While staying with family in Bath over Christmas I got in a day trip to Wells. This is the size of a small market town but with a large Cathedral in its center making it a City. The Cathedral was built between 1175 and 1490, replacing an earlier church built on the same site in 705. The cathedral's architecture presents a harmonious whole which is entirely Gothic and mostly in the Early English style of the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Each Cathedral is different in its attitude to Photographers and Wells is one of the friendly ones. Their Website said they welcomed Photography outside service times and the only restriction was on flash in one part of the building. No mention of Tripods so I ended up taking all my shots with a Tripod and nobody objected.

It can be difficult to get something different in photographing a cathedral. Many Anglican Cathedrals have Eagle Lecterns usually made of Brass and this one is unusual in being made of wood. I got the camera positioned under it on the Tripod. With my camera lacking a super flexible screen I judged the correct position by trial and error taking several shots and perfected the straightening in post.

. The picture was taken with a tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10 mm. I I took 3 shots for HDR processed in Photomatix using fusion Real Interior for a natural look. I copied the minus 2 image in as a new layer after reducing the exposure some more in RAW and used a layer mask to apply that only to bring down highlights in the windows. I copied the plus 2 image in as a new layer and used a layer mask to apply that only to bring more light into the Lectern. Further processing using Topaz Clarity for more detail and also the straighten and crop tools in Photoshop.