For the past couple of years a large section of my local churchyard has been left to grow wild. Untended, the grasses grow, and will gradually die back, more so in this hot dry summer. They provide a habitat for insects, birds and possibly other wildlife as well. In early autumn the area is cleared and nature’s cycle will continue. Cut back, dormant, only to re-emerge and thrive again next spring.
Churchyards are places of peace and sanctuary which evoke many contrary emotions. They are there for those that have gone before us. The old headstones and crosses mark the lives of the many generations who were once alive and part of village life. In some cases the inscriptions are still visible but these are old stones, so more often than not the words of remembrance and the dates of the dearly departed have been worn away, eroded by the elements. I can only imagine the tales that are buried in the ground beneath my feet.
The other day I dusted off my tripod and gathered together my ND filters, and decided to try and capture how I felt about this place. On the one hand there is stillness. The age-ed gravestones no longer upright but weathered and leaning from the passage of time. Resilient to change, protected and to be respected. The gusting wind and sun would play their part. The grasses waving as the wind ebbed and flowed. Sunlight fleetingly disappearing behind thin cloud only to reappear a few moments later. Essential ingredients which helped me realise the images I had in mind. A mix of life, movement, light and death.
From a photographic point of view I enjoyed being alone for a few hours. Over two sessions I immersed myself in the scene as I discovered new compositions. Moving and adjusting the position of the tripod, swapping lenses and ND filters. Manually focusing and varying the camera’s settings to try and achieve the look I was after. Simply being creative.
I understand that for many people churchyards are sombre and melancholic places. I find it hard not to share these feelings. However there are also feelings of resilience, rebirth, remembrance, respect and ultimately love and hope as we contend with the challenges that are placed before us each and every day.
In the past few days I have been reading ‘Steeple Chasing – Around Britain by Church’ by Peter Ross. I am now about half way through the book and I am thoroughly enjoying both the content and the well written word. I can highly recommend it.
In the first chapter titled ‘Darkness’ two short passages spoke to me and in so many ways succinctly described my own feelings when visiting churches.
The first and I quote – “And so, as I grew older, I found myself drawn back – not to pray necessarily, but to sit for a bit, to poke around, to get in out of the rain. I began to appreciate the wisdom of John Betjeman’s words: ‘Church crawling is the richest of pleasures, it leads you to the remotest and quietest country, it introduces you to the history of England in stone and wood and glass which is always truer than what you read in books’”
In the second passage the author refers a visit to the Benedictine Abbey at Pluscarden in Scotland following the recent passing of his father. He writes – “…… it brought me a peace that I hadn’t felt for many weeks. I left far lighter than I had come. Was this a religious experience? I don’t know. Perhaps it was just being forced to spend long hours sitting in quiet. ‘It kind of gets inside you / The silence I mean,’ sings Linda Perhacs in her beautiful song ‘Chimacum Rain’, and old churches are like that. You are entering a building but really it is entering you.”
The six images shown here are a collection I have made over many years from visiting a variety of churches. I love to watch the light as it moves around, highlighting subjects which would otherwise be in virtual darkness. I endeavour to capture the feelings of stillness, of quiet and of solitude, prevalent in churches but not quite so easy to find elsewhere.
Perhaps it goes without saying that in the Bible the metaphorical meaning of light and darkness is often used to compare good and evil.
In John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
I have almost certainly said this before, but a visit to a small church in the countryside is good for the soul whether or not you are religious or have a faith. I can happily spend a couple of hours in a relatively confined space taking some images whilst allowing the quiet solitude and timeless quality of the interior to have an enriching affect on me. More often than not it is helped by the fact that rarely I am interrupted by other visitors. To have the place to myself is rather special and only enhances the peaceful experience.
All Saints’ in Little Somborne is another church in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Historically important, it was mentioned in the Domesday Book and its origins are half Saxon and half Norman. It is still consecrated but no longer used for regular worship. I suppose this adds to a feeling of melancholy…..time and circumstance has long passed it by, and with church attendance falling in this country, more and more parish churches will inevitably close as they cease to be financially viable. They can’t all be saved so those that are should be treasured, not just because of the building’s significance but as a reminder of times past and how the church played such a vital role in village life in days gone by.
