These have been interesting times for me over the last two weeks. There has been a lot going on in pretty much every aspect of my life since the last trek to the Blue Ridge Parkway a couple of weeks ago. Last weekend, there just wasn't time to get out and do any photography. This weekend, I had a little bit of time, but not too much. The problem this weekend was the weather. The forecast pretty much called for very little to no clouds for the good parts of the day. The good parts are the ends at sunrise and sunset. I was pretty much set on not going out to get any pictures this weekend, which was fine. I still had a good many from the Parkway to handle my daily Instagram posts. I did wake up around 5am on Saturday morning to check the weather since there was a chance of a decent sunrise in the Piedmont. I wasn't sure where I would go, but I wanted to be able to get out and do something if the weather looked promising. The reports were pretty dismal though. I saw no clouds, and the sunrise forecast had gone pretty blah overnight. I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep. When I finally woke up, I wasn't even thinking about doing pictures. Toni, Sierra, and I went out and visited the book store, went to a movie, and then had dinner. All the while there were pretty nice clouds that developed in the sky. Unfortunately, the sun was high in the sky, and while the clouds were nice, the lighting was harsh and flat. Toni kept telling me to go and work on some pictures, but with the existing lighting I had no interest in shooting anything. I was hoping that the clouds would hold out till sunset as they would look really good then. When we got home after dinner I started to look at the weather forecast. It wasn't really looking promising for clouds, and the sky was fairly empty at this point. The sunset forecast, however, gave me a little hope for some color in the sky. It might not be much, but it was worth going out and trying.
The Simple Life
Now I needed to come up with a location to go. I have been trying to shoot a barn nearby for several months now, and I keep getting stymied by the sky at every turn. I have been trying mostly in the morning for a sunrise behind the barn. The idea has always been to get there long before the sun comes up and trying to capture some interesting colors in the sky, while still being able to expose for details in the barn. Twice now I've tried that and failed. I have also been out trying for some cloudy shots, but to no avail. It has been about 4 years since I have successfully shot this barn, and I wanted to get it in the summer before the trees started to change, or shed their leaves. I went ahead and set my course for the barn off of Union Cross Rd in Forsyth County. My thought was I would probably get there and turn around, or sit for a while before deciding to give up. I know, this is a terrible attitude to have, but honestly, I didn't really feel like going out. Had it not been for Toni prodding me, and my memory of many landscape photographers' vlogs talking about going even when you don't want to, I would have stayed home. Even if I didn't get anything, the weather was nice and it would be nice to get behind the camera for a short time if nothing else. When I arrived, the lighting was actually pretty good on the barn with the setting sun lighting the face. I went ahead and got the camera out and fitted my 70-200mm lens with the Sigh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer. I actually stayed across the road to get the composition that I wanted. Since there was not much interest in the sky, I wanted to minimize the amount of sky that I included in the shot. I mainly wanted to get the barn, and the tree that stood next to it. The plan here was to shoot a color image of the barn, but when I got home and looked at it, the colors were just lacking something. I liked the lighting and composition though. I decided to see how the sky would stand a monochrome conversion. Once I got the conversion started, I could tell that the clouds were a little more visible, and the textures of the wood and crops stood out more. I worked with the contrasts and tonal relationships until I was happy with the image. It wasn't what I had envisioned when I shot the scene, but it wasn't bad either. It was a good start to the evening.
Carolina Farm
The sun was dropping now, and the lighting was improving. The clouds were also coming into play above the barn. I flipped the camera on its side and framed up a shot that captured the barn, tree, and the clouds above. I was really liking this composition. However, when I was looking in the review after the exposure was made, I realized something. In my excitement to set the shot up, I had missed a power line right at the top third point, which is why I missed it. I lined up perfectly with the grid lines in my preview screen. I was going to need to get to the other side of the road and shoot under the power line. When I got there, I knew that the long lens was the wrong choice for my new location. I quickly swapped out to my 24-70mm lens and swapped the Color Combo Polarizer over as well. I recomposed and found roughly the same image at 35mm that I had found at 70mm earlier. This is the power of lenses, I can get the same compositions from wildly different positions. I was also able to get a bit more sky and foreground in this image with the perspective change. I grabbed a few exposures as the clouds moved across the sky. I continued to shoot different compositions as the sun faded to my rear. I was a little disappointed to see the best cloud formation in the sky, and also the best lit one, was to the South. There was nothing at all to put under that patch of sky except a line of trees and a power pole with a lot of power lines draping across the scene. This just wouldn't work at all. Oh well, I had a nice barn to work with. As the sun dropped out of sight to my rear, the colors started to change up