Cedarwood Worship Tour

Photography in Challenging Light

Our brother, David had the vision a few years ago to create a Christian Music festival in the North East. He chose to name it after on of the strongest trees in the world, the Cedar tree which would represent a single church community. When you combine many of these tress together to you get a Cedarwood, which represents the strength of the whole church when we put aside our differences and stand together. It’s a vision I share and very excited to get behind. It has opened up many opportunities for me, helped me meet some incredibly inspirational people, and even got a couple of very special brothers out of it.

Last year we did a worship tour leading up to the festival day which helped us to bring many volunteers onboard and get people excited about the festival. It was a pretty big tour with 9 venues on the calendar, but of course our brother who can’t do anything small had to go bigger and better this year. What better way to go big than to do the tour in some of the oldest places of worship in the North East of England, many of which where up to and over 1000 years old. And so the Cathedral Tour was born, and with it, some of the biggest challenges a photographer will ever encounter. Very challenging lighting conditions with no of off camera speed-lights of strobes.

Many of these medieval places of worship have beautifully painted ornaments and colourful tapestries which are hundreds of years old. They are very valuable historical artefacts which are not colour fast, making them very sensitive to UV light, including photography lighting equipment. You will notice that when you leave a box on the window for months one end, the sun will bleach the colour out of one sides of that box that where exposed to the light and the sides which where not exposed to the light retain their colour. The flashes in our camera equipment have similar UV rays which over decades can damage many of these historical artefacts. This means that we cannot us our speed-lights and strobes in the buildings at all. This means that we have to sacrifice something to get the photos that we need, which when working in these lighting conditions, means we sacrifice the ISO and aperture.

When we’re photographing musicians, we need to use a fast shutter speed as close to 1/250 as possible in order to freeze them in motion. To do this we must use a high ISO and a wide aperture. The downside to this is that we have a lot of digital noise which doesn’t look great on colour photos. One of the design decisions that we had to make was to turn the photos to black and white, which looks amazing with grainy photography.  Even with the challenges this tour gave us, it has been an incredible experience and I have learnt so much more about my craft, providing an opportunity to pass on that knowledge to you guys to help you take great photos in these challenging lighting situations.

Hexham Abby

One of the oldest places of worship on the tour is Hexham Abby which originally became a place of worship in 674 AD. It was built up to its current form in the 12th century, with additions being made in the 20th Century. It was truly an incredible building to begin the worship tour and we where made to feel incredibly welcome by the people who call Hexham Abby their home church. The atmosphere and acoustics where incredibly beautiful and I would highly recommend attending a concert there if you ever have the opportunity.

Hexham Abby has perhaps some of the most challenging lighting conditions I’ve ever encountered, made harder with no sunlight coming through the windows on a February evening. Many people forget that our eyes are amazing, and what appears to be good light for our eyes often good light for our camera. For the entire event I had to use the 50mm prime lens open all the way to f/1.8 at all times. Any attempts to use the kit lens failed as it was just too dark. I maxed out the ISO for the entire time which meant that the photos where very noisy. In post, I’ve used adobe noise reduction software to the best of it’s ability. It eliminated a lot of the noise, however a lot of the sharpness is lost during this process.

Cathedral Church of St Nicolas, Newcastle

The Cathedral Church of St Nicolas was second stop on our Cathedral tour, although it isn’t a true Cathedral . It is however, no less spectacular and a dream venue to work in. Being a city that many of us on the team see as our home city, it was a very special and meaningful addition to the worship tour. It was built in 1091, shortly after the Norman invasion and just down the road from Newcastle Castle that the city gets it’s name from.

Hexham Abby was a very difficult venue to work in, but St Nicolas made the Abby feel like doddle. Again, I had to use the 50mm lens opened up to f/1.8 and the ISO maxed out, but this time I struggled to get my shutter speed over 1/100, often having to underexpose the photos to get the shutter speed that I needed and relying of Adobe Lightroom to adjust the exposure. This also meant extra noise and having to make the software work harder, but I manage to pull it off.

Durham Cathedral

Durham Cathedral is perhaps one of the most recognisable and prestigious venues on the Worship Tour. The Norman’s started building it in 1093, replacing the city's previous 'White Church'. Over the centuries there have been parts demolished and new parts built onto the building as different people came into power and wanted to leave their signature on the building. I’m sure many of you are Potter-Heads, just like me and will recognise the Cloisters of Durham Cathedral as one of the courtyards in the Harry Potter films.

Wowsers, what an amazing building Durham Cathedral was to work in. We where made to feel very welcome by the staff who made us feel like we where part of their family. Us photographers where blessed to have the best light of all the venues on the tour meaning we could work with a lower ISO, as well as having plenty of space to move around without getting under the feet of your customers. It was a great venue to test the f/2.8 105mm lens for the first time which allowed me to create incredible depth to many of the photos and also get up close to the musicians without being intrusive. Durham Cathedral also had some great places next to the performance area to get up high so we where able to get a different perspective.

Ripon Cathedral

The Cathedral was built in 476, making it one of the UK’s oldest buildings, and the oldest place of worship on the tour. Ripon city is the oldest city in England, even predating London, but unlike London which is one of the largest cities in England, Ripon is one of the smallest cities in England. Ripon Cathedral is the smallest Cathedral we worked in, one of the most beautiful venues with it’s incredible glass and has what I can only describe as a homely feel.

Despite the challenging lighting conditions, reminiscent of those in Hexham Abbey, I found myself well-prepared after numerous encounters. Armed with my trusty 50mm lens at f/1.8 and the versatile 105mm lens at f/2.8, I was able to document the night well, successfully capturing its memorable moments.  

Holly Bush Farm, Thirsk

We had originally planned to end the worship tour at York Minster, but sadly it just wasn’t to be. Instead we descended on Holly Bush Farm early for a time of worship and to record some promo videos. There may be one out there with me turning the Geordie in my accent up to 100.

The big church is an incredible building and a photographer’s dream. With the balcony along three walls of the church, we loved being able to get up high. With all the lights on and the sun steaming through the open doors and windows, we had pretty good lighting.  It was a blessing to be about to have our ISO a little lower this time, and an unexpected additional blessing was a major new update on Adobe Lightroom and RAW converter with the AI noise reduction software.  It’s honestly like an answer to prayer and worth the 30 minutes per photo to be able to bring back an incredible amount of detail that was previously lost when shooting at a high ISO.  A true game changer, along with many of the other updates Adobe are rolling out.

Conclusion

We dedicated a tremendous amount of effort to the worship tour, with the Media Team tirelessly working late nights to prepare and publish content. Despite feeling like the tour passed by too quickly, we are thrilled to reunite for this month's Festival, reconnecting with team members we haven't seen in years. Our journey has been filled with both triumphs and challenges, often accompanied by tears, but we have persevered. As we finalize arrangements with the volunteer team, it's likely our big bro Seymour along side little bro David are once again going above and beyond to make it all happen.

We would love to see you there. if you would like a little more information about the festival, the mission and to see the work we’ve done so far, please head to Instagram, Facebook or the Cedarwood website.