Beauty Of Stained Glass Windows
Spectacular stained glass windows in St. Mary's Catholic Church in Hamilton, Australia.
I love to celebrate the beauty of stained glass windows. I do it through my photography and here's how you can to.
One day I’II get my very own Hobbit hole filled with light and color that’s filtered through the beauty of stained glass windows.
Secular or religious, it matters not. What I want are beautiful stained glass windows that speak to me of light and color and the human experience.
I dream of a more pluralistic society and a series of windows, each one reflecting one or more stories from our world's dominant religions, would be a nice way to acknowledge that dream.
Where it would be inappropriate to depict human faces, as is the case with Islamic art, I'd rely upon design to symbolize that particular religions preference for symbolizing the divine.
Notice how I’ve closely cropped the above image as a way of concentrating attention on a range of elements within the artwork including the following:
Color
Shape
Texture
Expression
Body Language
Reflections of stained glass windows in St. Mary's Catholic Church, Hamilton.
St. Mary's Catholic Church, Hamilton, Australia
I photographed the stained glass windows in this post at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in my hometown, Hamilton in south eastern Australia.
Usually folks are keen to eliminate reflections in glass.
In this case I liked the surreal quality given to the image as the reflections seemed to float in space in front of the stations of the cross on the background wall.
It was then simply a matter of making subtle movements with my camera until I achieved the desire composition.
The church was extended some time ago and, while it features a more contemporary worship space, most of the stained glass windows still reside in the original part of the church.
I knew the old church quite well, originally being brought their on a weekly basis by my folks and then, later, during my days as a wedding photographer.
I’ve only been back a few times since the mid 80’s, including attending my dad’s funeral, and then again for the baptism of my niece Rachel’s first child, Ashton.
What Is Stained Glass Art?
Stained glass is the term used to describe decorative windows and objects through which light passes.
Regardless of the object in question its beauty is best appreciated when light passes through it.
How Is Stained Glass Colored?
You might be interested to know that color is added to the glass through the addition of metallic salts during manufacture.
In the case of stained glass windows small pieces of glass are then arranged to form patterns or pictures that are held together by strips of lead supported within a rigid frame.
A silver strain is often applied to the side of the window that faces the outside of the building.
Church Stained Glass Windows
One of the most recognizable features of Gothic architecture, from as far back as the 10th Century, churches made use of stained glass windows for two very specific reasons:
To enhance the beauty of the setting.
To illustrate scenes from the bible including stories from the life of Jesus and other religious figures through narrative and symbolism.
I’ve long been fascinated by the beauty of religious stained glass windows.
It’s the purity of the color, and the relationship between those colors that, initially, attracts my attention. Beyond that it’s the Human Condition that’s explored in that artwork that I find particularly meaningful.
We’re drawn to beauty, which is one of the reasons we dream of travel to exotic cities around the world.
I love to travel as it’s provided me with an education far beyond what I gained during all those years of formal, classroom bound education.
However, while travel has opened me up to so many profound and meaning rich experiences, I’m happy to say that I find beauty wherever I lay my hat.
It’s good to know that in our increasingly chaotic, troubled world that beauty resides all around us.
Explore Stained Glass Windows Near You
Please don’t miss the opportunity to experience the beauty of stained glass windows in your own neck of the woods.
I remember photographing the stained glass windows at Notre Dame cathedral.
Due to the horrible fire that engulfed Notre Dame Cathedral together with the recent and, to my mind, very sensible decline in overseas travel due to the Corona virus (COVID-19) I’m not able to photograph those windows today.
But there’s lots of churches around Melbourne, where I currently reside, with spectacular stained glass windows that I can quite easily photograph.
What’s more I don’t have to move through highly trafficked airports or get on a plane to do so.
Needless to say I’d seek permission before photographing inside any church, temple or other religious bulding. And that’s particularly the case if making those photos required the use of a tripod.
The way to prepare yourself to be able to make really beautiful photos, wherever you are, is to cultivate an ability to remain receptive and open to beauty, regardless of the location.
I’ve had the good fortune to photograph stained glass windows in exotic locales around the world including the following sites:
Paris
Bruges
The Falkland Islands
From my point of view the stained glass I've photographed in St. Mary’s Catholic church in my hometown, Hamilton compared really well with those I've seen in other churches, cathedrals and cemeteries around the world.
What’s more, a visit back home allows me to spend time with my dear old mum, which is a huge bonus for me.
Stunning detail from a stained glass window in St. Mary's Catholic Church.
How to Photograph Stained Glass Windows
Stained glass windows aren’t easy to photograph. Here’s a few tips that should help.
Look to photograph whatever attracts your attention. If it’s a detail, as you see in this colourful and expressive face, then concentrate your composition on that area of the larger window.
Perhaps, as was the case in the photo at the very top of this post, you like most of what you see in the larger stained glass window. It’s then a good idea to photograph the entire artwork prior to photographing one or more individual elements (e.g., faces) within it.
To prevent distortion of the stained glass panels position your camera directly opposite and in the centre of the window.
That's not an easy thing to do, given the elevated position of most windows. Quite often it's down right impossible. But there’s a nifty solution I want to share with you.
Simple stand back and zoom in to fill the frame. This greater camera to subject distance has the visual effect of actually raising the camera, thereby reducing distortion in your photo.
It's an easy tip to implement, providing you don’t fall down after catching your feet on the kneeling rail in a church pew.