significantly. There were purples in the sky now, and the twilight sky was upon us. I set up a few different shots, and exposed as close to the right of the histogram as possible without blowing the image out. It looked terrible in the review image, but I knew that would be the case. I needed it slightly overexposed so that I could keep the detail in the barn, and I could recover the sky detail easy enough in Lightroom. I wasn't sure how any of these would turn out, but I knew if they worked, I would have something entirely different from anything that I had shot before. When I got home and started to process it, it took a minute or two to start seeing the colors develop that I had seen while shooting the image. What would normally take 5-10 minutes, probably took about 15 minutes to process. I really started to see the possibility of this one looking like what I had envisioned while shooting the image. Yes, this one might be a little more "worked" than most of my images, but I felt that it deserved a little extra processing to be true to my vision. It is not manipulated, and is not a composite. It isn't even an HDR image. What it has turned into is a highly saturated image that has been dodged and burned to bring out the details that I found important to the image. It is a true representation of the actual scene, and is spot on with how I interpreted the scene at the time. Just as I was about to pack up the camera, I started looking for the moon which was full. I knew it would be coming up very soon, and it should be near the barn. If I was lucky, I would get the opportunity to shoot the mood with the barn composition I had set up. Unfortunately, it was a bit far to the right for that to happen. I did move my position and shoot the barn square from the front with the moon just to the right. The composition was weak, and there was really no excitement in the image. It turned out to be one that I left in the discard file. I added my 2x teleconverter and tried for a moon shot at 400mm just because it was rather clear looking. It turned out pretty good, but I have just never really cared for moon shots that aren't a part of a complete composition. It was just a moon, and it was no better, or any different, than any of the other hundred moon shots I have seen. It fell to the discard pile as well. At the end of the evening, I had shot 59 frames of this barn and the moon. I knew I didn't want my normal 10% cut to be keepers since this was just a single subject. I was actually looking for one, maybe two images to keep. In the end, I found that I really liked three images. They were all quite different, and represented a different story of the barn. I was happy keeping all three of the images and sharing them with you.
Does anyone remember the last time I went to the Blue Ridge Parkway? It seems like forever ago to me. Looking back in the blog, it appears that it was May 19th when I last visited the Parkway. That is much too long for one of my favorite places to go when it comes to photography. I've been wanting to get back there for a few weeks, but my scheduling has been such that I just couldn't dedicate that kind of time to a Trek. That changed a bit this weekend with Toni at work, and Sierra with her Uncle. I finally had the time that I needed to head West to the High Country. The only thing left to determine was where to go exactly. I looked at the weather, and it seemed that the chances of clouds were going to be better around the Boone, and Linville areas, while further North it was looking more like clear conditions. Of course, we all know my track record with the weather forecasts so I really wasn't all that sure of what to expect. The plan when I went to sleep was to get up at 3am and head out to Rough Ridge for a sunrise attempt. Looking at the sunrise forecaster, I didn't have a lot of high hopes for any color, but there were clouds in the forecast and they were showing to have a low ceiling. This meant that I might be able to do some woodland work along the Rough Ridge Trail. Either way, I wanted to get an early start to the day. From there, I was going to go where the conditions dictated.
Color on the Ridge
My day started as planned, way too early for my liking. I checked the weather before getting out of bed and it looked like nothing had changed from the forecast that I had seen the night before. The chance of a great sunrise was going to be slim, but the clouds were looking good for most of the day with a slight chance for a storm around mid day. I went ahead and got things together and started my drive out to Rough Ridge. the entire way there, I was seeing stars in the sky, and was really getting worried about the conditions I was going to be faced with soon. I knew that whatever was going to happen, I was going to be in the mountains with my camera so it couldn't be too bad. When I arrived on the Parkway, a familiar dynamic started with me. One minute it was clear as a bell, and then all of a sudden visibility would drop to nothing due to fog and clouds. Weather like this makes for some very interesting photography and I was getting excited. I started looking for a good place to set up for sunrise in case a target of opportunity presented itself before I arrived at Rough Ridge. As luck would have it, nothing really fell into place, and I found myself nearing the parking area for Rough Ridge. Well, I was here, and there was only one other car in the parking lot. Let's do this! I grabbed my gear and started the dark (and rather soggy) hike to the boardwalk where I was planning on shooting the sunrise. The hike went quick enough, and I was really happy that I had brought my waterfall boots in case the weather dictated that I start looking for cascades to shoot. I slogged my way up the trail and found the rocky outcropping just off of the boardwalk to be completely empty which was a nice treat. I went out on the rock and got set up on the smaller section closest to the boardwalk.
