Soma-Sema.com » Architecture

Sanctuary

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:48:19 +0000

This is a church, which jars out of the ground in the center of the web of windswept streets of Ballater, Scotland. I ventured out on my own from under my guiding cousin’s wing, Chris Duguid (very generous and affable person), son of Lorraine (who literally grows her own curtains out of vines and flowers, a wonderfully stout woman), next in line of my aunts after my father, and got this shot from across the street underneath a skeletal tree. Combined with the tree in the lower left of the shot, the sickly finger-like limbs of the hibernating tree and the huge looming silhouette of the church evoke an imposing scale if not for the benevolent aura of the sky and the light falling on the back of the church. The way I prefer to picture it is as a wanderer, stumbling from the underbrush into a grove wherein salvation has been set down just when and where it was needed and the grand affair in the sky is a sign from the giver.

Ballater is a quiet town encased in steep ridges and high, sloping hills. It is kept clean and proper as the Queen of England will have to make her way through the town on her way to her country estate in Scotland. The river that flows alongside it, the River Dee, is the cleanest river in the country.

This photo, along with its companion shot Pandaemonium, were taken using my Nikon FM2, a Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lens at it’s smallest aperture, on 400 ISO colour negative fujichrome film.

Pandaemonium

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:46:03 +0000

This is the reciprocal shot of Celestial Church. Pandaemonium is the first fortress Dante and his guide, Virgil, encounter in Hell. It is home to those great men who were noble enough to escape eternal punishment for their heresy, but were heretics nonetheless, not legitimate Christians, but Greeks and Romans of antiquity (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.), and so cannot be admitted past the Pearly Gates. I waited for a flock of birds to return before taking this shot. Concurrently, the windmill at the top has positioned itself into an upside-down cross, enhancing the malevolent masquerade.

Gospel Torch

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:44:56 +0000

I got this while visiting a friend who, at the time, was attending Queen’s and living in a house in Kingston, Ontario, with a crazy group of guys. The city, which was the original capital of Canada, lies on the shores of Lake Ontario of the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater bodies of water in the world. The lake can generate some great weather for photography, and on an oddly humid night we went out into this ridiculous mist and found ourselves in the parking lot of a church. I used a 28mm Nikon lens at f/16 with a slow shutter speed and a cable release. This was taken on 400 ISO film using my Nikon FM2.