textured subject, and helps to create highlight and shadows that add a 3 dimensional feel. It’s a subtle effect, but one that works.
In this case we were at the church around lunchtime so I guess the sun would have been in the south. I faced west – in fact probably north-west so the sun was slightly behind me, to ensure that the curved wall of the tower was lit to some extent. At that angle, the light on the left-most set of shutters is nicely reflected back into the camera and gives a pleasing highlight.
To keep the shot a little more interesting I tilted the camera – this allowed me frame more of the tower, and avoid having the sky surround the entire tower on all three sides. I thought about cloning out the lightning conductor running down the side of the tower, but it helps as a line to lead your eye to the cross on the top.
This wouldn’t be my favourite photograph in the world, but it was an exercise in lighting where I had no control over the position of the light or the subject, and all I could alter was the position of the camera.
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