Bridging Colors
I had been running different compositions in my head while hiking up to the boardwalk and knew that I was wanting to try out my 16-35mm lens to get a little different perspective from my normal 24-70mm choice. I started out with no filters at all, but quickly realized that the compositions that I was wanting to shoot were going to need some exposure help. Starting out early, I added my Lee Filter Holder and a 3-Stop Singh-Ray, Daryl Benson Reverse ND Grad. this helped the exposure in the sky right at the horizon, while letting the sky further up expose a little bit more. that was just the trick that I needed to get the exposures as close to correct as I could. While I was shooting the opening series of the new day, a couple came hiking up the trail and joined me on the rock. He was apparently a photographer as well since he pulled out a camera and tripod. He set it up to shoot intervals as the sun came up. While the camera was firing off frames he got a drone ready, which he sent up to view Rough Ridge from the air. It was quite an impressive display, but I just sat there and worked my compositions one at a time. As the sun came up and the colors started to fade towards the East, I decided to swap out lenses and use my 70-200mm lens to get some isolations of the clouds in the valley below. Since I wasn't shooting into the bright part of the sky, I opted to leave the filters off of the lens and just shoot as the scene appeared. What I found was as the color faded to the East, it started to pick back up to the West, and I had a lot of great color in the sky to play with.
Vibrant Viaduct
Something that I am always seeming to photograph when I visit Rough Ridge is the Linn Cove Viaduct which is visible from many portions of the trail. With the 70-200mm lens, I can just about reach out and touch it. With the colors that were developing in the Western sky, I was able to photograph the Viaduct in a way that I hadn't been able to before. I was actually getting sunlight on the side of the mountain and the warm light was doing really cool things with the clouds above. As I worked this unique situation I noticed that there was another element that was working its way into the frames. There was a thin cloud coming between me and the Viaduct, and as it reached the frame it provided a really nice layer of fog to the image. The Viaduct wasn't the only part of the landscape that was looking really nice. The sky to the East was actually starting to erupt in color again and since the sun was partially hidden, the exposure looked very workable without any filters. I trained the camera back around and framed up a shot at 70mm that included part of the boardwalk as well as the sky above.
Tanawha Tales
My main purpose in this shot was to get the sky, but I wanted something interesting in the foreground to anchor the image. Not wanting to lose the light, I shot it with the long lens and made due the best that I could. As it turned out, the little hint of the boardwalk and the rock made for a great foreground, and didn't weigh in too heavily at all in the composition. The colors in the sky were great, and the low clouds across the mountains in the distance really added the depth to the image that I needed. There was still the slight haze from the passing clouds which gave the image a dreamlike quality that I really liked. With all of this back and forth, I was starting to become overwhelmed at the list of potential subjects. As I was finishing up the shot over the Tanawha Trail, I happened to look back to my right and saw something that I can only describe as amazing. While the sky above was starting to settle into the normal hues, there was a large bank of clouds that was on the way across the mountains that was bathed in an orange and pink hue from the sun. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but it was just too cool for words. I decided that was going to be my next shot. I just had no idea how to capture it. I was still shooting with my long lens and I was able to get a few shots of the clouds, but nothing that I really liked. I decided that I would try a panorama of it. I flipped the camera on its side, and leveled the tripod. I made a quick sweep to confirm that the camera was going to be level the entire trip across the image. I set my focus and exposure and shot a six frame series that I later merged in Lightroom.
Blue Ridge on Fire
This panorama isn't one of my best ones. It lacks the prior planning that most of them really need. It is a great documentation of of the cloud that I saw which was just so freaking amazing though. The clouds above and below this one bank of clouds were all pretty much normal hues by this point, but this one cloud was like watching a flame move across the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was just incredible, and I'm glad that I thought to make this a panorama shot since swapping lenses would have allowed the light to be lost more than likely.
A Ginger Sky
When I got done shooting the panorama, I went back to shooting single frame images of the cloud in an attempt to capture the unique look of this situation. I followed it all along its path until it was pretty well hidden by the peak to the East of the trail. As the cloud moved on, I could see that most of the color was now gone in the sky except for a small area to the South. I could see some remaining color in some of the clouds above the mountains and figured that I would give them a shot as well. They were far enough away that the long lens was a fine choice to capture them.
Feeling Peachy
The composition here was a simple one. I was focusing on the low clouds in the valley below and using the clouds as a framing element and pretty much the only color in the image. I thought about doing this as a monochrome image, but that hint of warmth really helps the clouds stand out from the valleys. After shooting this image, I was starting to see the blues really coming into play in the sky, so I decided to swap out my lenses one last time. I put the 16-35mm back on and added a 2-Stop Singh-Ray, Galen Rowell hard edge ND-Grad filter to the front. This was going to take the place of a polarizer since I didn't want to cause uneven blues in the sky which is a risk using a polarizer. This would also allow me more flexibility in darkening the sky regardless of my angle to the sun.
