This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge is a slightly unusual but very interesting one. We are asked to provide three images of a subject, showing progressively more detail.

To begin with, here is a conventional shot of the huge neo-gothic cathedral of Albi. It is massive: the walls are about twenty feet thick at the base. Begun in the 15th century, is is still the largest brick-built edifice in the world.

The main door is on the left, through the portico which is just visible in the bottom corner of the above image. Closer to, it looks like this:

That’s impressive enough in itself, with the human figures conveying an idea of the scale, but when you get to the actual doorway itself, you find it surmounted by this amazingly complex stonework.

(It occurs to me that it would be perfectly possible to continue the process of increasing detail by zooming in to some of that elaborate carving, like an almost endless set of Russian dolls.)

Lens-Artists Challenge: In the details