What’s more this tip also works when you want to record tall buildings without the inherent distortion that occurs when you have to tilt your camera upwards to fit the top of the structure into the frame.
Needless to say distortion isn’t always a bad thing. Some folks love it. I think it’s great when it achieves a result in line with the mood or emotion you want to explore in your photo.
Here’s an example of when I embraced distortion to create a particular mood when photographing the Church Of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium.
Unfortunately, regardless of how expensive or sophisticated your camera is, there's no guarantee it will produce an accurate exposure.
Light meters, when trusted and not overridden by the photographer, determine the brightness of your photos.
But they are constantly fooled into making poor decisions.
There are numerous ways by which you can quickly and efficiently gain control back from the machine and produce fantastic photos.
How you actually go about doing that is a little more complicated and dependent upon the exposure mode your camera is set to.
After working with thousands of enthusiastic photographers I believe the best way forward is dependent upon the following criteria.
The camera in question and what's the simplest way to use it while maintaining control over things such as focus, exposure and white balance.
The photographer in question. We're all different and we all make sense of information in different ways.
Beautiful stained glass window and devotees in a Catholic church in Chennai.
Back in the days of film most cameras where made for folks who were right eye dominant. I’m referring here to the way the light meter was displayed inside the camera’s viewfinder.
Clearly that placed the lefties at a disadvantage, though they probably never knew why.
These days things are a bit more democratic.
However, each camera brand and/or specific models within a camera range have their own logic. That logic will either make sense to the photographer in question or it won't.
This is probably one of the reasons why the vast majority of people surrender to the machine and use their camera on fully automatic.
In doing so they've largely surrendered their opportunity for creative expression and their ability to override the camera’s often poor choice of exposure, white balance and focus.
This is the reason why most folks photos fail to adequately express their own, unique way of seeing the world.
I think that's a tragedy, which is why I make myself available to help folks both understand their cameras and make more creative photos.
Thank goodness composition still remains within the domain of the photographer. Let’s take a look at this photo from a lovely Catholic church on the bottom of St. Thomas Mount in Chennai, India.
I very much wanted to contrast and compare the colors and figures in the stained glass window with those inside the church. I think I did a good job and I’m happy with the result.
But how could a camera know what you want. Assuming we continue to resist assimilation into the Borg Collective then we should continue to celebrate the individuality available to us through composition.
It’s absolutely one of the things that makes the photos you create unique.
Achieving correct exposure (i.e., brightness) in a photograph is no easy thing. That's largely due to the fact that, despite their incredible sophistication, camera's don't recognize subject.
Put simply, your camera has no idea whether you're photographing a baby, a birthday cake or a bar mitzvah.
The camera doesn’t know you’re photographing mountains, let alone snow covered mountains. No wonder it often produces images that are brighter or darker than you'd expect.
A scene of average brightness should photograph correctly. However, small areas that are much brighter or darker than the rest of the scene can cause your camera to produce an inaccurate exposure.
What's more there are some fundamental concepts that most folks who make photos simply don't realize. I like to summarize those concepts as follows:
“The brighter the scene, the darker it will photograph.
The darker the scene, the brighter it will photograph.”
Another major problem folks have is that their composition often includes large differences between the brighter stained glass and the darker surrounding interior church walls.
The best solution here is to completely eliminate those darker walls from your composition.
It’s no guarantee of a great result, but at least you’ve reduced the contrast of the scene which, in itself, is important.
All that’s needed now is to understand, when your camera produces an image that’s either too light or too dark, what you need to do to fit it.
Is this relevant to photographing stained glass windows?
Absolutely, part of being able to create great photos is understanding the limitations of your camera to record the world around you the way you perceive it.
This is actually quite a profound statement and often takes a while to accept, particularly after spending a chunk of change on an expensive camera kit.
Once we accept this fact we’re less likely to spend time blaming ourselves for the poor choices our camera makes.
All that’s required is learning what to do each and every time your camera fails you. And they all do.
Spectacular and intricately designed stained glass window at Helligenkreuz Abbey in Austria.
Tripods Are Great Under Low Light Conditions
This highly detailed examination of a beautiful stained glass window in Helligenkreuz Abbey in rural Austria is a good example of the value of a tripod for low light architecture based photography.
One of the difficulties associated with photographing stained glass windows is that you often find yourself in churches and other old buildings where there's not much light, either natural or artificial.
But, just because it's dark, doesn't mean that your photos will be too dark.
Your camera's light meter will measure the low levels of light and, in theory, adjust your cameras shutter speed, aperture and/or ISO to achieve what it believes is a correct exposure.
However, under really low levels of illumination, that could result in a very slow shutter speed causing blur in the following ways:
Camera shake
A depth of field less than what you’d prefer
Noise resulting from too high an ISO
Sometimes the best solution is to employ a tripod. That is, assuming you have permission and the space around you to set one up in the first place.
A tripod will allow you to photograph at a lower ISO which should produce cleaner and sharper images.
But a sturdy tripod will also allow you to make very small adjustments to the composition of the image and, thereby, produce a more pleasing result.
Photography Of and Beyond Stained Glass
However you go about making photos and whether you're using a smartphone, mirrorless or DSLR camera to do so, I recommend you try photographing stained glass windows at some stage.
They're one of my favorite things in this world and it's amazing how the process of making photos of stained glass windows only heightens their beauty.
And I refer here, primarily, to the transforming, transient and transcendental nature of light.
Light really is key to the magic of photography and central to why it is that I do what I do.
