Thursday, April 9, 2009

A Saturday at the Cloisters

It's been pretty busy around here. So I'm just getting to a couple Saturdays ago.

We spent the day at The Cloisters.

A Cloister is basically a courtyard with a covered walkway. Some are indoor, some are outdoor. This museum is a collection of cloisters, a couple chapels, and lots of other amazing artifacts. Everything is amazingly old. Stuff this old is just incredible.

Ceiling

Chapel

Stone carvings

Afterward we walked around Fort Tryon Park.

Tree trunk

I must be very honest and came up pretty empty handed with photos. Museums are really hard to photograph. The light is really low, you can't touch anything to stabilize your camera, a tripod is clumsy and obtrusive to the other guests and I didn't bring one.

I did take a few photos from the ground, a nice stable place to photograph, but the shots weren't that great. The first shot above had outdoor light so that helped. I really like the simplicity.

I think old churches and chapels are really neat, they make me want to be still and contemplate. I hope my photo of the chapel gets that across. It really was amazing in there.

The stone work was very old. I used my macro setting for that, I love the macro setting.

The results here were pretty ordinary photos, with quite a bit of touch-up in Lightroom. Sometimes the magic happens in the camera, sometimes it happens in the (digital) darkroom.

2 comments:

Candice said...

Interesting the difference that light would make, but I never thought of the tripod.

Also, thank you for the advice concerning'rewarding' myself once I have earned the better camera. It is a worthy goal, and the preparation would qualify me for having the better camera. Like I will not be ready for the using all of the features of the better camera until I master what I have.

We should have used that reasoning before buying a banjo for my husband, which still has not been played.

Dan said...

LOL! That is so funny about the banjo.