Sun Drops
When I got the camera all put back together and ready to shoot I noticed that there was another bank of clouds moving across the valley that looked very similar to the earlier ones. These were a good deal lighter since the sun was still climbing in the sky, but the color was still there. The ND-Grad did an excellent job at bringing that color out by avoiding overexposure. I shot about four frames with this concept, but slightly different compositions. This was the one where the color showed the best, and the composition felt slightly better than the other ones as well. Honestly, this was the first image that I shot from the morning that I really felt good about. The funny thing was, I thought that I had shot about 45 frames during the sunrise. As it turned out, I had shot 79 frames in about an hour and a half's time. My how time flies when you are having fun!! It was time to move on to other things though. I went ahead and packed up the camera and started moving my way back down the trail to the truck. When I got there, I could see that the clouds were mostly clearing out at this point. It was also that strange time of day after the golden hour when the sky is just white. I wasn't looking to do much in the way of landscapes at this point until the sky got better again. What I decided on was taking a little drive to a road that I had seen on the map earlier. It was Roseboro Rd, and it was just a little beyond the Viaduct. I had spotted this on the map because it looked like a good secondary road to find some old barns on. When I found it and turned, I found that it was a typical gravel mountain road. Oh well, I needed to spin the 4WD for a few miles this month anyway, I dropped into 4Hi and continued on down the road.
Roseboro Falls
In an interesting turn of fate, I didn't find a single barn that I wanted to photograph on this road, but I did find a waterfall that to my knowledge is unnamed, and possibly only here during high rainfall times. Conveniently, there was a pull out on the side of the road a short distance from the waterfall which leads me to believe that this waterfall is a fairly typical feature. At any rate, I grabbed the camera and loaded the 24-70mm lens along with the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer. With this waterfall right off of the road, my compositions were limited. I tried some isolations, but the moving vegetation proved too distracting for the isolations to work. By capturing more of the falls, I was able to minimize the motion blur issues to a point. The composition that I settled on was one that actually included the sky peeking through the trees above the waterfall. I was worried about the exposure, but my histogram was telling me that I wasn't blowing out too many pixels by shooting this composition. It actually was a pleasing shot of this odd waterfall stuck on the side of the road. I didn't have long to work with this waterfall though. Remember how I said there were no clouds in the sky after I finished up at Rough Ridge? Well, the sun was now starting to shine through the trees and it was hitting the waterfall in a splotchy fashion. After maybe 15 minutes, I packed up the camera and continued down the road in search of a barn. I did find one, but the lighting was no good for it, and the setting was a little bland as well. I passed on the chance to do anything with it.
Keep it Together
I did my normal get lost thing in hopes of finding a good barn to photograph. As luck would have it, I didn't run into anything promising before finding my way back to Hwy 221 and eventually the Blue Ridge Parkway. I started my way North hoping to find a few things to shoot before getting on the road home. As I was passing through Julian Price Park, I happened to notice that there were some clouds moving into view over a field that I enjoy shooting near the red barn that is so famous. I went ahead and pulled off on the side of the road and grabbed the camera. For this situation, I wanted my 24-70mm lens so that I could shoot up close and wide angles as well. I added my Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer as well to really help the clouds to pop against the blue sky. Since I was going to be shooting roughly ninety degrees to the sun, the polarizer was going to work very well.
Summertime Blues
As I was shooting, the clouds were getting thicker and thicker. I was so glad that I stopped since I really like having these kinds of clouds in my photos. It just adds so much life to the image. I was shooting composition after composition. I slowed long enough to let traffic pass by when I was shooting from across the street. I did have the opportunity to watch about a dozen cyclists ride through the area which made me remember the several rides I had done on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I knew the struggles that they were involved in, and I kind of missed it...But, I had pictures that I needed to be working on, so I got my mind back in the moment and worked on more compositions.
Split Rail Dreams
For longer than I can remember, I have enjoyed photographing this one lone tree in the field. That is usually the reason that I stop here when I do. Something else that I really enjoy doing is photographing the fences along the Parkway. While I was setting up shots I decided that I would probably do well to include both of these subjects in a composition. I flipped the camera on its side and framed up a composition that had good visual balance, and took full advantage of the fence as a visual anchor. The clouds were really starting to come in nicely by this point, and I was having a lot of fun picking out views to put under the clouds as they appeared.
Time Well Wasted
I wasn't going to let this great fence get away from me. The overgrown weeds really created the perfect story for this fence, and I found a section that was very easy to isolate. I managed to work compositions in both vertical and horizontal orientations to go along with the tree in the background. The textures and colors really stood out, but that was what I was really liking about this fence and the field where it was standing. The greens of the weeds and grasses complimented the yellowing sections quite well. The bleached wood of the fence maintained its own visual weight despite being largely consumed by the vegetation. But was color really all that necessary for these images?
Monochrome Malaise
I wanted to find out, and actually set up a shot as a black and white image. What made this one different from the others in the series was the sky. There was a section of blue that was completely surrounded by clouds. This was the perfect scenario for a black and white conversion since I like to render my blue skies as dark grey. By putting a single post in the bottom right third, I was able to visually anchor the image. I shot it in color, but I had full intention of making this one monochrome when it came time to edit it. After I did the conversion, I could see that my previsualization worked just fine for this image. It all came together so nicely as a black and white image. The clouds popped, and the textures of the weeds and wood really stood out with the color stripped from the image.
