ST. ROBERT CATHOLIC CHURCH

St. Robert Church is a Roman Catholic parish, located in Shorewood, Wisconsin, that includes both church and elementary school.  I had (sad) occasion to visit the church to attend services celebrating the life of a personal friend who passed away late in 2018.  The church, an example of Lombardy Romanesque architecture, has a somewhat indifferent exterior but a lovely interior.  It was built in 1937.

The church is generally not open to visitors outside of scheduled services, so I called the parish office and asked permission to take some photographs of the interior, which they graciously granted.  On February 21st I spent perhaps an hour taking pictures.  Here is what I kept of the photos I took.

First, a very traditional shot of the sanctuary from the rear of the nave.

Here is another traditional shot of the sanctuary area.

And a third of the upper portion of the apse that includes a fine mosaic of a typical Christian depiction of the resurrection (I think).

Unfortunately, the parish personnel did not give me permission to enter the sanctuary area (some facilities do, some don't).  So I could not get a particularly close shot of a lovely cross situated on the altar at the front of the sanctuary.

The two sides of the nave include a series of lovely stained glass windows.  Here is one example of those.

The narrow window pairs are topped by a small circular window.  Unfortunately, the interior lights obscure those circular windows, as in the above shot.

The pillars that support the nave area include lovely detail and decorations.

I also took a traditional shot of the back of the church from just in front of the sanctuary, that shows the balcony at the rear of the nave.  This was taken from a low angle, perhaps two feet off the floor.

And here is a shot of that lovely balcony that features a pipe organ and traditional rose window.

I liked how this shot emphasized the contrast between the bright organ pipes, coffered ceiling, and rose window and the dark balcony background, so I emphasized that contrast a bit in post processing. This was my favorite shot of the group.

I also was able to isolate the rose window and blacken the background surrounding the stained glass.

I wound up using all three of my general purpose lenses for this shoot--a Tamron 15-30 mm wide-angle, my Nikon workhorse, go-to 24-120 mm, and a Nikon 70-300 telephoto.  I took a total of 55 shots and kept 9, about par for me.  I do wish I had had more time to try to get more creative and to capture more detail images.  Perhaps they will let me back in for a second shoot later this year.

John