Light and shade as Masons let us into their world

Accompanied by a reporter, we arrived to be met by a handful of members from the NSW chapter, including the Grand Master, Dr Gregory H Levenston, who accompanied us on the tour.

Naively, I thought there’d be dungeons or men in robes chanting Latin carrying candles through dimly lit halls, but no such luck. Just four blokes with smiles from ear to ear welcoming us into their Lodge.

The one common theme throughout the Lodge is the Masons use of the symbolism of the tools of the medieval stonemason, the Square and Compass, which in one form or shape appeared in most of the artwork which adorned the walls and appears on many old Freemason halls dotted across rural Australia.

The aim of the tour was to lift the veil of secrecy from what the Freemasons, a fraternal society that exists all over the world with its origins tracing back to medieval times.

As I discovered, the society shares with a philosophical belief in a Supreme or “higher” being. A giant “G” hangs from most of the Lodge rooms, which I was told stood for “The Grand Architect”. As it was explained, the Grand Architect could represent anything from Vishnu, Jesus Christ or anything you personally regarded as “a higher being”.

Photographically, the brief was to capture the experience of the Masonry tour, as it was one of the only times media had been through the doors, despite it being freely open to the public.

So, I shot it as it happened, walking room to room, floor to floor, watching our guide, Deputy Chris Craven, a Deputy Grand Secretary with the Freemasons, explain the history and relevance of the various objects, old clothing, books, artworks and furniture decorating the Lodge. Shooting in the light, at a very high ISO rating, ensured I had moody frames that were sharp… mostly.

I also shot various generics for any other stories relating to the Freemasons. As it turned out, The Daily Telegraph was reviewing Brown’s book and used them as illustrations the day after we published.

The photographic exception was of a portrait of the Grand Master, Dr Gregory H Levenston, whom, after the tour, I asked to pose in the room I felt reflected this dark, relatively little known society. He had already been put through the press ringer, by a TV news crew who had asked him to perform every setup idea under the sun - walking this way, that way, opening that cupboard. You get the idea.

So after the TV crew had left, I ushered him into one of the lodge rooms for what promised to be a very quick portrait. I used A/L at 2000 ISO and metered his skin tone standing underneath a tungsten light. The beauty of the room was its moodiness, with spot lighting, down lighting and little incandescent light bulbs scattered from the roof to the floor. Simply, it was a matter of getting this Grand Master into a reasonable composition and letting the lighting do the work for me.

Subtly underexposing the image ensured the background highlights weren’t too blown out and resulted in the image being saturated in colour and tone. Asking the GM to look towards the tungsten downlights showered him in a warm yellow glow against the sky blue roof and red painted walls.

We left as quickly we arrived, into the lift, onto the street, into a cab and on to our next job.

Sadly, no-one was chanting Latin at the next assignment either.