Weekend Shooter: The Red Brick Church in Berkshire, NY

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I live next to a church that sits right on the corner of Route 38 and Glen Rd here in Berkshire, N.Y. It's a pretty neat looking old building. I have no idea how long it has been around for - I'm guessing a while anyway. Admittedly, I don't spend much time in churches - most of my Sunday's are at races or football games. I did happen to pop into this particular church a year or two ago - they were having a bake sale, or maybe a blood drive? I don't know - I forget now - but I had to physically go inside of the place. Once in I happened to get a peak of the main room where the pews and stuff are. I decided right then and there that I had to speak with the "Padre", as I call him, and see if I could get permission to shoot the interior of his church 'cause it looked pretty cool in there. :) ( I'm guessing maybe he's a "Minister"? It's not a Catholic church -- I dunno what kind it is -- but I like Clint Eastwood's use of Padre from some of his old westerns ... <grin> )

The Padre' here at this church - he's a pretty cool and interesting guy whom I have met on more than a few occasions locally and he was more than willing to hear me out. We agreed that I should just keep in touch and let him know if /when we wanted to see if we could do this. That was late last summer. This past Thursday morning I happened to notice that the (now low and early rising sun) was basking the church once again as seen in the top photo. It was time to speak with the Padre' ...

My thinking is that the church, being situated and facing more or less to the east, early morning sunlight would be best. I'd hoped to catch the stained glass windows getting illuminated via mr. sun and the interior in general taking on a nice "glow".

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I'll be adding more photo's to this post over the next few days .. I wound up bracketing and doing some HDR as it was pretty dark in there. We turned up a couple of the lights but that just killed the atmosphere that I wanted / was looking for so - tripod, cable release and slow'ish shutter speeds were the order of the day.