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Espada

I continue to work on scanning the negatives from my San Antonio Missions trip back in 2008. It is a laborious process to convert black and white medium format film to a digital image. First, I scan all the images into a directory.  Once I have a digital copy, I use Photoshop to remove chemical blemishes and dust spots. I then import them into Lightroom and fix the tonality, straighten and crop the image. Once I have a clean image I can then make it part of the collection. Each image takes about 20 minutes to scan and fix. I shot a total of 7 rolls of film with 12 images on each roll (82 images total).  Surprisingly enough, 95% of the images look acceptable.  I mentioned before that digital photography has made me less disciplined.  I noticed that my composition and exposure was much better with these images.  I’ve got to work on getting my discipline back…

The image below is of the front door of Mission Espada. The mission is actually named Mission San Francisco de la Espada.  It was established in 1690 by Spain in what was then known as northern New Spain.  The mission was built in order to convert local Native Americans to Christianity and solidify Spanish territorial claims in the New World against encroachment from France. Today, the structure is one of four missions that comprise San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. I posted about Mission San Jose and Mission Concepcion a few days ago.  I just love the craftsmanship and detailed design of the door. It has definitely stood up to time (325 years worth…). Modern doors would never survive this long!

Espada
Mission Espada – Main Door

This image was taken with my using my Mamiya 7 II with the Mamiya N4 80mm Lens . The camera was set on Aperture Priority mode, however, I don’t recall the aperture and shutter speed settings. I used Kodak Professional T-Max 400 (400 ISO) black and white negative film. I processed the film in my darkroom and scanned it using my Epson V750 scanner with a medium format negative tray. Final digital processing was completed in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

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© 2015 T. Kahler Photography

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