Saint George and the Dragon: The information panel next to the painting says it is one of the earliest paintings on canvas in the National Gallery.
Blood is flowing to the ground from the would inflicted by St George’s lance.
But then the dragon seems to be pacified and tamed already because the woman standing there calmly is holding a leash or chain around the neck of the dragon.
So why the need for George to attack the dragon at all? And George looks too young to be fighting dragons. He looks like he knows what he is doing though and his horse looks very capable.
But what is it with the grass laid out in a pattern of rectangles?
All in all, one of my favourite paintings.
Artist
Paolo Uccello (about 1397-1475) Painted about 1470
In town I spotted a six-wheel Range Rover and so of course I photographed it. Then a short man and his wife appeared and I thought they might own the car. But it became clear that they were intrigued by the car, just as I was.
The man and the woman were wearing Panama hats. In fact, I have seen more Panama hats recently than in the whole of my life, barring perhaps when I was in Panama.
When the man walked around the car I brought him into the frame, mostly for the Panama hat.
Tech Info
Ricoh GR III at 1/1250th of a second at f4 and ISO 1250. And there’s a lesson there, which is that for years I have fought against bumping up my ISO for fear that the noise would overpower the signal.
But look at these shots – there is no noise to speak of. And what I have learned is that as long as there is good light (as here) then high ISO is not a problem. And I didn’t use any kind of noise reduction – just a RAW file with normal processing. ‘Normal’ means I generally bump the blacks and maybe raise the exposure. And that’s it.
And in this metropolis, each will have a balcony and be able to see the sky and a passing cloud.
Those in lower floors will be compensated for lack of a view the sky and a passing cloud by being able to save time reaching their floor when exiting and entering the block.
This room in the National Gallery is devoid of paintings because the Gallery is carrying out works to its research centre and wants to avoid affecting any paintings that might be hung in this the adjacent room.
A notice said that the works in the research centre are expected to be completed in 2027, so there is plenty of time to see this empty room.
The Barriers
One nice little touch is that the rope barriers that deter visitors from crossing and perhaps touching the paintings, are still there.
Technical Info
I shot this with a Canon EOS R6 at f3.5 at 1/200th of a second and ISO 5000.
I shot at ISO 5000 because of the low light.
The base ISO of this camera is ISO 100, so that’s 5.64 stops lower than ISO 5000.. Each stop means doubling the sensitivity of the sensor to that light. The sensor can do it but at the expense of more noise along with the signal.
To put it another way, the sensor ‘developed’ the scene with less than 1/50th of the light it would have had available if it could shoot at base ISO.
In fact I could have shot at base ISO, but then I would have had to shoot at a much slower shutter speed – and who knows how still I could have held the camera, even with the stabilisation on the lens and in the camera body.
And if the people had moved, then stabilisation wouldn’t have helped.
So I chose a higher ISO on the principle that sharp is better than the risk of blur from camera shake or subject movement, even at the expense of noise.
And just look at the woman’s face and how clean and clear it is. That is a testament to the sensor and processor in the R6 at high ISO.
