California Missions 2.1 | Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa

Quite some time ago I started a personal project to photograph all of the California Missions. To date I have photographed a whopping three of them:

• Mission San Diego de Alcala
• Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa
• Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo

Its not that I’ve given up on the project, but it seems like I’m always driving past the Missions on my trips up and down the California coast, zoned in on my primary destination, never taking the time to stop and explore.

In the next few months I hope to make the time to visit another Mission or two, but until then I have a few new photos of the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa to share with you. These images were captured earlier this month during a class with Lee Varis at the California Photo Festival.

This class focused on Ansel Adams‘ zone system, how it applies to digital photography, and how to adjust exposure to get the best possible RAW file. While I am no expert on the zone system, I did walk away from the class with a better idea of how my camera sees light and shadows and how to adjust my settings accordingly.

All of the following images were shot with a tripod (Induro AKB1) mounted Canon EOS 7D and Sigma 18-200 Lens.

63 mm, ISO 100, 1.6 sec at f/8, Processed with Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

28 mm, ISO 100, 1/125 sec at f/7.1, Processed with Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

31 mm, ISO 100, 8 sec at f/4.5, Processed with Lightroom

63 mm, ISO 100, 2.5 sec at f/5, Processed with Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

35 mm, ISO 100, 4 sec at f/9, Processed with Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

42 mm, ISO 100, 1.3 sec at f/4.5, Processed with Lightroom

200 mm, ISO 100, 1/5 sec at f/6.3, Processed with Lightroom

I hope you enjoyed these additions to my California Missions series. If you’d like to know more about the processing on any of these images please post a comment or contact me directly.

The California Photo Festival was incredible! I have five days worth of images from classes with amazing instructors that I’ve been slowing working my way through.  I’ve finally started to make headway in processing them so more will be on their way shortly.  Until then, cheers!