Photographing stained glass windows - a how to guide

The brightest part of the interior is usually the sunlight projected on the lovely stained glass windows. These are often a fair distance from you, so the camera cannot fill the frame with just the window. Take our example above, the automatic exposure system of the camera will record the dark surrounds and the bright window and will often get the exposure wrong. It will either compensate for the surrounding area making the window area too bright (above left) or expose for the light coming through the window, making the surrounds black (above right). The picture on the left is more pleasing, but the detail in the window is ruined. There's not a lot you can do about this it's an either or situation, unless you can get permission to use flash and then you can use a painting with light technique. This is far too complex to cover in detail here, but the basic idea is you set the camera up on a tripod, with a long exposure. You'll need ND filters to prevent the windows being overexposed. Then you point the flash at the various recesses and fire it on full power to illuminate all the dark areas. It's a tricky technique to master and in most buildings you will need a photography permit which will cost you a few pounds.

The other thing you can do is take two shots; one exposing for the shadows, the other for the highlights and carefully combine both in an image editing program. Again this is only for the advanced user as a lot of complex manipulation will be necessary.

If you decide to fill the frame with just the stained glass window you can usually rely on the auto metering, unless it's really bright outside and then you will need to compensate by about one stop over exposure.

Angle of view
The designer of the architectural delight you are photographing would not have considered you, the photographer, in his plans. The window you are about to photograph will probably not have a pillar to support your camera exactly where you want it - aligned parallel to the centre of the window. So you're likely to have to photography it at an angle and from below so you'll capture a photograph like the one on the right.
This can be corrected digitally. If you take this sort of shot on a film camera, use a scanner to convert the photo to digital. With a digital photo open in you image editing program select all (Ctrl+A) and locate the Transform tool. In Photoshop Elements this is intheImage>Transform menu.
Pick the Distort option and drag all four corners outwards so that the image looks square on.

It's easy to straighten up a photo like this using the Transform tool because there are many horizontal and vertical lines as reference points.

With the picture transformed we will now crop to the indicated area to remove the less interesting areas of the window. Draw around the picture using the crop tool and click in the middle to activate it. This leaves a square photo and because of the angle we shot at the panels within the window are squashed. Simple select image size turn off proportions and adjust the height by about 30% to stretch the proportions and make a more natural looking portrait format shot.

In this example the two photographs were taken using the camera in horizontal format. Both from the same position but one framing the top half of the window and the other framing the bottom half. Allow a fifth of the frame for overlap. Then use a stitching program to combine the two. Roxio PhotoSuite and Photoshop Elements include one in their programs. The photo was stretched using the previously explained technique.