Time To Die

There are two ways of getting this shot:

1) Walk in and take the photograph
2) Ask the pastor permission beforehand to come onto the land at a pre-arranged time

I shocked the pastor. I went for the second choice.





Late evening twenty minutes after sunset: early Autumn October 2011. This was tricky. The graveyard was covered above by a canopy of trees. Only the sky high up to the right of the church had any decent light. A tripod was necessary for the long exposure but one image led to a wide dynamic range of dark, dark shadows to bright overblown highlights. Though I was ready with hard or soft grad Lee graduated filters I don't think they could have worked for this shot to hold back the sky allowing for increased exposure of the dark foreground.

This image is a combination of five images merged in Photomatix Pro - a High Dynamic Range plug-in for Photoshop / Lightroom / Aperture. The exposures were as follows: one normal exposure, one two stops under exposed, one at one stop underexposed, one at one stop over exposed and finally one at two stops over exposed (-2, -1, 0 +1, +2). Images were brought into Lightoom 3.6 then the plug in was used to gain a plain single image. An alternative to this technique would be blending of bracketed images in Photoshop. The horizontal cross lying flat on the sarcophagus to the lower left of the headstone  acts for me as a lead in line to the church.

Time to Die

Nikon D700 Carl Zeiss Distagon 21mm f2.8 lens @ 21mm f /8.0 1.3sec ISO800
Other than merging the shots in photomatix little else has been done here.

Learning points for me here?
1) In dark conditions consider a bracketed shot as above (or more simplified one such as -1, 0, +1) and bank it for future use e.g. with Photomatix Pro as a plug in to Photoshop or Lightroom/Aperture

2) Coming round to case the joint first might prove useful in choosing angles, viewpoints, and checking service times to capture lights in windows