NYC: CHURCHES

New York City has it share of churches, and we saw a few on our recent visit.  In fact, one, the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, was right across from our hotel, and I took a few shots of it from our hotel window, including the following.

I particularly liked this shot for the blue reflected off the church's wet tile roof, which came from a brilliantly illuminated skyscraper behind the church.

Here is another shot of the same scene.

To the left of the steeple there is just a hint of a building that is otherwise hidden by the evening's fog and rain.

Here is another shot of the church's tile roof taken at another time with a much different (and even moodier) effect--and many more pigeons.

Below is a shot of the front facade of the church, also taken from our hotel window.

All of these shots were taken after dark and at a very high ISO (3200) to shorten the exposure time, so they contain a good deal of "noise," but otherwise I thought they were quite effective.

On Friday morning, before touring the 9/11 Memorial, we visited Trinity Church, located on Wall Street a few blocks from the Memorial.  We first visited the graveyard on the north and west sides of the church.

Following is some detail on one of the elaborate headstones in the cemetery that I turned into a B&W.

My guess is that that's Noah on the right, holding a replica of his ark.

Here is one of the entryways to the church.

I liked the rich colors of the doors and the copper stains (or is that mould?) on the stone walls.  I also liked that I was able to include the top of the spiked wrought iron fencing around the church building.

Here are three shots that I took in the church sanctuary, one of the front of the sanctuary, one of the vaulted ceiling, and one that features the curves of the side arches.  The general shot and ceiling shot are pretty mundane, but the arch shot is more unusual and I like it for that reason.

I tried this last shot as a B&W, but it lost the warmth that the walls' colors provide.  As with most churches, this one was dimly lit, and I wound up taking these last three shots at an ISO of 2000.

Finally, on our bus tour to the north side of Manhattan, we passed the Riverside Church, near the Hudson River northwest of Central Park.  The church includes a nearly 400 foot high carillon tower.  Unfortunately, my only shot was through the badly scratched "clear" plastic roof of the double deck bus.

The good news was that the skies had cleared, and the tower stood out brightly against a dark blue background.  I turned the shot into a B&W and was able to darken the sky even further.  Although the shot is marred by the scratches in the plastic, the definition and detail on the tower are quite good.