St. Wilfrid's Window, Ripon Cathedral

St. Wilfrid's Window

Our Christmas Card in 2018

Sometimes you can walk into a church or cathedral and a stained-glass window will leap from the wall to meet you, shouting out a greeting (as this window alongside). And if you’re lucky, it’s summer and the sun’s high, you’ll see the colours are also projected round your feet, like jewels (or, for those of us with more normal bank accounts, like the wrappers in a tin of sweets).

In contrast some windows have no voice at all – too high, too far away to hear, too dark, too leaded.

And then there are other windows, like St. Wilfrid’s in Ripon Cathedral, which call out softly, attracting you with their quiet dignity and freshness, even without help from the sun. (This window is on the east side of the north transept, so St. Wilfrid rarely has the sun on his back, except for an hour or so, early on a summer morning).

One of the recurring battles I have with my camera is that it doesn’t ever see the same things as I do (I’m sure I’ll write about this again). I know it has 20:20 vision whilst I have astigmatism and (invariably) my glasses need cleaning but even making allowances for those differences, the camera and I can look at the same view and come away with completely different impressions. It will give you a perfectly balanced, precise and detailed view whilst I want to convey the spirit of the scene and excite your imagination, your curiosity.

Take this window, for example. I saw St. Wilfrid, like an old friend in the distance, quiet and assured; and I saw the colours – the browns and reds, blues and greens. But the camera saw the heavy stonework of the surrounding wall and arch; and the spot-lit paintings nearby; all with that weird distortion you get when looking up at something that’s well above your head.

So, the first stage of post-processing was to correct this distortion and make the window look more regular (and it also had the side-effect of making St. Wilfrid seem lower down, and hence more accessible); then I cropped away extraneous distractions, the stonework and the paintings; next I brightened and enhanced the colours. And finally, I enlarged a small section of the window – focussing on St. Wilfrid’s face – and overlaid it on the image.

That’s what I saw; and that’s what I want to share.

It was an ideal image for our Christmas card in 2018.

Take care

Paddy

December 2019