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Blue439

New member
Another lonely church in Sardinia (2019)

This one, San Nicola in Silanis, is not only built in complete isolation in a peaceful and quiet vale, it is also quite large (three naves!), and in ruin...

Nikon Z7, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ adapter. Gitzo tripod, Novoflex Magic Ball head.

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Blue439

New member
A stupendous Romanesque church... ignored by all ! (2021)

Saint-Paulien in Auvergne (central France) is a place with about 2,400 inhabitants. Larger than a village, smaller than a town, there is a word in French for this kind of in-between locale: a bourg. Bourgs almost always have a church, as they were, for times immemorial, the place where the seat of the parish was located, but those churches, which may occasionally be very old and extremely lovely to behold and visit, are proportionate to the size of the congregation and its financial means: relatively small (excluding borderline cases like, say, priory churches founded by a powerful abbey and doubling as the parochial place of worship).

In Saint-Paulien, the story is different. First, on the outside, the church is enormous. No monastery was ever involved in its construction and no one knows how come such a vast church was ever built, nor who had the financial means, not only to actually buy the materials, but to commission the genius architect and builders who brought it into existence. Dedicated to Saint George, it was built during the 1100s and most of it is typical Auvergnat Romanesque style.

It is when you step inside that you are likely to fall back onto your rear end out of amazement: this gigantic, cavernous, single-nave church is absolutely pillar-less and features an enormously heavy barrel vault of solid stone that spans a whopping 16 meters without any kind of support, along the whole length of the nave...!

There is not one single column to obstruct the view nor the elevation of the mind through meditation.

Cluny III, the largest church in all Christendom, only spanned 14 meters... Saint Peter's span in Rome is bigger but it was built during the Renaissance, and it is segmented... Saint-Paulien is not.

This is a UNESCO-caliber achievement, yet you rarely see more than a couple of tourists around, and very often you have it all to yourself!

Nikon Z7, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, FTZ adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.

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Robin W

Senior Member
I was in Grants New Mexico last week, when Albuquerque had their big wind storm, with gust reaching 91 mph. We got some of it and I was able to capture a big gust coming up through a valley near my sister's house. That is all dust and sand. It was a good day to stay inside.
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Blue439

New member
Another lonely church in Sardinia, Part II (2019)

I showed above a photo of the façade of the ruined Romanesque church of San Nicola di Silanis in Sardinia, and now this is what its apse looks like. This lovely 12th century church, partly in ruin but now well taken care of, is a fine example of the Lombard and Pisan architectural influences that prevailed over earlier, Byzantine and Greek ones, in Sardinia after the Republic of Pisa finally defeated the Muslims in a naval battle towards the end of the 10th century. In the wake of that achievement, the Pisans took partial control of Sardinia, then full control after they evicted their Genoan rivals.

Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z 24-70mm, ƒ/4 S lens. Handheld.

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Blue439

New member
Saint Helen in the fields (2019)

The chiesa campestre of Sant’ Elena is the cutest and one of the most memorable I ever photographed in Sardinia. Imagine having only vague directions to the place; no road, only a bad dirt track which I picked among several others, and on which I had to drive fingers crossed, very carefully and quite slowly, even with my 4×4... Kilometers pile up, not a soul in sight, no more cultivated fields, only what Aussies would call “the outback”... I must have taken the wrong track, and the weather has become threatening, with a big thunderstorm coming... Several times, I thought I would turn back —only there was no place to turn!— and suddenly, after almost 15 kilometers of this, I saw it, standing quietly in the middle of uncut wild grass, and just then a ray of sunshine pierced through the thick clouds and illuminated the humble façade... Talk about a miracle!

Dedicated to Helen, a saint of the Greek church, Sant’ Elena is a very old, pre-Romanesque church, probably built during the 600s with local stones and pebbles and no ornamentation of any kind whatsoever. There is a shelter against the weather to the southern side.

Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z 24-70mm, ƒ/4 S lens, handheld.

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Blue439

New member
Venice in Winter III (2018)

You know you really are in the dead of Winter when you have the passageway along the Doges’ Palace all to yourself...

Nikon D850, Voigtländer Nokton 58mm, ƒ/1.4, manual focus, handheld.


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Blue439

New member
A priory in Provence (2021)

The impressive façade of the Romanesque priory church of Notre-Dame de Salagon near the village of Mane in Upper Provence. Built around 1150, this priory was one of the many founded by the Saint-André Abbey in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, which numbered more than 50 priories.

Nikon Z7, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.


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Blue439

New member
“I gift you with this church” (2021)

Religious sculpture during the Romanesque Age (1000–1200) sometimes features a motif in which you see a wealthy patron presenting a cleric with a sort of small-sized replica of a church, thus symbolizing that the patron in question had paid for the construction of that church. Here, we see King Louis le Débonnaire of France presenting the parochial church in the Burgundy village of Avenas (southeastern France) to Saint Vincent, patron saint of that church.

This relief appears on the side of a very well known sculpted altar I have shown before. I am quite happy with this photo, as I have never seen one so correctly taken anywhere else. Even Dom Angelico in the Zodiaque book couldn’t quite manage it, because of the lack of space to maneuver a camera and perspective-control lens into position... In his defense, he had to use Sinar view cameras and 6×6 Hasselblads, so this explains that. The wall of the apse is very close behind. I myself couldn’t physically fit, so that I had to stand to the side and flip the back screen of the camera to frame, set the lens and focus.

Nikon Z7, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light.


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