Roses for Mary

I took this picture last night when I was at the Mary Immaculate Church. This is the grotto [a place where people come to pray or put flowers] at around 7pm. I was there with my family for the Intercession [Prayer Group]. So anyways, we arrived early so we decided to visit the grotto for the first time [we've always walked by but never stopped there].

When we got there we saw a friend from the intercession sitting there and my sister and my mum went and sat on the bench too. I took my camera out just to see whether I could get some good photos and as I walked towards the bench, a sudden flash of inspiration hit me when I saw the silhouettes and the shadows created by the grotto, I instantly imagined what the scene would look like if it were rendered in High Dynamic Range.I got to work trying to get pictures of the scene, but then, armed with no tripod whatsoever and in the dark, it was difficult to get a clear and bright shot of the scene.

All I could do was improvise and sat on the ground, used my knee as a mount like a tripod and out of desperation for faster shutter speed, I hit ISO 1600 and took the photos in raw mode with exposure bracketing. I knew the noise and quality would haunt me in post later but all I could think of was getting all 3 exposures perfectly.

When I was done taking the pictures and walked towards them, my sister told me that she saw an apparition of Mother Mary wearing a white robe and blue veil walk towards them and then vanished. The grotto has always been a place where many people have had extraordinary experiences and I guess my sister was lucky to be one of those who are able to witness such a miracle.

When I got home, sure enough the noise was horrifying and it took alot of work in photoshop to remove all the noise after Tone Mapping the 3 pictures in Photomatix.

Settings:
Av mode
F-Stop: f/1.8
ISO Speed: ISO-1600
Focal Length: 50mm