Mountain Motorway
What's a day on the Blue Ridge Parkway without actually shooting the road itself. Well, I admit that is a new thing I'm doing these days. Years ago, I would occasionally shoot the roadway, but here in the last year or so, I have found that some of my favorite Parkway images actually include the road. The sweeping turns really do make fantastic leading lines for a sense of depth to the image. Of course, the fences that line the Parkway make for some outstanding complimenting elements as well.
Melancholy Barn
As luck would have it, the sky that was pretty much void of clouds an hour ago, was now getting overloaded with clouds. Those clouds were bringing some rain as well. It wasn't enough that I was having problems shooting, but it was enough to get me thinking about packing up and going down the road to see what else I could find. Before packing up the camera though, I wanted to try shooting the barn once again. I've shot this thing in pretty much all seasons and in all conditions. There wasn't anything overly special about it today though. The lighting was flat by this point, and there was a bit of cloud interest above. The only thing that really stood out was the barn itself. I decided to include the fence in my composition as a leading line and a bit of foreground interest. I really wasn't all that excited about how the picture was coming together, but pressed on regardless. When I got home and started to process it, I wanted to include it in my day's collection, but it just wasn't really speaking to me. The barn wasn't standing out at all in the field when I did my normal edit on the image. I started to think about what I could do to really make it pop and decided that by reducing the vibrancy of the image I could dial in the saturation on the red siding and really get it come together as an image. When I was done, I was actually rather impressed with how it came out. While not an award winning picture, it does capture the essence of how I saw the barn at the time of capture. There is enough blue to balance out the red, and the green is rendered almost neutral with this edit keeping the attention in the image where it needs to be.
Sidewinder
I did move on down the road and ended up a little ways further up the Parkway near the Thunder Hill Overlook. This is one of my perennial favorites for sunrise, but I have shot here at all different times of day. As I came around the corner, I noticed that the clouds were looking pretty good here and decided to pull off to the side of the road. I went ahead and fitted my 16-35mm lens along with the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer since I was planning on shooting at an angle to the sun. I started out working some compositions of a section right next to the MST, but wasn't really liking how the lighting was working out. I decided that while I was waiting for the lighting to chance, I would go ahead and shoot the Parkway headed towards the main overlook. I used the Parkway as a nice swooping leading line cradling the fenced field, and ultimately sending your eyes to the mountains range in the distance. To be completely transparent about this image, I have flipped it left to right to allow the eyes to read it better. I don't really count this as image manipulation as it doesn't change the content, only the direction.
High Country Clouds
While I was shooting the road I noticed that the behind me, the clouds were really looking crazy beautiful. I changed my position and framed up another image that took full advantage of the clouds. I used the Parkway once again to be the leading line which carries the eyes through the frame. These clouds really didn't need much help, but I liked effect the road added. Again, when I was processing it, I decided to flip the image left to right to improve readability since our eyes are designed to enter a page on the left and carry through to the right.
Dreaming in Color
With the clouds really coming to life, I decided that it would be a good idea to try my original shot once again. The clouds really made the image completely different from what it had looked like previously. The lighting was a little better on the landscape as well. It turned out that this final image was the one that I ended up being the most happy with. Shortly after this shot, the sky turned mostly overcast as had happened down the road. It was time to load up and head back to the house since it was about to be noon. I got everything packed away and I started heading North once again looking for 421. As luck would have it though, I passed by one of my favorite locations and the lighting looked really good. Yeah, I had to get turned around to give it a try once again. This is another location I have shot in pretty much all seasons and in all types of lighting. Some I have liked better than others, so there was no reason not to give this a try again today.
Dreaming Field
The clouds were looking great overhead so I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to capture a good chunk of the sky. I went ahead and fitted my 16-35mm lens along with the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer. I started to work my way up and down the road in an attempt to find the right spot. The weeds growing at the fence made for a very difficult time getting the right composition. There were only a few places that I could shoot from without getting tall weeds in the frame. Fortunately, the clouds lasted a good bit of time and allowed me to get several different variations on this image. At the end of this series of shots I really did call it a day. I went home with a total of 193 new frames shot. I was really thinking I had done more like 130 or so. I really am having a hard time estimating my shutter clicks on these treks. It took me about five hours to cull the images and then edit the remaining 33 images. When it was all said and done, I had found 21 images that I liked enough to keep in my collection. The rest of them went out with yesterday's trash. Since it is so late already, I will be waiting until tomorrow to figure out which images are going in the gallery, and to start posting to social media. At least the biggest parts of the Trek are done. I have been going strong since 3am this morning. I have put in 20 hours or work, driven over 250 miles, and still have a bit more to do tomorrow. The life of an artist, it is a labor of love.
