ST. JOSEPHAT'S: STAINED GLASS

I found myself back at Milwaukee's Basilica of St. Josephat recently looking for something new to shoot.  A little disappointing.  But I did take a few shots of the basilica's windows.  The interior of the basilica is so striking that it is easy to overlook the windows, which are interesting in their own right.  Like most modern stained glass windows, these were created, not by arranging smaller pieces of glass that had been stained a uniform color, but by painting larger pieces of glass with multiple colors to create the desired designs.

So here are details from a couple of the basilica's windows.

Here is a shot of another, semicircular window.  Again, the detail is beautiful.

Instead of showing the entire window, I chose to crop this down so that the glass fills the image.  I decided that the value was in the detail of the glass design, rather than in the overall shape of the window.  I did the same with the following shot of a rose window.

As with most rose windows, this was elevated, and I took the shot at an oblique angle from below.  As a result, the full window would appear oval rather than round, and I decided to avoid that by zooming in to the central portion of the window.

Following is a shot of the beautiful skylight window above the apse.  My regret here is that I could not shoot this from directly beneath the window because entering the sanctuary portion of the church is not allowed.

 Finally, there was the rose window behind the choir loft in the balcony at the rear of the nave.

My primary goal in this shot was to capture the trumpet elements of the pipe organ, as well as the colors of the rose window.  This was challenging because of the great difference in intensity of light between the window and the pipes.  This was the best I could do in post processing.  Pretty good, considering.

Here, finally, is a wide angle shot of the same rose window, which I am including to give an inkling of the ornate quality of the basilica's overall interior architecture.

John