Allaire Church 850

scan of a contact sheet from 4x5 negative. Unretouched in photoshop except for the resizing and jpg. Not sure why this is in the gallery - i thought i put it in an album. It was only meant to augment a comment to St. Paul's Chapel. I need to figure the apug media thing out. It was difficult to take this photograph, and i knew i would have serious vignetting. Right at the edge of the path was a fir tree with very low branches. I had to position the camera with a wide angle lens nearly at ground level to avoid the branches of the fir tree. Only way to get the church entirely into the frame from this side of the building. The clock tower was the important element of this photograph.

Beautiful image of a gorgeous church ! Why is the top of the image so dark ? Is it vignetteing or did you burn it in ?

It is vignetting. I was pretty confident it would be a problem. I was practicing with the view camera (a monorail in this case) and the wide angle lens. I has so much tilt and rise that the vignetting was unavoidable, but i really wanted this image on film so i took it. Also, i did nothing to fix all the dust and stuff on the contact sheet image. I hadn't actually meant this to show up in the standard gallery. The photo was taken around 2005, i believe. And with a contact print, the highlights are too high reflection for the scan.

'Very handsome. Apart from the perspective control, it looks like exposure was no walk through the park either.

"but i really wanted this image on film so i took it." I love this. 'Love it when I feel the same, love it when anyone else does. It would be enough reason to shoot any image. Its what made me shoot a row of dogwood in full bloom, several of the creek, a seasonal stream and a grotto today - just on the way home from getting groceries.

HiHo, all very true, exposure was no walk in the park. I used a spotmeter, picked up the high off the building obviously and the best i could in the dark space behind that tree in fore and went for the middle of the range. Hoped for the best and i think providentially it was good i had TMAX. While the film came out great, print not so much because of the SBR, scan is crappy in highlights. On the other, again reinforced, your motto should be "I live to photograph" there is this same richness in the silly old cliche' "stop and smell the roses" in these sentiments and appreciation values.

I always found the best photo accessory to be a chainsaw.

Eric, this won't be the only photo i have had a problem where the chainsaw temptation wasn't strong. The only good composition i like of the flatiron building across from Madison Square Park has a very annoying top of a young tree that pops right into the shot. Bringing a stepladder to the park is rather difficult, hard to get a permit for; and even touching to push out of the way temporarily the flora of NYC is even more an offense than doing smack there.