Saturday, July 21, 2018 As you might recall, last week I found myself in Virginia after a quick planned shoot in Sparta, NC. I have to admit, I really enjoyed my time there and was wanting to go back and do some more exploring. As luck would have it, I actually had the time to go out and do some of that exploring this morning. It was kind of a complex decision, and one that really started out backfiring on me. So, here is now this all went down. My week had been pretty much taken up with planning for my webinar with Singh-Ray which dealt with my Wabi-sabi style of photography. That meant that for pretty much the whole week, I was working on my presentation and reviewing lots of images from my rural explorations. I had some mixed feelings about this. On one hand I was getting tired of seeing rust, but on the other hand, I was really studying my style and was really in tune with how my images were looking. On Friday, at 9:15pm, my webinar was over and I closed out of the presentation program with a complete sigh of relief. I was now able to focus on where I wanted to go on Saturday, and it was the first time I had given it any thought at all. I looked at the weather and saw that sunrise wasn't going to look all that great here or in the mountains. There were chances of storms and rain through the early morning hours, and then sporadic clouds for most of the morning. The clouds would increase throughout the day. I was wanting to do some more waterfall work, but the lack of clouds in the morning would have been problematic. With the intermittent cloud cover, I thought that my best option would be to do either some landscape work in the mountains, or some barn photography. I wasn't really up to doing landscapes after a week of looking at specific subjects, so I figured that I would do some rural explorations. I might as well go to Virginia, and if I was going there, I might as well reshoot a scene from several years ago off of Hwy 52 in Cana, VA. Just in case, I set my clock for 3:30am so that I could actually get up and to the mountains if the sunrise would be worth it. It was after 10 when I went to bed, so when the alarm rang at ungodly thirty, I was not overly happy. I looked at the weather, and the sunrise forecast was still looking rather dismal. The clouds were absent here at the house, but showed to be partly cloudy in the mountains. That was a far cry from rain and storms, but I was too sleepy to really care. I decided to forgo sunrise, and get another hour of sleep before getting up.
When I finally did get up, I figured I would go on to Cana since the forecast was still showing patchy clouds for most of the morning hours. When I left the house, it was pretty clear in Winston, so I figured that the forecast was pretty accurate. I left about 5:45 and as I was traveling down the highway, I could see something that I did not expect in my rear view mirror. There was actually some pretty good color in the sky to the East. I didn't have any time to take action on that sky, so I just enjoyed it in my mirror for a bit. I guess my sunrise forecasting app missed this one. It wasn't a brilliant sunrise by any stretch, but it was enough that I could have put a barn I know under that sky to pretty good effect. Oh well, I was off to Virginia with high hopes of some great photographs Well, the further North I traveled, the more clouds I started to see. This was no problem and it was actually welcomed since there was really good definition in them from what I could see. However, as I climbed altitude I got closer and closer to the clouds and ultimately found myself driving through them. I don't mind working with fog so I was still happy with the turn of events. When I got to Cana, I took one more kick to my stomach though. The cars that I was there to shoot had been moved around a little bit, and the trees had overgrown most of them. The shots that I was wanting to do were no longer possible. With the flog, and now drizzle, I decided it wasn't worth going through the overgrown field to get close to the cars which were most obscured by the trees. Oh well, I was out here to explore, and that was what I was going to do.
Mountain Mist
I worked my way North and then West. I found myself crossing the Blue Ridge Parkway, but I only knew it by the GPS in the dash. I had absolutely no visibility, and I knew that the Parkway would be just as bad. I needed to loose altitude if I was going to have a chance of finding something to shoot this morning. I made my way towards Galax, VA on some road that was paved and had yellow lines (that was about all I knew). I would pass barns that were moderately interesting, but in the current conditions they were not worth me pulling over. I was starting to get rather discouraged at my progress at this point. I remember thinking to myself I should have brought my tall boots and just done waterfalls. The weather was perfect for that, but I was woefully unprepared for standing in the water. Just as I was starting to panic a little that I wasn't going to find anything, I passed by a red barn sitting at the base of a hill. The barn was really pretty, and the hill had a lot of character. The sky was really less than ideal though. But...it was something and the red of the barn would pull the attention away from the sky pretty well. I got turned around and pulled off of the road on the gravel shoulder. I pulled the camera out and set it up with my 24-70mm lens and a Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer. The property was gated, so I wasn't able to get in close, but the barn was relatively close to the road, so that wasn't a huge deal. It just limited my compositional choices. I framed the barn several different ways both including the sky and excluding it. I didn't have much hope for the shots with the sky in it, but the histogram was showing that nothing was blowing out at least. I was really figuring that my money shot here was going to be the barn isolated on the hillside, omitting the sky entirely. I was happy to find out when I was gong through the images that I was able to pull in some detail in the sky which worked with the composition. I was really fortunate since when I was shooting these, I was seriously thinking that they would all be trashed when I got home. That was not a fun thought since it was looking like this was going to be my only subject for the day. The rain was increasing at this point.
