Sunny Shillington

The church at Shillington sits on an area of raised land meaning that it is clearly visible from every direction.  I was hoping to get a shot of it with a moody sky behind and the sun lighting the church up.  On the day I chose to make the trip to take the shot the clouds weren't quite as moody as I hoped for, but the sun was nicely lighting up the fields in front of the church.

The farmer who owns the field by the side of the road was kind enough to give me permission to enter his field to take this shot, my thanks go out to him for giving me that opportunity!

I took the image on my 7D using a tripod for stability.  I shot with an aperture of F/22 at ISO500 and 1/250th of a second.  I wanted to make the whole image sharp, but had forgotten I'd set a fairly high ISO on a previous day's shoot so I could have gotten away with a slower shutter and larger aperture if I'd remembered! I shot using my 18-55mm lens at 30mm.

In post processing I carried out a but of a fake HDR routine to brighten the church slightly, I couldn't get the full HDR effect as the camera moved very slightly between shots, even using a tripod and so the images didn't exactly overlay.  I also sharpened the church and tractor slightly and cropped a little to get closer to the ideal thirds.

If anything I feel the tractor looks like it's motoring into nothing but there were distracting objects to the left which meant I had to position it where I have.  I also think the church is a bit grainy, possibly as a result of the higher than optimal ISO.