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After an all too short walk down Main Street in Park City (see my previous post here) we headed to Downtown Salt Lake City to visit the Catholic Cathedral of the Madeline. This is a physically impressive building on the east side of downtown Salt Lake City, located on the busy street of ‘South Temple’ and nestled into a substantial hill which makes parking fun, and walking around the cathedral a good workout.

The view of the Cathedral as seen from the sidewalk of South Temple street. The church is level the ground is not! It slopes up to the right and also upwards behind the church.
9 exp HDR

Leaving late from Park City we arrived after almost everyone else, as we approached the church I caught the amazing Karen Hutton taking this shot of the front of the Cathedral with what I presume is her fisheye lens.

Karen Hutton getting the shot! Sadly this is my only non-HDR shot for this blog post.

On our way out of the Cathedral I set up in the same spot and captured this shot with my 10-20mm, it’s no fisheye but I liked the extreme distortion, thanks for the inspiration Karen!

9 exp HDR

The Cathedral of the Madeline is a treasure that I haven’t fully appreciated during my life, in fact this was only the second time I have ever been inside. The first time was back in 1994 while I was still dating my wife, and I must admit that after having just come home from 2 years of living in Italy and seeing all the amazing cathedrals there I was less than impressed by this little back water cathedral (at least that was my impression at the time, I mean wooden floors, really?) Fortunately the passage of many years has softened me a bit (in more ways than one) and I’m completely in love with the beauty of this majestic Cathedral, the renovations and cleaning made in recent years have really enhanced the look of the church. However with it being a large and dimly lit church I decided to use HDR for all the shots so fair warning. I also shot everything in wide angle, but I think I missed a lot of good shots doing so, however this gives me a good excuse to re-visit the church so I don’t feel too bad about missing some shots.

Well lets get started with some interior shots then!

The redesigned Altar and Chancel. 9 exp HDR

The Altar, Chancel and the west Transept. 9 exp HDR

I'm not sure what they call this but it sits in the Chancel behind the Rood Screen. I love the bold blue color and stars of the Chancel's ceiling. 9 exp HDR

The Altar and Chapel (Nave) seen through the Rood Screen. 9 exp HDR

This was located next to the confessionals. 9 exp HDR

Located in the east side Transept, this angel statue was too interesting to not shoot. 9 exp HDR

I couldn't get enough of these Dragon candlesticks! 9 exp HDR

A closer view in black and white. 9 exp HDR

The view from the Altar:

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A closer view of the organ:

9 exp HDR

By this time most of the group had moved on and we were trailing behind as usual, we made our way out to the entrance lobby where I was able to finally meet Thomas Hawk and his wife if only very briefly, too briefly in fact as I never had a chance to talk with Thomas for the whole walk which I really had wanted to do, as I’ve followed his work for a long time. (They were even farther behind the others than we were, and obviously in a hurry) To make our timing worse my friend Heather Webb had found the candle room off to the side so we couldn’t resist taking some shots in there as well.

Some seriously tough lighting conditions in here! 9 exp HDR

9 exp HDR

9 exp HDR

After this we left for a stop by my wife’s work downtown to park the cars for the rest of the day and to grab a bite before moving on to the Downtown Library our next stop on the photowalk.

I couldn't resist adding a black and white version of the street view to end on. 9 exp HDR

Happy Shooting!

Howard