It was photography day today, so I thought I’d crack on and photograph a church looked after by the Churches Conservation Trust. I chose St Mary’s at Chickney in Essex. It’s not far from Stansted Airport and about 40 mins drive from me.
The church is down a single-lane track that leads to a country mansion, and it is enclosed my trees. I parked by the gates to the mansion and had the church to myself all afternoon. The only visitor was the red-faced local toff, who I took to be the owner of the mansion. The first I knew was when two Labradors came bounding into the church. That was a shock. I’ve never seen dogs in a church before. They came sniffing around me in a friendly and excited way, and the toff came in after them with a cheery “Hello!” He strode down the the altar and back, looking up an down as if he’d lost something, when I think he was just checking nothing was damaged or missing.
“I’m just taking some photos,” I said. “If they work out, I thought about sending them to the Conservation Trust.”
“Oh, very good,” he said. He finished his quick scour around the church and departed with, “Well, I’ll leave you in peace, then.”
So the afternoon I could haul my tripod about and take pictures from different angles. The light was a challenge, since the sun was intense. The trees outside the church cast a camouflage pattern of shadows on the walls and tower, and inside intense streak of light crossed the floor and glimmered on the woodwork. It was horrible to deal with. I got one picture of the outside of the church when briefly the sun went in, and inside I put the camera on a 10 second timer, pressed the shutter and then rushed to the brightest window with a circular diffusing screen to soften the most intense light.
At the end of the afternoon, I walked round the north side of the church to see if there was something to photograph there. I heard this intermittent beeping, and wondered if I’d set off a burglar alarm. Then I realised it was a couple of metal detectorists in the field next to the church. The church dates from Anglo-Saxon times, so presumably they hoped to find something antique. I don’t think the church was ever in a village, though, so the likelihood was perhaps small.
Back home I went through the photos and edited them. Here are some things I learned:
- Bright sunlight is horrible to deal with, so avoid intensely sunny days.
- Make sure you keep a collapsible diffuser. They soften the intensity of the sunlight and act as reflectors for filling dark shadows.
- Avoid using the EOS 550D. Yes, it’s a shame but the photos from my EOS 550D weren’t good in the dim light. There wasn’t much colour details and there were greenish and cyan colour casts, which were horrible to remove in post processing. I didn’t get them at all in my 6D, so the colours were artefacts, not things that were there. This is a cruel decision, not using my 550D, because I have good lenses for it, including a 10-18mm zoom that I can’t use on my 6D, and which gives me an extra wide-angle view.
- Don’t leave the IS on in my 28-135 lens. The Image Stabilisation (IS) is good when you’re shooting hand-held at slow shutter speeds, but it makes pictures blurry if you have the camera on the tripod. I had to re-take pictures because I’d left the IS on.
- Learn to use a flash for subtle light filling. It’s the “subtle” bit that’s difficult. There were some dark areas, like the carvings on a medieval font, which I could take with just a tripod but the exposures were long and the light was flat. I just could have done with a soft flash on them to have given me more form and detail. I had my flashes with me but just didn’t use them.
- To get the best quality, use my 40mm fixed lens. This will get a fairly wide angle and will get close up. and is sharper across the frame than my other lenses. I keep forgetting to use it. I could start off with that and keep returning to it as my default lens.