For the record Sir Thomas Sopwith, a British aircraft designer whose company was responsible for the Sopwith Camel and other military aircraft which fought if the First World War was buried here in 1989.
It was a dull early winter’s day as I stepped inside. I looked around and slowly my eyes began to adjust to what at first seemed a very gloomy, cold interior. Slowly the church revealed itself to me, as the light of day penetrated 13th century sandstone rubble walls through the deep arched medieval window openings. The remote setting, the ancient churchyard and the surrounding Black Mountains of the Brecon Beacons all contributed to the atmosphere of this small historical place of worship. Almost instantly I am taken back in time and can only wonder whose feet have crossed the threshold in all the centuries past?
This is the church of St Ellyw’s in Llanelieu, Powys in Wales. It is now cared for by the ‘Friends of Friendless Churches’. On their website it states that “St Ellyw was a princess martyr of the 5th century and according to legend, she was murdered close to Llanelieu by a rejected suiter who refused to accept her vow of chastity”.
A good many years ago I began a project which has no end. I started to photograph church interiors which eventually inspired me to submit a successful panel of images for my Associateship of the The Royal Photographic Society. Whilst the appeal of this project has never been lost it has been on the back burner for quite a long time. Whilst on holiday in the Brecon Beacons towards the end of last year, I made a special effort to visit and photograph this church which was of particular interest to me. It revived my love of not just photographing these places but experiencing their atmosphere and quiet solitude.
I have always been drawn to remote churches in the countryside. Small buildings which are being preserved but not necessarily used for regular worship. There are a number of other similar churches in the near vicinity of St Ellyw’s, so a short break to this part of Wales specifically to visit these churches is definitely on the cards. Until then there are others closer to home which I have listed, one of which I visited quite recently and I will be posting some images very soon.
I have been quite serious about my photography for a little over 10 years now. Before then I can’t say I knew much about RAW files or how they should be processed. In the early days it wasn’t long before I was hooked on Lightroom and its sister program Photoshop.
In 2012 I regarded myself as a dedicated black and white photographer and then in 2014 I purchased a second hand Leica M Monochrom, which I still love and use to this very day. As its name suggests it is a black and white only camera. It’s an inspiring tool but not to everyone’s liking particularly given the cost of both the camera and a set of manual only focus lenses. Even today a second hand M Monochrom camera body, which is up to 8 years old, is around £3,000, assuming you can find one.
The M Monochrom was sold with a licence to use Silver Efex Pro, arguably the best plug-in for black and white processing. The fact Leica supported this program was a significant endorsement and the majority of my photographs have benefited from its use.
Time though moves on and earlier this year I purchased a Fuji X100v as a carry anywhere camera. I had read that Capture One had a close working relationship with Fujifilm and their RAW editor was a considered to be better than Lightroom. (Let the arguments begin!) I purchased a perpetual licence but this only allowed me to process Fujifilm files and not the Leica DNG RAW files.
Having watched many of the excellent Capture One webinars hosted by David Grover and very informative Live Editing sessions with Paul Reiffer, not only did I learn a great deal about Capture One in the past few months, I was starting to wonder how well it would perform if I could process my Leica RAW files. After all the Monochrom is the camera I use for what I consider to be my best work.
The original RAW file cropped to a ‘2 x 1’ aspect ratio.
Yesterday I processed an image I had captured last week. A picture of Idsworth Church close to the Hampshire/Wets Sussex border. The dramatic sky was the appeal and I visualised a dark moody result. Taken with the M Monchrom I imported the file into Lightroom and followed my usual workflow. I always expose to preserve the highlights but this did leave me with a very dark foreground. From experience I know that I can readily recover detail in the shadows and balance the overall exposure. I couldn’t achieve the look I wanted in Lightroom alone, so I exported the partially processed image into Photoshop and from there into Silver Efex Pro. It was a lengthy process but in the end I made the image you can see below.
