Perspective: Compression

Posted on March 12, 2024

I took this photo a few years ago on a coach trip to the town of Pompadour (home of the French National Stud). There’s an extravagantly-decorated chapel (The Chapel of St Blaise) in a nearby village and while inside I pointed my camera through the open door.

It looks almost like a framed two-dimensional picture, but the optical effect of using a long lens compresses the perspective so that in fact there are at least four ‘planes’ in the image. Beyond the door there are two unseen sidewalks and a road before you get to the steps, at the top of which is a narrow terrace before you get to the wall and the front door.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Interesting Perspectives

Category: Composition Tagged: Cee's Fun Foto Challenge, Chapel of St Blaise, compression, Perspective, Pompadour

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Mural in the Chapel of St Blaise

Posted on March 18, 2020

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge for this week gives me the opportunity to post another image taken in the Chapel of St Blaise in Pompadour. This follows on from this week’s Monday Window Challenge.

As a reminder, for the next few weeks Cee is asking us to pick up on an element of a photo she herself has posted. As the relevant image contains a mural, here is the dramatic painting behind the altar in St Blaise’s. The whole of the interior – walls and ceiling, totalling some 300 square metres – is covered in similar images with the same colour scheme. It’s not the Sistine Chapel, but it is certainly quite spectacular in its own way.