WANDERING DOWNTOWN MILWAUKEE

Sometimes, without having any particular photographic goals in mind, I find myself simply wandering around downtown Milwaukee, hoping that something will happen.  Generally, this occurs on the weekend, when crowds are fewer and parking is easier.  And that's what happened last Sunday morning.  I will admit I took a lot of shots--over 100--and didn't get a lot of keepers.  But I thought I would post what I got, starting with a trash container meant for recyclables.

And here is a detail shot of masonry work on what is now the Milwaukee Historical Society Building, a triangular building that was originally a bank.

I liked that the detail is off-center and there is a masonry seam near the top of the image.

Milwaukee boasts a variety of architectural styles, but probably tilts toward older, more ornate examples, such as the Pabst Theater building. Here is a detail from the building's upper section.

And this of from a lower portion of the building that was in the shadow of some fire escape stairs.

Compare that to the ultra-clean lines of the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.

And here is a shot that includes both old and new, the "new" being the Moderne apartment building.

Sometimes you need to look down as well as up.  I liked the richness and complexity of the rust on the following manhole cover.

Neenah is a smallish town in northeast Wisconsin.  But the products of its iron foundry can be found throughout the U.S., in the form of sewer grates and sidewalk grids, as well as manhole covers.

I spent a fair amount of my time around the Riverwalk.  It's a far cry from, say, San Antonio's, but it's been a nice improvement to Milwaukee's downtown over the past 10-20 years.  This time around I discovered a couple of new sculptures.  The first was of a trio of figures.

This sculpture posed technical problems, as the background was a bit distracting.  Some could call this a prototypical travel shot, as it incorporates not just the photo's primary subject but the context as well.  However, there was too much going on for my taste, and even though I opened up the lens's aperture as far as I could (f/4) to soften the background, it is obvious that it is still recognizable.  Things got better when I did closeups of individual figures, as in the following shots.

The lesson here is that the same aperture creates a shallower depth of field the closer the camera is to the point of focus.  I thought the emotion shown on the faces of these figures was exceptional.

Compare that to the expression on the face of the following sculpture.

A true warrior woman . . . I guess.  This shot, again taken at f/4, had great resolution, at least of the figure's face.  The open aperture served to soften nicely the building in the background.

Finally, here is a black & white of a bench along the Riverwalk.  I liked the play between the metal strips of the bench and the shadows they were  creating on the sidewalk.  The shadows created by the iron railing along the river helped too, I thought.

John

A NEW SLANT ON ST. JOSEPHAT'S BASILICA

My recent visit to the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota, has whetted my appetite for shooting more interior architecture.  In addition, I recently read an article providing tips for photographing cathedrals and other religious venues.  As a result, earlier this week I found myself returning to the Basilica of St. Josephat on Milwaukee's south side for another session.

I have, of course, shot St. Josephat's a number of times, and most of my posts on those sessions have looked similar to one another.  To some extent, the complexity and extreme ornateness of the building's interior seems to compel me to keep trying to perfect the shots that I have taken in the past, most of which draw on that ornateness as well as the building's overall symmetry.

While the text of the article I read included some tips for photographing religious venues, it also provided copious photos to illustrate those ideas.  And I think I learned more from the photos than from the narrative, as many of the points the author made in text were ones that I was already familiar with through my own experience, such as dealing with challenging lighting conditions and being respectful of the nature of the venue.  If I had to list some of the points that I gleaned from the article, they would include the following:  Don't be afraid of asymmetrical compositions.  Look for details as well as wide-angle views.  Incorporate foreground elements to provide more context.  Shoot at an angle to create a better sense of space.  In this shoot I have tried to incorporate some of those ideas, with mixed success.

When I was at St. Paul's, I missed having my tripod and had to ramp up the camera's ISO setting significantly (generally between 1000 and 2000) to keep shutter speeds at a reasonable level for handheld shots.  I brought my tripod to St. Josephat's and was able to keep the ISO setting at a more reasonable level of 200.   The difference in resolution might not be noticeable given the size of resolution used for this blog, but it is quite noticeable, at least to me, when comparing the shots on my computer.

When I first arrived at the basilica, I could get into the vestibule area, but the doors to the main interior area were locked.  And for a few minutes I feared my trip was going to be in vain.  I did get a few detail shots in the vestibule, including of this lovely rose window.  Then someone came to open the rest of the basilica.

