Tag Archives: color

A Barn in Kansas

Growing up there was this barn on the side of the highway by my little town.  It becomes one of those landmarks that lets you know you are close to home.  As I got older and started seeing things a little differently the barn become something more.  I always wanted to go look inside, see what’s there, etc.  Finally, last year at Christmas I asks my Dad to take me out there so I could take some photos.  This only prompted him to say “You mean to XXX’s barn?”  Of course we knew the family that owned it, if only I would have asked earlier.

I was able to get some great images of it with the snow all around, and I have found I am partial to the black and white, that must be how I’ve always seen it in my head as a child.  The barn is nearly 100 years old so I think the black and white is fitting.  For the images below, you can see them larger here.  I used a few presets that I have in Light Room and then of course tweaked them a little, I’m never happy with pre-sets.  I did import a few of them into Topaz BW but I decided that I liked them better straight from Light Room.  Take a look and let me know which one is your favorite.

 

 

This is the first image I completed.  This is HDR using Photomatix, I love how the sun turned out…

 

 

 

 

 

This is an image of the back of the barn.  Something about how the door was hanging from the hinge and resting on the ground drew my attention.  The red with the sun hitting it was so bright and beautiful!

 

 

 

 

 

 

An image from the side in the snow path of the trucks and tractors.  Just to the right was a huge snow pile that I did clime up a little to get a different perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image is my favorite.  I used a few presets from Lightroom then  kept tweaking them until I was happy.  something about that old Black and White photo is how I have always seen it in my head.  It gives this image some of that old story and mystery to it.

 

 

 

This is a different Black and White process I did.  I love the sun as the focal point, but you cannot ignore that barn.  I think this makes a unique panorama of the whole place.

 

I will be putting these up on my fine art america site but I am still looking for another printer that is a little cheaper.  Fine art america charges so much and I get so little as I try to keep the costs reasonable.  If you have suggestions let me know! 🙂

onONe Photography – Focal Point

I participated in a photo contest recently that was based on using onOne Photography suite.  onOne has add-ins for Photoshop and Lightroom so that you can make all edits at once.  My favorite at this point has to be the “focal point” add-in.

This image specifically uses the focus add-in.  The entire image was in focus and it made nothing appear different or attractive about the image.  The image actually seems rather boring.

red plymouth in focus

 

 

The image below is done using onOne Focal Point.  This added oval focus areas on the grill with extreme feathering on the edges.  The focus put only on the front and grill of the old plymouth with everything else out of focus adds the much needed abstractions in the photo.  The image now has something that draws your eye to focus on an area of the image.

Red Plymouth onOne

 

 

Abstract Photography Created by Cropping

I am one of those people that (oddly enough) is hesitant to take a picture if I’m not sure how it will turn out.  Last weekend while in Canaan Valley West Virginia we visited SmokeHole Caverns.  I finally decided to take a few shots that I wasn’t sure of.  I took a few shots of the wall that actually worked well.  Caves are one of those places that I’m scared to take images of because the light is random and it’s always lit with spot lights.  Please note the images below.

 

This image turned out well with the light from the cave but the spotlights themselves had to be cropped out.  Once those items were cropped out its lovely with the colors and the layers.

SmokeHole Caverns West Virginia bacon staligmite

f/4.8 ISO 2500

 

This image is taken from the cave floor up the wall.  I used the camera flash for this image as the other lights were too high to illuminate the part of the wall I wanted to focus on.  As the camera flash is not idea you can clearly see the shadows created from the imperfections of the wall.  Those some of the shadows add to the image, some also distract from the image.  Some additional cropping could assist in correcting this issue.

Smokehole Caverns West Virginia canaan valley wall

f/3.5 ISO 2500