La Purisima Mission
The extensive complex of the La Purisima Mission entails the church, workshops, gardens, and living quarters. It presents a detailed picture of mission life in the early 19th Century. With ten of its original buildings fully renovated, La Purisima Mission is the most completely restored mission in California.
It is also one of the most photogenic missions.
“Mission of the Immaculate Conception of Most Holy Mary” or “Misión la Purisima Concepción de Maria Santisima,” is its official Spanish title. Established in 1787, the mission fell victim to a massive earthquake in 1812. After the quake, Father Payeras moved the mission to its present location.
The red and white adobe building with its fountain, colonnades, and countless intricate angles delivers an exceptional opportunity for photographers.
Visit La Purisima and discover a jewel among California’s missions!
How to get there
La Purisma Mission Map
La Purisima Mission is located on 2295 Purisima Road in Lompoc, California. From Santa Barbara, drive north on CA-101 / CA-1. The highway will follow the coastline for about 30 miles and then turn right toward the mountains. After about 2 miles, turn left to stay on CA-1 toward Lompoc/Vandenberg AFB. After about 18 miles, turn right onto CA-246. Drive 1.8 miles and then turn left on Mission Gate Road. Follow Mission Gate Road into the park.
From Santa Maria, take CA-1 south. Take the Lompoc/Vandenberg AFB exit to stay on CA-1. After 6.7 miles, CA-1 turns sharp left. Follow the road for approximately 6.5 miles to the Purisima Road turnoff. Take Purisima Road (left) and drive for 2.1 miles to the mission parking lot entrance.
GPS position
How to photograph La Purisima Mission SHP
La Purisima arches
La Purisima Mission offers a variety of compositional choices.
One of the most overused techniques is the frame within frame. Whether you are inside a dark room, photographing an exterior scene through a window or a door, or include one doorframe in another, you will find plenty of framing options at this mission. Frames help to focus the viewer’s attention toward the inside of the frame, pulling her into the picture. They give photographs a three dimensional quality and add perspective. Our brains easily understand that both doors are roughly the same size, yet one appears much smaller in the picture. Hence, it must be further away.
Colonnade
The colonnade photograph shows another way to add perspective and depth to a photograph by converging toward a distant vanishing point.
As in the example of the doorframes, objects in our pictures get smaller with distance. The pillars of the colonnade are a good example, the wall on the opposite side another. We can see that parallel lines in the picture, like the floor and the ceiling, seem to converge toward a point in the distance. This is the vanishing point.
Once again, the picture draws the viewer in and sweeps her attention into the distance. The doorframe at the end of the colonnade is some kind of reward for the eye. It is brighter and thus draws even more attention.
I underexposed slightly, so that I was able to recover the foliage that we can see through the door. I had to boost the shadows a bit, to make the wooden beams visible. Restoring shadow detail will increase the noise, but once the camera clips the highlights, they are lost. If you want to preserve highlights, you need to watch your histogram carefully.
Inside La Purisima
The mission also stands out for its excellent restored shops and quarters that allow you to take a trip back in time. This is a good opportunity to take some detail photographs.
Fill the frame corner to corner with your subject, or zoom back to show it within the context of its surrounding. Think about the placement within the frame and the light.
Use natural light for your photographs, it looks better and will not damage the artifacts. You need to increase your ISO speed accordingly.
Don’t worry about noise. Digital grain adds authenticity to historic subjects like an old mission. We almost expect to see it. A tripod, although occasionally useful, generally gets in the way of your creativity.
Best Time of the Day and Best Season
The mission is a fun subject to photograph any time of the year. I prefer some clouds in my outdoor scenes, but even a clear deep blue sky looks good with the red and white buildings.
The park opens from 9am to 5pm ever day, except for Christmas Day, Thanksgiving Day, and New Years Day. The light in the afternoon can be very good.
If you want to catch the sunset, you need to come during the winter months.
Time required
The mission is worth the detour, even if you have just one hour to spare. Two hours are better.
Equipment
- Zoom Lens with IS
- Wide-angle lens
- Tripod
Fees
The parking fee for the park is $6.
Close Locations
- Guadalupe Dunes Park
- Pismo Beach
- Shell Beach
- Avila Beach
- Solvang
- Santa Ines Mission
- Gaviota State Park
- Santa Barbara Mission
- Santa Barbara Courthouse
- San Luis Obispo Mission
- Montana de Oro State Park
- Morro Bay
- Wildflower Routes
Useful Resources
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11 Comments
amazing shot!
The sky looks fantastic. Great composition in the top shot.
Hey, I just found your site and I love it! I enjoy photography but purely as a hobby, with a crummy little point and shoot most of the time (plus what I can borrow). I hope to get a better camera soon and learn more about the technical stuff in your articles…this is a great resource.
Love that first shot, is it HDR? Or did you just kick the sharpness way up?
And the frame within a frame…maybe an overused technique but beautifully done, nevertheless.
I love missions (but I said that before).
Arches photograph cought my attention ,nice perspective and colors combo
Impressive, I agree that this is a paradise for photographers! So many great spots to take a photo, the intense colors, the mysterious galleries and the silence of this mission, amazing!
Thanks everyone for the kind feedback!
Madeline: That is how we all started. All it takes is the tenacity not to give up. Check out my personal website for more general photography tips.
Candace: I just treated the photo with Topaz Adjust. It is a single exposure.
Thanks – a lot more cool stuff there. Thanks for the encouragement
“Established in 1887, the mission fell victim to a massive earthquake in 1812″
One of these dates is wrong.
Hello Douglas,
Thank you for your comment. You are very observant. You correctly assumed that California Missions aren’t known to be time travelers. The Mission is 100 years older than I claimed. I will correct the article later tonight.
FYI, La Purisima mission is in Santa Barbara County, not San Luis Obispo County.