Thanks for the votes of confidence. I too like the image in B+W, but another of my current mini-obsessions is to try and capture form and shape without throwing away colour. This slide is pushing beyond the limits of my scanner's puny dynamic range. The original doesn't wash out the sunlit column base, and the figures are better-seperated from the stonework. The aisle and far wall have quite a bit more detail which makes the vivid green patch less distracting.(posted 8681 days ago)The framing of the multiple columns was what originally caught my attention here, and the unposed people were a bonus that made the shot. When I look at the image my eye is quickly pulled to the bottom of the frame by the fact that there are people there. It then follows the shadowed area slanting up and left, on up the dark column to the apex of the arch and then descends the column on the right as far as the splashes of colour where it meets the woman in front going the other way.
I love cathedrals because they are a wonderful mix of form and function. You can read their structure like a book, peeling back layers of history which mix local, national and international influences. Ely is one of my favourites because it was always poor and the layering is really obvious (the twenty-second echo in the lady chapel is fun too :-). Modern equivalents I've visited like the chapel at Princeton or the new Cathedral in Madrid seem very wierd in their uniformity.
This is Winchester, which was rich and powerful from Anglo Saxon times onwards and is much less tatty than Ely, having always had the cash for renovations. The viewpoint is from the first-floor museum in the south transept. If you go there in search of photos, I highly recommend a walk through the College and down the water meadows to the almshouse at St.Cross - both institutions show their age in more a visual way than the cathedral.