St Johns Church Edinburgh

One of my favourite personal things to photograph is church and temple panoramas. While I don’t have a religion myself I love the history and architecture of these buildings.

While completing the final project of the HND I studied in Birmingham I did a series of 360 degree panoramics which included 360 degree interior photos of Lichfield Cathedral. I exhibited these around three months before I moved to Edinburgh and the show turned out really successful.

As part of a long term project for which I want to shoot the interiors of churches all around the UK, which I’ll make a book of eventually, I asked for permission to shoot the interior of St Johns Church at the end of Princes Street in Edinburgh. They really loved the images I turned out and a year and a half after the initial meeting commissioned me to photograph both the inside and outside of this attractive church.

St Johns Church also contains the graves of some quite famous people for which I’ll be updating the info here in due course.

The images below are not all but a good majority of the photos that I shot. Some of the photos have comments but I hope you like them.

The above two images are two of my favourites of recent times. I shot this was a 1.3x crop Canon 1d3 but with a 35mm lens. My widest lens after this is a 14mm fisheye but this is impractical for this kind of image. I shot the above with a Really Right Stuff pano kit and the resulting image is equivalent to 11mm. I’ll be doing an article about RRS’ products soon.

This is the image that got me the commission with St Johns and one that they are using on their postcards and also on mugs. While I like to think my 360 degree images can be used for more than mugs they fit them perfectly.

I was originally due to start shooting the outdoor panoramics at the end of July but I was fully booked with weddings. Then the Fringe came along which made photography impossible as a large part of the graveyard is taken about the shows. Following the Fringe I was again booked with weddings but about two weeks before we went to Spain I went in and shot these panoramics.

Around the end of November, beginning of December, it snowed constantly for around a week. Sadly I was working most of the time but I did get out and take these panoramics of St Johns graveyard as well as some photos of Dean Village.

In the foreground is St Cuthberts church. The director at St John’s wanted a view from the side of church (took it from the edge in the photo below). St Cuthberts has an almost Russian feel to it but I like it.

Like a couple of the images taken in St Johns this again is shot with a 35mm lens but stitched together. The resulting image was around 10mm but it’s really sharp throughout.

The above is a vertical panoramic of St Cuthberts with Edinburgh Castle in the background.

The above few photos are a collection of some of the gravestones I shot at St Johns. I will update the photos with some names when I have the time but I believe some of the graveyard residents are quite famous (in Scotland at least).

For more photos like these check out the rest of my blog or go to Chris Radley Photography