San Francisco de Asis New Mexico

This is a very famous church that was made famous by Georgia O'Keeffe

in her paintings and Ansel Adams in his photographs, to name a few. Of

course I wanted to mimic Ansel's image but the lighting was wrong for

that image and there was some construction in the way. After taking my

first image the "Four Crosses" which I posted earlier , I pondered

this image but I was concerned about the fir tree branches. The sky

was beautiful and I liked the perspective that the road gave me and

the distant building added a nice secondary focal point, so I decide

to go for it. Besides I have never seen a photograph of this side of

the church. This was a normal exposure and development on T-Max film.

I used a medium yellow filter to darken the sky and enhance the adobe.

I used curves adjustment layers to enhance and darken the sky and

separate the various shades of white in the lower clouds. I soften the

sky with a Gaussian blur to further enhance the softness of the cloud

layers. As far as the church goes, my main objective was to adjust my

curve adjustment layers until the adobe appeared round and three

dimensional. By adjusting the shadows there comes a point where the

shadows maintain a glow and appear to be filled with light and at the

same time the building has dimension. The Ectalure Cream tone is

prefect match for adobe. Your comments are welcome.

This image is really amazing, and your exposure here is very great, the only 2 things I wished here, 1= the image should have been tilted slightly to the right, to gain a uniform perspective.

 

2= the branches of the tree do not add anything to this image but disturbing it, and should been cloned.

 

I thing also the composition without the other buildings on the far of the back ground, they do not match the aging factor of your subject, that why your subject without those building would stand with more powerful impact.

 

 

Wishing you all of the best

Gorgeous work, Leo! I never had the chance to capture anything remotely close to this unfortunately. Vintage New Mexico, and a superb composition and exposure. Wonderful image and processing. A 7/6 anonymously. Cheers! Chris