Landscape Photography – Mission Bell

Here's another shot taken last weekend in Goliad, Texas at the Mission Espiritu Santo de Zu iga, a beautifully reconstructed Franciscan mission from the 1700 s. For every mission there must be a bell to call folks to worship and this is no exception.

Mission Bell
Copyright 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM tripod-mounted with a Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer attached. The exposure was taken at 70mm, f/11 for 1/80th of a second at ISO 100 on Lexar Professional digital film. Post capture processing was done in Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 (details below). Click on the image above for a larger version.

I decided to try a little different approach in post processing on this image. I had taken this image using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer, so not much really needed to be done in post.

I originally envisioned this shot as a black & white or duotone image and began the RAW conversion in Lightroom 2 as I normally would by correcting the exposure, adding some contrast and tweaking the luminance of the sky slightly.

The image really started to look nice with the warm details of the Mission set against the deep blue sky and white clouds as you can see here.

I almost stopped right here and gave up on the idea of a B&W or duotone image but then I remembered a simple little Photoshop trick that I'd learned from one of Matt Kosklowski's videos on Kelby Training.

I cloned the background layer and converted it to grayscale using Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro plug-in filter with the "Soft Sepia" option. Then I simply set the new layer's opacity to around 28% to give the finished imaged a warm, high contrast but desaturated look. I also lightened the bell just enough to bring out the highlights on it. This is a really simple way to add a little contrast and color to a black & white or duotone image and took about 5 minutes in Photoshop CS4.

Posted in Photography Tagged: Canon, Canon 5D Mark II, Goliad State Park, Photography, Texas State Parks, Texas Towns