Here is one of the early wide-angle shots I took, looking toward the sanctuary.  This shot is a very familiar one for its symmetry, but at least I did incorporate the two angels on either side of the central aisle who are holding basins of holy water for the congregants' use.

Below is another image that I liked, perhaps because I managed to have the shot look directly down the aisle while at the same time being off-center and incorporating one of the angel sculptures.

I also think it helped that I took the shot from a low perspective, perhaps a couple of feet off the floor.

It was a bright morning and I was taken with the reflection of the sanctuary elements on the polished floor of the center aisle.  Here is another shot that emphasizes those reflections, again taken from a very low perspective.

So then I tried a few shots taken on a slant, if you will.

In this first I managed to include the angel on the left as well as a portion of the central dome.  And here are a couple more that were taken landscape and incorporate the angel on the right, whose face was being lit by the sun streaming in the windows (while the face of the angel on the left was in shadow).

I did a lot of experimenting with these angle shots and hopefully learned from my experience.  First, I learned that if the angle is greater than a certain amount, probably around 30-40 degrees, the shot doesn't seem to work.  The distraction is too great.  Second, incorporating either the floor or the ceiling as a significant element may be important.  I think it serves to "ground" the viewer in the scene.  Third, foreground elements also help to ground the viewer.  Of these last two shots, I feel the second is better, even though the sculpture is in the center rather than being off to one side.  I think the difference is that the second shot incorporates the floor.  Or perhaps its simply a matter of personal preference.

Among the most attractive features of the basilica are the central dome, of course, and the high arch supports at the "corners" of the nave.  And I took a number of conventional shots of these features.

(I can't help myself.  I do like the symmetry incorporated in the above shot.)

But I also took some shots on a slant that features both elements.

There's a lot going on in this last shot, perhaps too much.

Here is another unorthodox shot of the "rear" of the basilica featuring the ceiling, rose window, and pipe organ.

And yet another that features a corner of the stained glass ceiling window in the apse.

I did like this composition for the complementary arches that frame the window.

As mentioned, the morning was sunny and the stained glass windows were beckoning to be shot.  Here are a couple of those.

I am continually amazed at the workmanship that has gone into this basilica, in part explaining why it has been awarded the basilica designation. I also noted that the light from the stained glass windows was illuminating the pews and took this detail shot.

The variation in color is subtle, but I liked it.

I also took a number of shots of the spiral staircase leading to the pulpit . . .

. . . including a shot detailing the leaf work in the staircase's railing.

In this first shot I wanted to feature the leafing, with the stained glass window as a contextual background element.  This was shot with the aperture at a wide open f/4.  While that allowed the leaf work to "pop," I felt it left the background window too ambiguous.  So I tried another shot at f/16.

Now the leaf still pops, but the stained glass is more recognizable.

Finally, I spied a ceiling in a side chapel that had escaped my notice in past visits.  Here is a symmetrical shot that I got using my tactic of placing the camera on the floor directly under the ceiling.

This image, taken at f/10 for 6 seconds, has great resolution.  In keeping with my efforts to take more unorthodox shots, I took other shots rotated at an angle to the orthogonal, as in the following.

Because this shot incorporated some of the brightly lit stained glass window in the lower right, the camera shutter exposure was only 4 seconds, rather than 6, at the same aperture of f/10.  As a result the image was darker, and I brightened it some in post processing to match the other image.  I think I like this second image better, even though it cuts off the ceiling's upper and lower corners (because I don't have a true wide-angle lens).  The four corners of the image manage to show off the four very different features that abut the ceiling.  This is my favorite image of the shoot, both for its freshness and for the image's technical quality.

John

CATHEDRAL OF ST. PAUL

Not having grown up Catholic, I remain amazed by many of the Catholic cathedrals, basilicas, and other churches that I have had the opportunity to photograph.  Their grandeur and ornateness speak, if nothing else, to the Catholic religion's great wealth.  The Cathedral of St. Paul, located, fittingly, in St. Paul, Minnesota, is certainly no exception.

Since Geri and I travel to the Twin Cities regularly to visit her dad, I have wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to photograph the cathedral's interior.  Twice in recent months I attempted to photograph the interior but was unable because of ongoing events in the cathedral, one time a wedding another a mass baptism.  But on this last visit I succeeded, spending an hour or so photographing the interior.

The cathedral building was completed just under 100 years ago, in 1915, though work continued on the interior for nearly another 50 years.  Nothing is forever, however, and one thing I noticed on our visit was that the interior is undergoing significant repair work, which shows up in many of the shots that I took.  Otherwise, the cathedral appeared to be in excellent overall repair.  And of course its opulence is stunning.

