As a non-religious person my interest in churches has always been... hmm... how shall I put it? ... rather limited. But since my photography hobby got the best of me in the last few years, I have come to appreciate them more... if only as photo subjects.

So the other day when my wife and I went on a weekend excursion to Roskilde, one of the things I was looking forward to the most was to explore Roskilde Cathedral with my camera. Now, Roskilde Cathedral is one of the largest and oldest churches in Denmark where many important people from Danish history are buried, including kings and queens.

Roskilde Cathedral was built during the 12th and 13th century (according to Wikipedia), and while it may not compare with famous cathedrals of Rome or London, it's plenty impressive and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We were a little late in getting there so we only had about 30 minutes inside the church before they closed for the day. As we entered, one of the elderly ladies at the ticket desk told me to take my hat off. I obliged, of course, but immediately felt unwelcome and out of place. At first, I was afraid to even get my camera out and get on with the shooting, but when I did, no verger tackled me or grabbed my collar, so I started to relax a bit.

And relaxing was necessary, because I did not bring either my tripod or monopod, and like most churches this one was not well lit, requiring fairly long exposures for hand-held shots of about 1/5 second.

So first we have some indoor shots. The first one is actually not hand-held. I put the camera on the stairs leading up to the chapel and set it to a 2-second time delay.

The second shot is purely hand-held and shows the beautiful chapel.

The next one is a panorama made with my beloved cell phone camera. Normally you wouldn't want people in a church shot, but I think this father and his child grace the image and add just the right amount of disturbance in an otherwise very clean shot.

Another cell phone panorama. I can't get tired of those. Google+ made an automatic version of it that I kind of like, but of course it's a bit too outrageous to put on a serious photo site like this!

The below picture is an HDR shot using three exposures and denoised with Topaz Denoise, which I'm still learning to use. This part of the church is where the famous King Christian IV is buried.

Moving outside the church presented the opposite lighting problem: too much light. The sun was still high in a blue sky and created some harsh shadows that had to be fixed in post-processing.

Even my wide-angle lens wasn't quite wide enough to get the whole church in one shot, so the two first images were stitched together from two images that were shot top-down.

The below image was perhaps my favorite of the day, shot just as the sun disappeared behind that little dome.

Altogether, I was very happy with my output from that day. Still, we returned the next day because of some clouds that were hovering over Roskilde that I thought would add a little extra drama. The last one is another cell phone panorama.

My photographer guru Scott Kelby has written something to the effect that no self-respecting photographer will shoot outdoor pictures in the middle of the day. The blue hour and altogether the light around sunrise and sunset is the only light worth using.

Well, even though he's my guru, and even though I of course agree that those times of day are the best to shoot in, I have two problems with that: 1) using HDR you can do a lot to compensate for the harsh light of mid-day, and 2) if I could only shoot during those early and late hours, I'd hardly shoot at all. I know that part of it is laziness and unwillingness to get up early enough to catch the sunrise, or lift my butt from the couch in the evening. But when photography is not your main occupation, real life just makes it very difficult to get out there with your camera when you ought to. And even if you do have the opportunity, the weather might be a hindrance, especially in a country such as mine where it seems a thick cloud layer will often block any magical light that the sun might otherwise have served you with.

So, I'm sorry, Mr. Kelby, but I will continue to shoot even when the sun is high in the sky and the shadows are harsh and try to make the best of it. That's why the other day I ventured into Copenhagen to spend some time doing a little mid-day urban photo exploration -despite a clear blue sky and Scott Kelby's admonitions - and here's what happened:

The above is a revisit of a motif I shot months ago with my cell phone: the corner of Danish Industry's HQ in downtown Copenhagen. The original picture went on to become my most popular submission to YouPic so far, much to my own suprise. Well, I wanted to do it again with my "real" camera and it turned out pretty well too.
This one is my favorite from that day: the underneath of a new elevated bike path among modern glass facades. Conditions were difficult for taking pictures with, indeed, harsh shadows and even harsher sun reflections in the water. This was put together from three different shots.

One of my goals for the day was to take pictures of trains. I did take a bunch, but nothing too spectacular. This one was my favorite. I love the wide railroad area near Copenhagen Central Station.

Another revisit of a scene I took with my cell phone more than a year ago that turned out really well. This isn't too shabby either. And yes, while I think this mid-day picture is perfectly fine, I can only imagine how gorgeous that glass facade must look in a beautiful, colorful sunset.

A canal in the part of Copenhagen called Christianshavn. The canals were one of my main objectives of the day, too, but I didn't quite find the right spots. This one turned out okay, but the light definitely was a challenge that again required three different exposures put together to overcome the shadows and the highlights.

One of the things I realized on that day was that urban photography is often made difficult because of all the cars that are everywhere and that just get in the way of all the interesting buildings and other objects. Here I tried to make them work to my advantage in how the shiny metal contrasts the old buildings.

Finally, you may ask, where are all the people? Isn't that an important part of taking pictures in the city? Well, maybe. But that's where the landscape photographer in me takes control. In landscape photography, people are usually just in the way. So on that day at least, I avoided places with lots of people. Maybe that will be a challenge for another day.