Symmetry in blue

The last post showed the altar in the Siena Cathedral -- magnificent beyond words. This shot was taken standing about twenty away but looking straight up. The key to photographing the ceilings of great cathedrals is to capture the remarkable symmetry and graphic design, and to do that you must be standing dead-center on the design. The graphic elements on the floor often mirror the architecture on the ceiling -- not exactly, of course, but usually you can find the center of the ceiling layout by looking for a central place to stand on the floor. With a wide angle lens, like my 14mm Sigma f/1.8, it's very easy to skew the composition, especially when bending backwards and pointing the camera straight upward. You have to watch carefully that the composition is oriented precisely square to the ceiling and that all sides have the same space on either side of the central design. This is a hand-held HDR with 3-frame increments between exposures and a total of three shots. My settings were f/1.8, 3200 ISO, auto white balance, and evaluative metering (i.e. Matrix metering for Nikon shooters). The slowest shutter speed in the HDR sequence was 1/60. As I said, it's tough to orient the camera perfectly, and it took me four tries to get it right because arching my back and shooting straight up is not a stable way to take pictures. In addition, I took several HDR series to make sure they were sharp. Hand held HDR, even with a wide angle lens, often takes several attempts to make sure the software can align the images well.