Church Photography

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the Mass Mob at Holy Cross Hungarian Catholic Church in the Delray neighborhood of Detroit. For those who do not know the purpose of the Mass Mob events is to bring people to the historical churches around Detroit and help support those churches. Usually these churches have a low attendance and an amazing history. You attend a mass at the church and that is followed by a socialization hour where you can tour, photograph and learn about the church and its history.

I have been wanting to go to some of the historical churches in the area and photography them. There is usually some much character and history within four walls. Usually there is very unique architecture both inside and outside, the walls have paintings and murals, there are interesting statues, stained glass, and the light inside a church can create a lot of depth to a photo. This provided me a good opportunity to give it a try and test some of my skills and maybe learn a few new things.

So what did I learn? For starters, don't be afraid of high ISO. Usually in all of my photography I have a tripod available or a flash. With both of these option I tend to very rarely raise my ISO over 800 even with any night photography that I have done. At the church I had my ISO up as high as 2000-4000 ISO even with my aperture at f2.8.

I would have rather done longer exposures on on a tripod. With a carefully steady hand and bracketing I was able to get a few shots. The dynamic range between the stain glass windows and the walls of the church was far greater than my Canon could capture. To capture the detail of the windows I had to bracket and blend them in post.