Architectural Photography

The City of London has many beautiful churches, and a few ruins.  ‘The Friends of the City Churches’ is an architectural heritage charity helping to open the churches for visitors – tourists, and those interested in the buildings as well as those looking for a few moments of quiet peace and prayer. Not all the churches are used solely for Christian worship (and concerts), one at least is used occasionally by a Muslim group and by various charities. A friend of mine was a ‘Watcher’ (responsible for opening the church when otherwise not in use and answering visitors questions) and she introduced me to the Friends and the churches they watch over. After touring around one thing occurred to me – while the general architecture was spectacular and that was what people generally photographed, the ceilings too were at least as spectacular.

If I had to come up with one thing, I thank Covid-19 for getting me back into film photography (if using my dad’s point-and-shoot to take family photos in the 90s counts as having been into it).

Back in the beginning of 2020 when I was stuck at home and only a few months into photography, the film SLR look of my recently acquired Fujifilm XT-30 reminded my dad of his good old days of being a photography enthusiast. Topics like how to get the perfect exposure, developing black and white films, composition in different circumstances, you name it, he just couldn’t shut up! So I asked him the whereabouts of those film point-and-shoots I used to use. To my surprise, not only did I reunite with the Pentax Zoom 90 WR after two decades, there was also a Nikkor 50mm f1.4 AF-D sitting in the cabinet without a pairing body.