Corridor, San Juan Capistrano

I recently returned from a month in Southern California and I took lots and lots of pictures! I visited Zion Canyon, three of the California missions, and spent a lot of time in Balboa Park. I have always loved the missions and over the years have done a lot of photography at the missions but I have never been satisfied with my results. On this occasion, I think I may have been more successful and over the next few weeks I shall see if this is true as I shall work primarily on the pictures I took at the missions.

The day I went to Mission San Juan Capistrano was not planned; it was a decision made at the last moment and because it was a Saturday, I knew that it would be crowded, and that it would be a challenge to photograph there.

Anyone who knows my work, knows that I love corridors, so it was only natural that I would want to photograph this corridor. Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped into the corridor, I heard shouts from behind me, and realized that an entire camera club had decided to take the same picture! I beat a hasty retreat and returned much later when the group had left. When I did return, I had to be very patient in waiting for the corridor to clear of visitors!

In processing this image, I first had to deal with the length of the corridor and I wanted great depth of field, so when I took the picture, I did several exposures, focussing from near to far, and I then used Helicon Focus to blend the images to achieve the good depth of field. I worked to emphasize the light coming through the openings from the left, and toned the image slightly as this seemed to increase the sense of presence.

[photo for week of 19 April 2010]

© David Butts, 2010