174 - Rescue of an Emperor

It is now at least 20 years since I shot a series of slides in Vienna’s Votivkirche, a neo-Gothic church erected between 1856 and 1879 to commemorate the rescue of Emperor Franz Joseph (yes, the one from the “Sissy” movies) from an attack. Read the whole story on Wikipedia. Funny. This person is so engraved into Austrian minds, that he is simply “The Emperor”, as if there were none before and none after him. This always reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ novel “El otoño del patriarca” ("The Autumn of the Patriarch"), a not entirely unfitting comparison for what our late Emperor really was 🙂

I was then fascinated by the light reflexes from the stained-glass windows, and when I was there Thursday noon I was struck again. Don’t get me wrong, this is Kitsch, not the real thing, but it is pleasant Kitsch and it is well executed.

I had no tripod with me but, using the Nikon 18-200 VR, it was possible to shoot at 1/8s hand held. Did I say that I love VR? And did I say I love Auto-ISO? All shots were made at 1/8s, but the camera automatically varied ISO between 200 and 1250, 1600 would have been allowed by my settings. Sure, some images have more noise than I would like, but none has more noise than necessary, given the light. Without Auto-ISO I would have had to change ISO all the time or, more likely, would have set it to 1600 and shot with that all the time.

The Song of the Day is an instrumental Jazz piece by the late Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, “The Emperor” from their 1986 album “Avant Pop”.