Don’t get me wrong I was pleased with the result but it was a long and drawn out process. It made me wonder how well I could do if I just used Capture One Pro? If only I could import the Leica RAW file I said to myself. I couldn’t resist the temptation, so yesterday I upgraded the software so that I could import the RAW file of any camera make and that of course included Leica. I was excited to find out how much could be achieved in Capture One Pro alone. Cutting to the chase I was not disappointed. In fact the results exceeded expectations. Why you may ask?
First and foremost I was familiar with the Luma Range tool in Capture One to create a mask. Yes, there is a similar tool in Lightroom but in my view it doesn’t do the job particularly well. The Luma Range tool of Capture One is far more refined, easy to use, and the ability to feather the edge around the trees and the church made masking the sky an absolute breeze. No nasty halos to worry about. A Luma range mask applied to the sky.
Having processed the sky to my liking it was a very quick and similar process to mask the dark foreground and make the necessary adjustments. I continued by making some further local adjustments on separate layers. This is something you cannot do in Lightroom, hence the need to export from LR into Photoshop.
Luma Range mask applied to the foreground.
Before and after view.
The before and after view clearly shows how the sky has been darkened and the church and foreground lightened. The overall result is quite dark and moody but that is what I wanted the finished image to look like.
The finished result processed in Capture One Pro.
And lastly I applied a split tone……
Some of you may be asking the question why didn’t I balance the exposure in camera by using a ND graduated filter. A fair point but a rangefinder camera with attached filters and no ‘live view’ is not a workable combination. The filter holder obscures the view through the rangefinder window and there is no way to accurately position the graduated filter to match the scene in front of you. More recent versions of the Monochrom, the M246 and the newly announced M10 Monochrom overcome this problem, as they both have ‘live view’ and can show clipping warnings before taking the shot. The use of a filter might of course further reduce the amount of post processing, but this on the proviso that the composition includes a relatively straight horizon.
Conclusions.
May I start by saying that I have the advantage of comparing the results of the two processing methods on a large screen at full resolution and not much smaller resized versions in a blog entry. Whilst I enjoy both versions the finished image processed in Capture One has the edge. It looks less processed, the rendering is smoother, it’s a cleaner result which should print very well. There is also visibly more noise or grain to the image from the combination of LR/PS and Silver Efex. Perhaps I used too much clarity in Lightroom or the processing engine in Silver Efex has had an effect, I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that Capture One Pro is a superb RAW converter.
Not only is the overall result more pleasing but the time taken was considerably reduced and far easier to achieve. In Capture One I also have the advantage of retaining all the layers and adjustments in one program, which means I can revisit and fine tune the image at a later date should I wish to do so. A win win, in my opinion.
So are the other programs consigned to history, well yes and no. This is the first time I have processed an image from the Leica M Monochrom in Capture One. I need to work on other images and see what results are possible. I also have a back catalogue of many thousands of images stored in Lightroom and I don’t intend moving them into Capture One. It would take a very long time and life is too short.
I am sure there will be occasions when a pixel editor like Photoshop will work wonders when Capture One simply doesn’t offer the functionality required. The ‘Content Aware’ healing brush is one such example and there will be others. Horses for courses.
I can of course edit an image in either Photoshop or Silver Efex Pro direct from Capture One in the same way as I can at the moment with Lightroom. However if I can do most, if not all my processing in Capture One this has to be a distinct advantage. More consistent results are likely to be achieved and this is particularly valuable if trying to create a harmonious body of work.
And finally…..
This is the first time in quite a while that I have been out with the Leica M Monochrom specifically to make some images. It reminded me how much I love this camera, its handling, the superb lenses and the RAW files it generates. Having now discovered a new workflow using Capture One Pro 20, the process from beginning to end is that much more pleasurable and that has to be a good thing.
‘A photograph is not finished until it is printed’
Printed using an Epson 3880 on Canson Platine Fibre Rag 310gsm.
alan frost photography 