Gloucester Cathedral

Posted by Tim Knifton in Old buildings, Photo Essays | 6 comments

Visited on 25^th August with another HDR photographer and good friend of mine.

A little bit of the history

Gloucester Cathedral has been a place of Christian worship continuously for over 1300 years, since Osric, an Anglo-Saxon prince, founded a religious house here in 678-9 AD. Little is known for certain about the communities which worshipped here or the buildings they used over the next 400 years although it is believed that the Benedictine Rule was introduced here early in the 11th century.

A record of the building fabric is made before and during stonework conservation, detailing the information that repair works uncover about building history and early building techniques.

 The visit

We arrived at 7:30am as they were just about to open up. We were told that the early morning is the best time before the tourists arrive so that you can manage to get the Cloisters photographed without other people being in them or jostling for position.

As the weather wasn’t great, we had the whole place more or less to ourselves and never had to wait for another person to move out of the way.

The place is an architectural masterpiece – for photographing as well as just wandering around and marvelling at the building itself.

The Cloisters were the first place that we started with the Canon wide 17-40mm to capture them in all their glory. After this I moved on to the Sigma 15mm Fisheye. After the Cloisters, we made our way around the cathedral and photographed individual areas using the wide, fisheye and the macro in places.

There is so much to photograph that you will find yourself changing lenses at regular intervals. The cathedral doesn’t mind tripods so you can do what you like within reason. Most of my macro photos are single exposures but they can be found in the set on my Flickr account if you wish to see more.

The Cathedral

The cathedral advertises the fact that it costs £6,000 GBP A DAY to run. Goodness knows where the money goes but if you ever decide on a trip to Gloucester – make sure you put a nice donation in the box as the cathedral is free for admission and you are guaranteed to get some shots worth every penny of a donation.

I have been photographing for many years. My passions are urban exploration, travel and landscape photography. I particularly like using High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, with the majority of my work being captured in this way.

I am a fan of capturing more than the camera can capture in one exposure. The science behind revealing as much as the scene as possible by capturing as much in 3, 5 or 7 brackets appeals to me greatly.

I am a regular on the photography exhibition circuits and am accredited under several photographic bodies including the Royal Photographic Society, Welsh Photographic Federation and Federation Internationale de I’art photographique (FIAP).

Lives: South Wales, United Kingdom

My facebook page: www.facebook.com/TimKniftonPhotography My Flickr profile: www.flickr.com/photos/timster1973