Valle Crucis Monastery 1

Valle Crucis Abbey 1, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Valle Crucis Monastery, near Llangollen in Wales. This is a typical architecture type of shot for me, making use of doorways and windows as elements and shapes composed in the frame. The sun was fairly well to the side on this shot, which helped to enhance the texture of the stonework. If I was going to do any more to this I might square it up a little in Photoshop using Image/Rotate/Arbitrary and perhaps rotate it clockwise one or two degrees. I might also go into Image/Adjust/Variations and make the image a bit warmer by adding red and yellow. This is one of the few shots i took in colour and it was the warmth of the colour of the stone that struck me.

Valle Crucis Monastery 2

Valle Crucus Abbey 2, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Valle Crucis Monastery, near Llangollen in North Wales. This is the Latin name for 'Vale of the Cross' and the Monastery, founded in 1200/1201 by Madoc ap Gruffydd for the Cistercian order, is considered to be the best preserved of the North Wales monasteries. It is situated near the base of the Horseshoe Pass. This shot was taken in black and white mode using a combination of red and polarising filters. I liked the way the sunlight caught the building against the dark hills in the background. If I were to do anything more to this shot, it would be to remove the car on the extreme left using pixel cloning.

Valle Crucis Monastery 3 Texture and shape

Valle Crucis Abbey 3, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Valle Crucis Abbey, near Llangollen, North Wales. When I arrived here the light was virtually side-on to the Monastery, so I was able to get a shot like this which highlights the texture of the stonework. I liked this complementary relationship between the rough texture and shape of the stonework, the natural shape and texture of the tree, and the smooth texture of the sky. After about half an hour, I left and took a trip up the nearby Horseshoe Pass, and returned to the Monastery about two hours later to take some more shots now that the sun had moved around in the sky to light up the building in a different way, enabling some different compositions.

Valle Crucis Abbey 4 - Light and shade

Valle Crucis Abbey 4, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Valle Crucis Monastery. I quite like this composition. The bases of the pillars and the wall on the extreme left, lead the eye to the doorway, and from there, the eye wanders to the windowed wall at the back of the ruin. The wall on the right also leads to this wall at the back of the ruin. I also like the balance of light and shade.