This church, Santo Antonio dos Olivais, was very close to where we lived in Coimbra. I precisely remember the time when the picture was
taken: it was during high summer, on a Saturday, around 10 in the morning. I needed the deep blue summer sky, no shadows on the
church walls, light on the crosses, and, especially, not the grocer's dilapidated car parked right in front. The sun was right on many days but
the owner of the small grocery store just across the street parked his car there every day of the week, with the exception of Saturday. At the
same time on Sundays, mass was taking place and a multitude of cars and people populated the little square. The church is built on a hill, a former
olive grove (olivais). The many steps leading to the main entrance are flanked by small alcoves depicting the Stations of the Cross. The view in
the picture is of a side entrance to the major staircase. Sto. Antonio dos Olivais is a small and beautiful church. I had been planning to take
this photograph for months and remember being worried that someone would decide to whitewash
the church walls. And it did happen but, thankfully, only after I took the picture.
I used a deep red filter on the camera to get a very dark sky. The morning sun illuminated the two crosses and I wanted to achieve maximum
contrast between the sky and the lit crosses. I cropped the picture to a square format and exposed at a high contrast setting. After developing,
I very slightly bleached the image for the cross at the image center to become a pure paper white. This enhances contrast but also makes every
defect in the negative more apparent, which I had to correct by extensively retouching the image by hand. The final picture was toned in selenium.
Silver selenide is very stable and renders black tones slightly colder compared to an image formed by elemental silver.
