Day 307 - Taking liberties with Her Majesty

New Brunswick's Legislative Assembly building dates from 1882 (even though its front wall features a prominent "1880" carving) and, according to the descriptive plaque in the foyer, is made of sandstone with a mansard roof and matching towers (see bottom photo). It is currently in the process of being refurbished, with the exterior work being done first.

I trust that, as part of that refurbishment, the tradespeople won't display the same lack of respect that the workers who installed security cameras and pigeon-proofing showed when they defaced this poor carving of the Queen that keeps watch on the building's front doors (see upper photo). Yes, that is actually pigeon wire sticking out of Her Majesty's crown!

This photograph was not as easy to take as it might at first appear. The carving is located inside the arch of the doorway, meaning there wasn't much light to work with. Since the Olympus' flash washed out the details on the face and crown, I had to figure out a way to get a decent exposure while not losing too much depth of focus nor adding too much shake. I have to admit, I cheated a bit. I kept the shutter speed at 1/60th while allowing enough of an aperture to keep focus throughout the shot.

In other words, I underexposed the image on site and then fixed the exposure on my trusty old iMac.

I was also forced, because of the harsh angle at which I took the picture, to rotate the image slightly so that the carving appears straight in the photo. Neat what you can do, isn't it?

The lower photo is of the building itself. You can't get far enough back from the front wall to take a photograph of the entire building with a nomral lens so I had to zoom way out and accept the distortion caused by the use of the shorter lens (somewhere close to 28mm). Unfortunately, you can't fix that on the iMac.