Santuario de San Francisco, Golden NM circa 1800s

The unframed 10×20 ‘gallery wrap’ canvas sold recently for $300 in Johnson’s of Madrid Gallery on Hwy 14, the Turquoise Trail, thirty miles south of Santa Fe. Framed in tin, it sold at a charity auction for $400, the wholesale price for galleries.

Due to the days it takes to fabricate the frame, I have only two tin-framed editions available in 10×20, and two in 20×40.

Update: I only made two 20×40 ‘tin’ frames (tin-plated steel actually) and one sold 2016 for $1500. The remaining one is $2500. I consider it my ‘master’ print as I adjust all other prints by its color and almost 3D effect. I do have unframed ‘gallery wrapped’ and fine art paper versions. The first one pictured below $400, double matte, 10×20. The second is a 20×40 print, $800, with extra-heavy acid free matte and a glare resistant plexiglass lite. The framing materials are very expensive. I have a museum UV glass version, unmatted for $600. The third print is with a classic wooden frame, 7×16 inches. I only have two, one double matte and the other triple matted. Those are $300 each. 

All my prints are Epson K3 Ultrachrome pigment rated 100 to 300 years before any signs of fading. 

Technical Details

Camera – Speed Graphic w/75mm Komura Super-wide

Film – Kodak Vericolor negative, 4×5

Scanned and printed with an Epson 7800 archival pigment inkset, Giclee’ on canvas (also available on fine art paper)

Limited Edition Framed Giclee’

Some collectors want limited edition prints. However, as long as I live and have a printer I’ll print ‘Golden, Dawn.’ Instead of a limited run, I taught myself tinsmithing and am selling a version with a hand-made tin frame that I make in-studio. The frames take three days to fabricate and patina . . . so, there is your limited edition.

Tinsmithing is a traditional New Mexican art form. This frame uses no fancy machine tools or dies. The decorations are hand-stamped with homemade tools. The frame is, therefore, ‘rustic’ and looks like it was made in a barn. The patina is dark. A shiny tin would compete with the image.

Description

I have been in and out of New Mexico since a child, visiting relatives. When I was a retailer and tobacconist in Philadelphia I would visit Santa Fe and Canyon Road almost four times a year. In 1994 I signed over the hair salon I built to my ex-wife (thirty years later and the salon is still there, but under new ownership) and moved to Albuquerque, NM and here I’ve been. I built the photography studio I’m in now in 1998. [I am in a new studio built in 2012, one block South of Rt 66, Downtown Albuquerque.]

Landscape photography is a lonely and time-consuming pursuit. The movement of the sun changes your lighting, and clouds and weather modify the light further. What you can do in the studio in a minute can take all day, or even years.

I had taken a couple different photos of the little church in Golden, New Mexico. Then I decided to pack up my 4×5 and travel the 48 miles at night to capture the church at dawn. I was attacked by a couple dogs let loose from a trailer down the road, but I stood my ground, took my incident light readings as the sun rose over the Ortiz Mountains, and took two shots in the rapidly changing light.

I made one test print in 1996 but the negative was not ‘stabilized’ properly and so I had the negative scanned. Digital scanning was a professional job and cost $70, but it was a good thing I did it because today the negative is just a faded, ghostly image.

Digital printing . . . it wasn’t until 2004 that I could afford a large format printer. I sold my darkroom and medium format cameras and bought an Epson 7800 (using the new archival K3 pigments) and started working on ‘Golden, Dawn.’

I used Photoshop, of course, and Neat Image filtering software. Neat Image removed the color noise and grain that otherwise would have limited the size of a fine art quality print to maybe 14 inches. With the file I created, I can print ‘Golden, Dawn’ up to 15′ x 7′ at 150 dpi. The giclee’s produced in my studio are 20 x 10 and 40 x 20 inches on canvas. They also take several days to finish. The special receiver layer on the canvas takes the pigment, but the ink still has to dry for 24 hours. Then, a special coating is applied using two or three layers. When that dries, the canvas is stretched on wooden stretcher bars.

The color balance was a tedious task. I struggled to capture what the church looked like at night, just as the sun was striking the clouds with the typical ‘salmon’ color. The hours paid off . . . the image is so realistic that sometimes you think you are looking through a window at the real thing. Most people mistake the photo for a painting, such is the drama of the lighting and the way I kissed the grasses with light, and subtly put emphasis on the center grave marker. That adds a third dimension to the photo, a feeling of 3-D so to speak.

In the upper left, the night sky still has stars . . . in the middle is something I didn’t see until I printed the photo. The green sky is probably due to the warm, salmon light mixing with the cold, blue of night.

The 40 x 20 inch limited edition in tin is priced at $2500 and can be seen by appointment.

The 20 x 10 inch limited edition is $800 and can be seen at my studio by appointment, or at the Johnson’s of Madrid Gallery in Madrid, New Mexico, twelve miles North of Golden where the photo was taken, on the Turquoise Trail.

Update on January 5, 2011

The little church in Golden, Sanctuario de San Francisco, is usually only open for mass on Sundays. About 20 parishioners attend. However, it is now open for tourists traveling the Turquoise Trail (Hwy 14) to Santa Fe. Here is a photo of Hizzoner Leroy Gonzalez, official tour guide to the church.

Here is an older photo, taken during a Thanksgiving trip to my parents’ house in Santa Fe. The sky was overcast and then the sun peeked through lighting the church. Taken with a Mamiya C330 twin lens medium format camera.

I have several 20×20 prints on canvas, gallery wrapped. $60

A framed 8×8 inch version in a darkroom ‘silver’ print is available, and no more will be printed. $200

Here is an Albuquerque Journal article on the ‘renovation’ of the church. Frankly, I think they ruined it, but no one will ever get a photo like the ones I took in the 1990’s. That church is gone . . . history. I drove by recently and the once quiet, sleeping church has a full parking lot and dozens of tourists visiting. 

Update February, 2024–The little church in Golden was taken over by an Albuquerque family and ‘renovated.’ They did a nice job on the ceiling, but the rest of the Sanctuario was painted and up-dated in the style employed in cheap stucco apartment complexes. The pot-belly stove is gone, the church ‘electrified,’ and the old graves and markers moved to the back of the property; the prominent grave sites up front in the photo reserved for the family . . . modern laser-engraved polished stones . . .

The Sanctuario, once a quiet contemplative space with small mass attendance is now a bustling tourist trap.