Panos from Toulouse

I’ve just come back from an impromptu holiday in Toulouse and was able to take panoramas of a few of the historic and beautiful churches there. In particular, I was able to spend some time in Notre-Dame du Taur (panorama) and Notre-Dame de la Daurade. I did manage a pano in the Cathedral St Etienne in the Chapel of St Joseph as shown above. The full panorama can been seen at 360Cities.

A particular challenge taking panoramas in churches is capturing the beauty of the stained glass windows. In general, it is difficult to get a photo that shows the richness of their colours yet still allowing the interior of the church to be seen since the contrast range is tremendous. It is especially hard when they are part of a full panorama. This can be overcome with a lots of patience and work in post-processing, I have developed an exposure blending technique that avoids the heavily processed “HDR look” yet preserves the intensity of light stream through the stained glass windows. The example here shows the South Chapel of Notre-Dame du Taur. This is especially important in dark churches where the windows would otherwise be white if the photo was exposed for the rest of the church.