Lower Heyford Church

This wonderful little 12th Century church is constructed in a mixture of Cotswold and Hornton stone. It just loves to be photographed and as you can see looks wholly different at different times of the day and in different lights. Here are just some of my many images and of course every one is very idividual. One of the pleasures of photographing this building is the many opportunities for changing the geometry of the gravestones by just moving a couple of feet or changing the focal length of the lens a fraction.

St Mary's Chuch Lower Heyford ready for jazz concert.

A superb jazz concert, "Anything Goes" was held in this lovely old church in early March, 2006. The concert was recorded in front of a packed and highly enthusiastic audience. The accoustic and the environment were ideal. This photograph was taken on the morning of the concert. Am I alone in detecting an air of expectancy as the early morning sun glistens on the frost? Maybe the record producer will wish to use this picture in the CD booklet to complete the synthesis of all the elements of the occasion?!
In response to a request I will occasionally give technical details about the photographs. This image was secured digitally with a Canon EOS 5D camera which has a full frame (the equivalent of 35mm) sensor. The lens was a Canon 24-70mm L series lens at 30mm. The camera was set at aperture priority at F 7.1 and a shutter speed of an 80th/sec.The image was secured in Camera Raw (no in camera compression)and post capture processing in Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 was limited to some lightening of the dark early morning shadows and a very small reduction of the highlights. The image was then converted to a low compression/high quality JPEG file of about 10 megabytes suitable for printing at A3+ and in this format the final picture is pin sharp.

Location: Lower Heyford

Photographer: Robin Barker