Church of Santa Maria della Purità in Gallipoli

[Enrico Engelmann]

Some pictures of the interior of the church of Santa Maria della Purità in Gallipoli (Italy). It was built in the middle of the seventeenth century in baroque style. The interiors are completely decorated with paintings on panels (not frescoes) and stuccos.

Exif info of the pictures (lost during processing) can be found on the page Photos 'Places, cities e monuments' - Anywhere

All pictures are double exposures taken with a Panasonic G2 and separated by 1.5 stops, fused using the algorythm on the page HDR on line and finally optimized using Faststone.
Other pictures of this church, of Gallipoli and of Salento on the page 08-08-2014 - Salento pictures Panasonic G2: Gallipoli, Galatina, Soleto, Lecce: Event's pictures

 

[DavefromCt]

Beautiful!

 

[Enrico Engelmann]

Beautiful, but a little bit kitsch!
Confront it with this one, the church of the Mother of God and St. Nicholas, also known as Church of the Discalced in Lecce. Same period, same size, same style (Lecce baroque), but more elegant! (Go on the page http://www.milanofotografo.it/englishFotografiaDettagliFoto.aspx?ID=1026&Categoria=Places,%20cities%20e%20monuments, to find other pictures)

 

[The_Traveler]

Quite lovely pictures
I think that some color (to remove blue cast) and selective brightness adjusting might add even more to their impact.

 

[Enrico Engelmann]

Thank you for dedicating attention to my pictures!
The problem of pictures like these is that the most appealing interpretation of the raw file can be less near to reality than the less appealing one.
At least from what I see on my screen, your version is much to green. Very different from the true colors I believe to remember.
When I edit the pictures very shortly after having taken them it is easy the identify the settings which give the most realistic colors. If more time has passed it can become difficult. I have found that a a good criterion can be the resulting color richness in the paintings and in the frescoes.
If you look at the large painting on the left wall in my version, you can see that there are clearly red, azure, green parts. If you look at your version you can see that the color differences are much smaller and all colors are flattened down toward green.
Apart from that look also at the white paper sheet down right. In you version it has become bluish.

 

[The_Traveler]

Thank you for the response, Enrico.
Perhaps it is the difference in our monitors.

 

[The_Pearl_Poet]

The interiors of churches can be stunningly beautiful in real life and when photographed. However, their interiors provide many technical and compositional difficulties. Firstly, controlling exposure can be quite difficult, especially when there are interior lights and windows. In these photos, the windows and interior lights are blown out. These parts of the photo exceed the camera sensor's dynamic range, leading to a pure white tonal value. I see that you used two exposures for each shot. Despite using this approach, the exposure has not been controlled. Perhaps a different blending technique or more exposures are necessary.

Composition can be difficult as well due to tourists and other events going on. For example, the board in the front of the church in shot #1 is distracting and detracts from the cleanliness of the composition. As photographers, we are tasked with reducing our visually chaotic environment into a coherent image in which each part has purpose. Boards, lights, and fans, in my opinion, detract from the beauty of the church. The elimination of these elements would result in stronger, cleaner compositions.

 

[Enrico Engelmann]

You are completely right. That's the reason why I have added in the meantime the possibility to use three pictures, beyond only two.
But two is still much better than one!
Regarding the composition, it already often difficult to have the possibility to take pictures at all (in some churches it is forbitten, some are mostly closed, like the one here, some are always full of visitors), so when you can take pictures, you must then use the images you can shoot.

 

[Enrico Engelmann]

In the meantime I have improved my tecnique and now I fuse more than 3 pictures by simply applying more than one step: in the first I start from the normal picture and create intermediate pictures and then I fuse these ones! In this case I get often an improved result!
Here for example a fusion of six pictures!
The colors should be correct, since now I regularly use a calibration tool on my monitor. Details about the picture here:
Presbytery of the Church of Santa Maria della Purità - Gallipoli (Lecce, Italy)