church

Fleetwood Church, Brandy Station, Virginia /  by Todd Henson

A front view of Fleetwood Church in Brandy Station, Virginia

Visible between a break in the trees along the side of James Madison Highway is Fleetwood Church in Brandy Station, Virginia, sitting between Brandy Road and the railroad tracks. It dates back to 1880 and was apparently actively used from 1881 through around 1974. It resides in the general area where many battles of the American Civil War occurred, including the Battle of Brandy Station, the largest cavalry engagement of the Civil War where in 1863 nearly 20,000 horsemen fought, resulting in nearly 1,300 men killed, captured, wounded or missing. A National Park Service website reports that Captain William W. Blackford, an aide of General J.E.B. Stuart remembered the carnage, later writing “Fleetwood Hill was covered so thickly after the battle with dead horses and men that there was not room to pitch the tents among them.”

Apparently, the church may have been built over what was once Brandy Graveyard, and given that and all the people who died in the area during the Civil War battles, it is reportedly known as a location of paranormal activity and has been featured in some TV programs and also hosts local events to help raise money to restore the church.

An angled view of Fleetwood Church. A black and white rendering felt appropriate for this old wooden church.

We had driven by on James Madison Highway many, many times over the years, always noticing and wondering about the church, but never took the time to figure out how to get there to photograph it. I wish I had as back in those days it hadn’t yet been under renovation with the scaffolding around portions of the building. But in Late September of 2024 my father and I were out driving and just happened to end up right there on Brandy Road where the church is located. So now I’ve finally created some photographs.

A wider view, and in color, of Fleetwood Church in Brandy Station, Virginia

Note, the church is privately owned and on private property, so respect the no trespassing signs. If you want to see inside the building then visit during one of the events sometimes held at the church.

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Winston Memorial Chapel, Culpeper, Virginia /  by Todd Henson

A split-toned side view of Winston Memorial Chapel in Culpeper, Virginia. Given the age and look of the chapel I thought the split-toned processing might work well to accentuate the age.

In early September (2024) my father and I happened to drive by an old decaying chapel in Culpeper, Virginia, and I decided to turn around and find a place to photograph it.

The location is known as Winston Memorial Chapel, built in 1908 by the Winston family and dedicated to the memory of their son who died in 1906. It’s a beautiful stone building based on a Celtic style with a Celtic cross atop the bell tower. There is a small cemetery on the grounds to the left of the chapel.

At the time it was built the road out front was gravel but today it’s a fairly busy highway, which is what stopped me on this trip from attempting to cross the road to get photographs of the front of the chapel, something I’d very much like to do. But there isn’t a lot of space on that side of the road and when we visited there was a lot of high speed traffic, so I stuck to just the side view.

Please note if you ever visit this location that there are many no trespassing and private property signs around the walls and the building, so please respect that. The building and stone walls surrounding the property are falling into disrepair but the grass inside and outside the walls and around the gravestones is mowed, so there is some maintenance being done around the property.

Here we see a full color view of Winston Memorial Chapel and the small but busy and high speed highway out front.

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Saint James’ Episcopal Church, Warrenton, Virginia /  by Todd Henson

Saint James’ Episcopal Church in Warrenton, Virginia

I haven’t photographed a lot of architecture, though I very much appreciate a beautiful building, and churches often make for very beautiful buildings. In this case my father and I happened to be in Warrenton, Virginia, and stumbled upon Saint James’ Episcopal Church.

History of Saint James’ Church

St. James’ is part of Hamilton Parish which was first established in 1730. St. James’, itself, was first constructed in 1816 in a different location and built of a wooden framework. The old church was sold in 1846 and rebuilt from brick in 1853 at the current location. A fire consumed the church in 1910, though it was quickly rebuilt with the current stucco and brick in the style of an English parish church, and services resumed in 1912. 

Photographing Saint James’ Church

Photographing a church like this can be a challenge for a number of reasons. This one is located on a small street and the building isn’t too far from the street, so there isn’t a lot of room to compose a photograph. I used a wide angle lens at 16 mm to get as much of the buildings in as possible. As you can see this resulted in power lines running in front of the buildings. If I’d stood under the power lines my lens wouldn’t have been wide enough to capture the scene and there would have been an enormous amount of geometric distortion.

Using a wide angle lens up close leads to several types of geometric distortion. Wide angle lenses tend to be very rounded and this causes straight lines to curve and angle, especially if the camera isn’t held level but instead angled up to try to get all of the building in the frame. They make lenses specifically to deal with these issues, called tilt-shift lenses, but I don’t currently own any and they have limitations of their own.

So I did the best I could to capture as much of the church and yard as possible. When I imported the images into Lightroom I had to decide whether and how to correct for any distortions. For the main photo at the top of this post I decided to both apply the lens-specific profile corrections that account for the specific distortions of my model of lens, and I also decided to use the Transform feature of Lightroom to further correct the image by trying to make horizontal lines horizontal and vertical lines vertical. This does end up cropping in more of the image so I did lose some of the edges. Click on the image below to flip between the corrected and uncorrected versions of the photo to see the differences.

Angled View of Saint James’ Church

Finally, I wanted to try an angled view to better capture the depth of the church. Of course, this created even more distortion because I was much closer to the building. In this case I chose to only apply lens-specific profile corrections to try to keep straight lines straight, but I didn’t apply any additional corrections of the Transform feature.

Angled view of Saint James’ Church

Click on the image below to flip between the corrected and uncorrected versions of the angled view of the church. These were just lens-specific profile corrections, not Transform corrections.

I still have a lot to learn about photographing buildings in tight spaces, but I look forward to the continued practice. One idea I have is to try using my fisheye lens in some situations and compare that to the more normal wide angle views. Of course, using a fisheye will introduce even more distortions, but we’ll see how well they can be compensated for in Lightroom.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of my attempts at photographing Saint James’ Episcopal Church.

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