Photographing the Cathedral Cloisters...

Friday 4th July (slowly catching up!)

After my escapade in Frome the day before (and escape, the trains were running normally when I returned - thanks for all your concerns about whether I'd even managed to get home!), I was rather tired on the Friday.

Wanting to relax a little before the big event of officially photographing Wilton Carnival on Saturday and being rather tired anyway, I decided to take tea in the (Salisbury) Cathedral's Refectory restaurant, mid afternoon.

I wasn't set out to go inside the Cathedral but spend some time in the Cloisters. One thing I like to do is use a long fast lens and use at maximum aperture, whilst looking down the length of the Cloister pillars. Doing so, it is immediately apparent that most are not exactly upright and they differ slightly in colour, also.

I took the now little used Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 and took such and in themselves, make pleasing architectural pattern shots, especially when minimal depth of field picks out just one pillar and the rest recede nicely. Inevitably, visitors and tourists come by and you either include them, or not. Rather like the Blip from Frome yesterday, you can really make a person a focal point, as here.

This lady is looking up at the Spire which soars high above - everybody takes these shots and I'm sure they too would be a great Blip but I've done these myself so many times now, I don't really bother anymore.

I edited in colour but then the black and white variant just had so much more power. I posted a Blip about a year ago of the Cloisters which is in colour to give you an idea what they look like 'naturally'.

Lens is Sigma EX 70-200mm f2.8 Apo

One highlight is that there is a peregrine falcon nesting with a chick high (high!) up on the base of the Spire, probably some 250 ft up! There is a daily vigil, organised by the RSPB with expensive telescopes trained on them. Some folk do get really quite over-excited at this - and fair play to them. However, as you can imagine, the comparatively very short focal length of a 200mm lens compared to a professional spotting scope (Swarovski at that - three grand's worth) means that on my photos, you might as well be photographing a speck of dust in a sandstorm. I might go back with a longer lens, though my big Sigma (150-500mm) died some months ago...