With a seating capacity of 3000, the building is massive, far larger than any church I am familiar with in the Milwaukee area.  Moreover, unlike with many other large churches, it presents unobstructed views of the altar from everywhere on the main floor.  As with so many religious and governmental buildings, it includes a central dome that rises 175 feet above the floor of the nave.

Now for the usual excuses.  First, a reminder that the interior walls were undergoing repair work that detracts a bit from some of the shots.  Second, the interior was extremely dark.  The architecture included numerous stained glass windows, and they were beautiful and large, but of course the stained glass served to reduce the actual amount of natural illumination of the interior.  And the incandescent lighting is adequate for most practical purposes, such as finding oneself to a seat, but not for photography.  As a result, I found myself ramping up the ISO setting, which led to a good deal of digital noise in many of the shots.  As usual, too, the color of the light in the interior was a difficult combination of daylight (modified, of course, by the stained glass) and incandescent lighting, which was modest in intensity, unless, of course, the camera was pointed right at a light source, a problem in its own right.  I wound up using an Auto setting in post processing to achieve a white balance that was close to my recollection of the interior colors.  Finally, I simply don't have a legitimate wide-angle lens to capture the massive space that the cathedral created.  So I had to content myself with narrower shots in the hope that the viewer can put the pieces together.

Generally, when a building includes a central dome, I make an effort to capture the dome with a straight-up shot.  I didn't think that was going to work at St. Paul's because of the way the lighting was structured, so I took some oblique shots instead.  Here are a few of those.

The interior was much darker than the impression given by these photos.  They only look reasonably light because of their relatively long exposures and high ISOs, as well as because of the work I did in post processing.

Keep in mind that the top of the interior dome is some 175 feet above the floor of the nave.  Note too the white plaster repair work visible in the dome.  I have generally prided myself in not having a particular fear of heights, but I could not imagine working on the ceiling of this dome without a great deal of scaffolding support.

The cathedral boasted three very large rose windows, one at either end of the transept and one at the back of the church, as viewed from the sanctuary.  Below are two shots of one of the transept windows, the first taken in the architectural context and the second taken just of the window.

This last photo worked by underexposing slightly and then darkening the walls further in post processing.

At the back of the church as viewed from the sanctuary (the front as viewed from the exterior) is a third rose window, this one some 28 feet in diameter.  It is situated on the second level behind one of the cathedral's two pipe organs.

The cathedral featured numerous other stained glass windows, including this large semicircular one.

The cathedral included all manner of statuary and other wall and sculptural artwork and I simply didn't have time to shoot more than a few items.  Four massive columns are used to support the ceiling and dome and inset in the columns are 12-foot statues of the four gospel writers.  Here is one of St. Matthew, as it turns out.

And below is a much smaller medallion, one of several depicting Christ's ordeal.  This was perhaps 6-8 inches in diameter and made of brass set into the wall.

As with other Catholic churches, the ceiling of the apse was especially interesting.  First, is a shot of the interface between the circular base of the dome and the top of the apse ceiling.

What appears to be the painting of a bird at the base of the image (the top of the parabolic ceiling of the apse) is an avian depiction of the Holy Spirit.

Following is another shot of a support arch that features a glimpse of the apse ceiling as well.

And finally, here is a direct shot of the Holy Spirit painting in the apse ceiling.  This detail illustrates well, I think, the amazing amount of work that went into the interior facade of this cathedral.

Although the apse ceiling was stunning, so were the ceilings of two small side chapels on either side of and toward the rear of the nave.  Not only were they ornate but they were also very different from one another.  Here are a few shots of the one on the right as one faces the sanctuary, beginning with the entrance to the chapel.

I was able to position the camera on an array of prayer kneelers pointing at the ceiling to get the following shots.

And below are shots of the ceiling of the complementary chapel on the other side of the nave.

Finally, here is a novelty shot showing a bit of the statuary on the cathedral's exterior.  This is a very grainy appearing shot, in part because the stone exterior was very grainy and in part because the scene was nearly shadowless.  I kind of like it, though.

Some people who photograph church interiors are reticent to use a tripod, feeling it might be deemed disrespectful.  I don't feel that way, particularly if I have asked permission in advance and if there are no or few worshippers in the church at the time.  Considering how very dark the Cathedral of St. Paul was, I regretted not having my tripod along.  Perhaps on a future visit.

John