No te quería ver rojo

 From my visit to one of the local botanic gardens (I think this is from the South Coast Botanic Garden), I took a few 4x5 slide photos. Now, slide film is not inexpensive, especially in this size. Only two major companies are producing it, Fuji and Kodak. I was using my mainstay, Fuji Velvia 100, and it costs about $100 for 20 sheets, which is, of course, $5 per sheet. More if you add sales tax and delivery. Then, since I don't process slide film at home, I have to take it to a lab. The one I use is Pro Photo Connection in Irvine, and they charge $4 to process each sheet, so the net cost is about $10 per individual sheet. It is worth it, one may say, if one is able to nail the exposure, because holding one of these slides up to the light is an amazing feeling. I feel as if they are my equivalent to stain glass windows in a church. It gives me a thrill to see them, so I am extra careful to choose well-lit scenes, never in the shadows because I don't want muddied colors or a bluish hue, and I try to be careful with exposure so that I always use f16 and 1/125 shutter speed when taking the photo with my Travelwide.

So, what happened? Easy. I was shooting black and white sheets also, and I was using my Red 25A filter to increase contrast and darken the skies. This is fine for black and white, but not fine for slides. So, I switched to slides but forgot to remove the filter, and voilá, a red slide. That and a double exposure on the other slide. I can't correct the hue, so, here is the original and here is the more monochrome version.

As Mexican people say in their colorful way of speaking, "¡Ya ni la ch*ngas!".