Flagstones in the Cathedral Cloisters

Backdated Blip 50

These old flagstones are in the Cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral.

Unlike the inside of the Cathedral itself, which is £6.50 admission, the Cloisters are free and form the entranceway for visitors, paying. Being local makes no difference, you still have to pay. The cloisters offer many photo opps, such as when they contain this sculpture exhibition of busts made of Olympians , one of my earliest Blips .

This, with the Sigma 20mm f1.8, has the camera's white balance set to 'cloudy' which gives this warm colour, and so, not a b&w conversion. I've always liked the way that an ultrawide lens elongates shapes out toward the corners and edges, such as the diamond shapes at the base.

The sharpened and distortion corrected resulting image looked OK was a bit flat - I wanted it to look natural but still give it more oomph! So, the bottom part was given more contrast, which subsequently enriched the colour but the top, above the line, the opposite, to soften and bring better detail in those more delicate stone colours. To ensure that this transition didn't look too obvious, I did a middle part, just below this line, too. This had (I can't remember now, actually!).