Mission San Xavier del Bac

by David Safier

Joan and I took a friend from Portland to see Mission San Xavier del Bac this weekend. It’s the first time in a long while I’ve seen it without scaffolding hanging around it (if I’ve ever seen it without scaffolding). Absolutely beautiful. I took a pic from my favorite rear view, gray scaled it, then did a little of what I used to do in the darkroom (in the olden days) with Photoshop.

A bit of a poor man’s homage to a shot Ansel Adams took in 1968, which you can see below the fold. I noticed Ansel didn’t have a large cactus in front of the left gate, a palm tree in front of the dome, or a car parked inside the gate (which meant I couldn’t shoot the courtyard). And he took unfair advantage of me by being a great photographer.