Day 155 - Wilmot among the trees

It's been a long time since I featured the lovely Wilmot United Church on this blog, hasn't it? I mean, at least a week, maybe close to two. That's probably a record.

I took this photograph while wandering around downtown Fredericton, trying to find new views, new things to shoot. Taken from the Loyalist Cemetery, this shot creates a nice mix of the natural and the artificial, with the lovely tree, darkened in the foreground, and the lovely church, in bright light beyond.

Two challenges, of course. First, the focus issue with the auto-focus problems I've always faced. I solved them here simply by closing the aperture down to f8 and trusting the depth of focus to save the day. I wanted the church to be crisp and wasn't too worried about allowing the tree to lose a little focus.

Second, the question of how much light to let in. Since I wanted the aperture as small as possible, I adjusted the amount of light through the use of shutter speed. I took one version at a somewhat higher speed but I felt that the tree got too dark, making the entire shot seem somber. So I went with this photograph, understanding that the church in this one might be a little too bright for some people. Without playing with the photograph in iPhoto, I wasn't going to be able to get both perfectly lit.

Of course, my brother-in-law Gavin has a website he'll send me to that allows you to combine two or more photos of the same subject to ensure that each element is well lit but I haven't mastered that one yet. He's a lot more technically savvy than I am. (And that's an understatement!).