Door Arches, FT Barrancas, comments welcome

[STM]

This is one of my favorite images and was one of the most challenging exposure wise. It was also kind of cramped because the walkway leading to this doorway was rather steeply downwards, flattening out only right at the bottom. FT Barrancas is a rather old fort (over 150 years old) and the door and arches were not perfectly plumb but sometimes you have to deal with what you have. My goal was to have roughly one Zone difference between each of the arches. At the same time, I did not want to lose detail in the bricks and the door itself but DID want to blow out the centered arch leading outside. I metered the lowest arch at around Zone VI 1/2, and the middle and upper arches fell roughly one zone apart. There would still be some detail in the bottom arch that I did not want there so I adjusted the exposure so I could do N+1 development which did erase any and all detail. Shot with the Hasselblad and 60mm Distagon (roughly equivalent to a 35mm lens on 35mm) and Kodak TMAX-100 film. This is a scan of the negative, and it does lose somewhat in the process. The original 16 x 20 print on Oriental Seagull G2 does indeed haver wider tonality and deeper blacks.

I would love to shoot this in 4 x 5 but I don't know if I could fit all of the equipment in there to do it!