In our Rhein River cruise this summer one of the stops was in Speyer, Germany,  Amidst the tours of all the grand cathedrals along the way was this little Lutheran church in the town of Speyer.  It's interesting that in the land where Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation in 1517 we visited only one Lutheran Church.  But then the Lutheran's weren't as intent on creating enormous edifices.

This little church captivated me from the moment I walked in.  We entered near the front and I gasped as I saw the gold encrusted alter crowned by the pipes of the enormous pipe organ.  It was breathtaking.  During the short time we spent in the church my eyes kept being drawn back to the alter. 

The photograph was going to be difficult.  I didn't have a tripod so was shooting handheld and therefore was limited to fairly short shutter speeds.  The image stabilized lens helped out here quite a bit though.  The challenge was going to be to expose the shadowy areas while still holding the highlights on the parts of the floor that was getting direct sunlight through the clear windows.  So I had to watch the histogram closely as I composed the shot.

I originally shot this in landscape orientation.  But there was a person setting in the pew just to my right that was in the frame.  I was hoping to be able to clone stamp the person out in Photoshop. But it wasn't to be. So I changed the orientation to vertical and cropped the person out.  I liked the original landscape orientation but like the vertical just as well.

The post processing focused first on getting the dynamic range under control. The Recovery and Fill Light adjustments in Lightroom did a good job.  In Photoshop I used a contrast mask to further bring the highlights under control and give them more detail.  It worked out well.  The last thing was to emphasize the alter and organ pipes by brightening them a little.  This is the focal point of the photograph and doesn't need to be hiding in the shadows.

The final print is really exciting.  The gold glitters in a way that is not visible on the website. I'm very pleased with the way this image turned out.