Salisbury Cathedral...from the Racecourse

At twilight and though I'm nearly 3 miles from it, the floodlit cathedral comes brighter and clearer as it gets darker, rising majestically above its surroundings, like a beacon.

It's a view I've often wanted to capture and with no tripod for my 70-300mm Tamron SP VC lens, I settled it all on a crooked fence post, which at least was the right height. Propped it up on my wallet and used the Mirror Up setting to help eliminate shake from the moving mirror in the camera.

Because it was almost impossible to see to focus accurately (AF definitely out, too dark and lack of contrast) I focussed manually as best I could and then stopped the lens right down, for better image quality and more depth of field, to hopefully overcome focus errors. A good wallop of extra post-sharpening and I have a pleasing result. I had to rotate the canvas too, to straighten out the crooked angle that the fence post offered, plus a bit of cropping.

As I said, I really like this scene on a warm summer's evening when out walking, it is so enthralling, so inviting and so comforting, despite not being a religious person. It might not have the creativity of my recent green wheatfield or drama of yesterday's sunset, but to me there is something about this late 'blue-hour' that is magical.

Have a look closer in LARGE

Have to, yet again, thank all who got the aforementioned sunset up into the Spotlight, it is as always much appreciated.

It is my father's 81st birthday tomorrow and naturally, I will be going down to visit and spending some quality time with him.