Last time, I promised I would feature a couple more photos from Lincoln, the photo collage I’ll be submitting to the Orange Crush exhibition at the MBAA Gallery later this month.
The photo at top shows part of the high altar area of Lincoln Cathedral. And in a nod to the choir, which would have been situated in the same area of the church, I have underlayed the main image with one of a piece of medieval sheet music, whose Latin lyrics are taken from Psalm 20:6:
Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed; He will hear him from His holy heaven, with the saving strength of His right hand.
There are fifteen images altogether in my Lincoln collage. While some of them feature the large, sumptuous spaces of the church, others focus on small details and atmospheric corners of the site.
One of the things I love about many of the great gothic churches is the way in which the Grand — the awe-inspiring spectacle and majesty of the architecture — so often mingles side by side with the trivial, the mundane, and the outright vulgar. While most church carvings don’t get quite as outta control as the erotic Romanesque sculptures in Cantabria, Spain, it’s quite common to find, even in the grandest medieval cathedrals, images akin to this droll little fellow from the wooden cloister vaults at Lincoln:
All over the interior of Lincoln, you can find stone visages leering down from portals, arch springings, colonnades, and more — images not only of saints and kings, but of contemporary lay figures, dogs and other animals, and whimsical and grotesque creatures (including the famous Lincoln Imp). It’s a huge part of the charm of visiting this astounding edifice.
If you’re in the Morro Bay area between May 14 and June 22, please drop into the MBAA Gallery at 835 Main Street, and check out Lincoln and the rest of the Orange Crush show!
Other stuff I’ve been doing
In between working as a daily wage slave, reading books of World War history, and eating lots of salad, I’ve been continuing to work on mastering the use of my neutral density filter. Yesterday I went out once again in the late afternoon to nearby Montaña de Oro State Park, to capture some coastline surf using the filter. Here’s one of the results:
What do you think? Am I getting better?
I persist in thinking that the better use case for the filter is actually something like a waterfall or a rushing stream. Here, for instance, is a picture I got in New Zealand back in 2020 using the same filter:
… but I keep stubbornly trying to improve my anemic Central Coast seascape pictures with a little filter razzle-dazzle. Legitimate artistry or shameless and desperate gimmickry? I leave it to you to decide.
Ronald Crittenden 