Pasture Patina
I was here, and I had the whole day to ride around. I might as well make the best use of it. I continued to drive around for the next two hours touring small towns, long country roads, and getting chased by dogs. It was starting to remind me of my cycling days, and I was getting pretty bored driving around. I started to explore those narrow, winding roads that may or may not lead somewhere. I found a bunch of barns that I would have liked to worked with, but there was nowhere to pull off of the road, and if I had, there is a good chance I would have caused a traffic issue in the event somebody else wanted to come down the road. Just as I was about to give up, I happened to see a truck surrounded by weeds well behind a house somewhere near Independence, VA. At this point I was getting desperate for something worthwhile to shoot. Looking at how the property was, there was no way to shoot this from the road, so I was going to have to get permission from the owner to go and play the truck. I pulled onto the long driveway passed the barn, and finally up to the house. I got out of the 4Runner and approached the house. The windows were open, and there was a car to the side of the house which indicated I might get lucky and find somebody there. I knocked and rang the bell...and waited. I heard nothing on the inside of the house and backed away from the door to give myself a view around the side of the house. As if planned, as I was backing up, I saw a gentleman approaching with a concerned look on his face. I explained why I was there, and what I wanted to do. He looked less concerned at this point and more confused. He wasn't really sure why I would want to take a picture of an old rusting truck, but he seemed to believe my intentions were legitimate. He said that I was free to help myself and I couldn't hurt anything. That worked for me! I got the camera out and decided since there was a little clutter around the truck on one side I would fit my 70-200mm lens to better isolate the truck. It also served the purpose of cropping out the sky which was pretty boring at this point. I set up a few compositions and grabbed a few shots before the property owner started to walk up the hill towards me. We actually chatted a few minute about the truck, and I found out that it was originally a Nebraska truck and his son had bought it with the intentions of restoring it. However, he has quite a few projects and it has been left to sit there. It is for sale, and if anyone is interested, I do have contact information. After we talked I noticed that the sky had changed significantly. There was detail in the clouds now, and that was a very good thing. I swapped out lenses for my 24-70mm, and moved the Color Combo Polarizer from the long lens over to this lens. Now the compositions were coming much easier.
Bowtie Break
Something that I hadn't seen from the road was another Chevy truck parked behind the first one I saw. This was a flatbed, and while it didn't have a lot of rust, it still showed a great deal of weathering in the finish, and I thought that it would make for a pretty good shot as well. The clouds were really nice behind it, so I was able to get in close and go wide to get a good portion of the sky behind the truck. While I wasn't wild about the color of the truck, it seemed to work very well with the greens and subtle blues in the clouds. It wasn't my normal patina, but the final execution was something that I was pretty happy with. I didn't work much with this truck since the color wasn't the best. I only shot a handful of exposures and a couple of different compositions before moving back over to the other truck.
Rural Revelry
There was a barn situated off to the side of the scene that interested me. I really wanted to get that barn in a composition, but wasn't really sure how to go about doing it. There were a lot of vehicles around the base of the barn, and most of them really didn't fit with the story that I was trying to tell. The one Chevy was in a decent place to tie in with the barn, but I had to be really careful with the composition because I was using the cab of the Chevy to obscure a Geo Tracker, and a newer Ford Pickup. There was also a red Firebird in the field of view. I was able to block them all with the cab of the truck and still have the barn make sense in the composition. When I got home and started to edit this one, I wasn't really liking how the color image was working out, so I decided to see how it looked without the color. When I made the conversion, I could see a great deal of potential and adjusted the tonal relationships until I came upon this image. I wasn't positive I liked it, so I asked Toni what she thought. She liked it, and since she is the monochrome expert between us, I went with her opinion. After this part of the shoot was over, I decided that I had done pretty much all that I could do with this truck. I had tried to work some isolations out, but with the weeds in the way, I didn't like how they were looking. I didn't want to wear out my welcome either, so I opted to load things back up in the truck and continue on my explorations. At least I was feeling a little better about how the trek was going at this point. I was pretty sure that I had something usable from this set of pictures.
