Category: architectural photography

Here is the third of three posts featuring photos of bronze, steel, and stained glass, part of my Exploring Architectural Photography series from Oakland Cemetery.

These first three images are the last ones (for now, anyway) that I took from outside mausoleums:

On many of the older mausoleums, the stained glass windows are covered on their exteriors with sheets of plexiglass … a good thing for protecting the glass, of course, but not so good for the photographer since plexiglass fades and discolors over time, captures a lot of dust and dirt, and blurs the window colors. I had to find different strategies for the images in this gallery, so either used the doors as foreground frames for the stained glass windows (the first six photos), or stuck my lens through openings in the doors and captured only part of the window (the last two photos). Typically the lens wouldn’t fit through the door elements, though, or was impossible to turn right or left if I got it through — which is why there are six photos using the first approach and only two using the second one. With some bright mid-morning sunlight, however, the windows glowed nicely from the outside-looking-in and highlighted a lot of their color and detail.

I haven’t done a Before-and-After article in a while, so I’ve picked some of the images from this post to write about how they were taken, and mostly, how I processed them in Lightroom. Here’s a hint: the before versions of four of the images above, that I transformed substantially to create something I was satisfied with. I’m working on that post now and will likely publish it by the end of the week.

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Thanks for taking a look!

The previous posts in this series are:

Exploring Architectural Photography: Dated Doors and Their Hardware

Exploring Architectural Photography: Steel and Stained Glass (1 of 3)

Exploring Architectural Photography: Steel and Stained Glass (2 of 3)

Hello again! Here is the second of three posts featuring photos of bronze, steel, and stained glass, part of my Exploring Architectural Photography series from Oakland Cemetery.

The first photo in this gallery probably seems like an odd one…

… but you know sometimes you see a small, rectangular, bronze-blueish-greenish thing out in the wild and you can’t resist taking its picture.

I puzzled for a while about what this really was — it’s embedded at the bottom of the stone wall of a mausoleum — thinking it might be some sort of vent, or perhaps a Victorian stereo speaker. Then I realized what it was really for: it’s how the ghosts get out!

Thanks for taking a look!

The previous posts in this series are:

Exploring Architectural Photography: Dated Doors and Their Hardware

Exploring Architectural Photography: Steel and Stained Glass (1 of 3)

Hello! I’m continuing my architecture photography posts with a small gallery below, one of three — I’ll post the other two over the weekend — containing mashups of stained-glass windows and steel or bronze architectural elements that I discovered while exploring Oakland Cemetery for this series. The series doesn’t have a planned end at this point; while I’ve processed most of the photos I’ve taken so far, every time I look at them I think of other approaches I might want to try … and probably will!

The variety of colors and materials for a photographer to study on the property seems nearly endless. In the gallery below, you’ll see, first, a pair of stained glass windows adorned with a sculpted bronze wreath. Bronze, steel, or concrete wreaths — representing eternity, or eternal life or love — are common on the property, but this pair of photos shows one of the most intricate wreaths I found. These are followed by windows more austere in design and color, from the top of a large mausoleum patterned after a church.

The window in the third pair photographed perfectly on the day I took these; taking pictures of stained-glass windows can present challenges (with harsh shadows or glare), but these worked out well because it was a cloudy, bright day — allowing for minimal shadowing yet still preserving the bright colors. The last three images in the gallery are photos of the same door at different zoom levels, showing an elaborate urn pattern created out of bronze and steel, framed by wood and stone.

The previous post in this series is: Exploring Architectural Photography: Dated Doors and Their Hardware.

Thanks for taking a look!