Mountainside Silo
My happiness started to fade over the next two hours of driving around. I think by this time, I was in the area of Mouth of Wilson, VA. The sky was starting to clear which was what it was supposed to have done many hours before. It was now getting close to noon and with the clouds breaking up, the lighting was getting less and less flattering on the landscape. I had pretty much given up at this point and set the GPS for home. Of course, I opted for the back roads as my route just on the off chance I could see something interesting. Well, that actually happened. As I was driving down one of the back roads, I came upon this farm with a pair of barns situated at the base of a hill. The rolling landscape was rather interesting, and to top it all off, the clouds were really nice looking overhead. I made the decision to pull off on the shoulder and get set up. Once again, I was going to have to shoot this from the road since there was a gate and fence. Not wanting to loose the clouds, I didn't bother finding the property owner's house. I was hoping that they would come out and ask me what I was doing so I could ask to go in, but that didn't happen. In order to get the sky included in my compositions, I chose to go for the moderate zoom of the 24-70mm lens once again. I added the Color Combo Polarizer as well. The exposure was pretty straightforward, so I didn't need anything else to capture the image. I shot many different compositions from different locations behind the fence. Some of these compositions were dictated by the clouds, and others by the way the light was hitting the barn and mountains. As I was getting in a nice routine of framing images, I realized that the clouds were all dissipating in the sky. Without the clouds, I really had nothing at all to make this composition pop, so when I realized that the clouds were gone, I packed up and got back on my route to the house.
Timeless View
About an hour later, I was nearing the NC line and on familiar roads. I happened to pass a barn that I remembered from last week and it caught my eye. The difference was this time the sky was looking fantastic above it. The blues were really deep, and the clouds bright white. I decided that I would give this barn a shot or two since I had time and the conditions were really good considering it was about 1pm. I grabbed my camera with the well used 24-70mm lens and added that Color Combo Polarizer once again. I set the tripod up right at the fence line which gave me a pretty good composition. I started to make exposures as the clouds changed their positions. While I was shooting this shot, I was already thinking about doing it as a black and white image. This is the kind of sky that I love to see in monochrome with a red filter applied to darken the blue against the white clouds. The color version was pretty good as well, but it didn't hold a candle to the monochrome image that I had previsualized before setting the camera up in the first place.
Rural Virginia
Before packing up, I decided that I wanted to try a different composition from a bit further down the fence. I kept my same lens attached, and even stayed close to the same focal length (38mm with the first one, and 30mm with this one). The biggest difference is the change in location of about 60 feet to the right. This opened up the scene and really gave a lot of depth to the image. This is a more dramatic composition, but there is just something I really like about the more intimate shot of the barn in monochrome. Regardless, both of these images ranked among my favorites from the day which seems to be how I do things these days. I wait until I have given up and then my best work happens. I had shot 97 images throughout the day which was pretty good considering the terrible weather that I started out with. I knew that many of them from the farm in Independence would get tossed since the sky changed midway through the session. The first half images were tossed just on that one criteria. I was happy with the seven images that I had decided to keep, even though it wasn't as many as I was hoping for considering the investment in time for the day. As I was exporting them for resizing and watermarking I looked at two images from the farm in Independence and wondered about switching the monochrome/color format on them.
Rust in Peace
The first one that I worked with was the final image of the Chevy and barn. I hadn't like it in color the way the processing was turning out so I had converted it to monochrome. Part of that conversion includes adjusting the white balance, tint, and some of the contrast controls to get the tonal separation that you want. Surprisingly, these color shifts that I made while in black and white actually really improved the appearance of the image. I can say now that I have processed a color image while color blind. I just made a few additional tweaks to the image and I decided that I was a fan once again of the color version. Both work equally as well I think, so I kept them both and gave them different titles.
A Storm is Coming
The other one that I wanted to play with was the flatbed truck behind the original Chevy. I still wasn't really happy with the paint color on the truck, even though it worked for the scene. I wanted to see what would happen if the image was stripped of color. The initial conversion looked very promising indeed. I started to work on the sky a bit more, and changed some of the tonal relationships in the image. In the end, I found that this image had a lot more visual tension and drama than the color one. However, I still liked both of them equally as well, for different reasons. I felt that this one also deserved to stand on its own with its own title. At the end of the day, I ended up with nine new images in my collection and these are nine that I am very happy with overall. I'm still very much a fan of Virginia and will be making a return trip out there again to do some more exploring at some point in the future.
After spending the week working on my webinar presentation for Singh-Ray which is dealing with photographing the derelict and decaying, I was fully in the mood to capture some rust and rural scenes. The weather was a little uncertain for the weekend, but it was looking like Saturday was going to be my better day when it came to clouds in the sky. I had thought about trying to get a sunrise out of the day, but looking at the sunrise forecast the color was going to be non-existent. That meant I could sleep a bit later. The only question was, where to go on this trip? A few years ago, I had found myself in Sparta, NC, after a tip from a fellow photographer. There is a great little roadside yard art display with a ton of tractors, and this one really nice GMC truck. I remember having a great time with it last time, although it was in the winter and I was standing in a good deal of slush to get the pictures. The green trees really should change the look of the compositions here. This was going to be my starting point for the day. I say starting point because I always have a first picture in mind when I head out, and then I start to explore from there. Since I don't spend a lot of time in the area of Sparta, I was looking forward to a little bit of rural exploration. I wanted to get an early start on the day, but not quite early enough to catch a sunrise. This meant I left the house around 5:30am, looking to arrive in the area around 7ish or so. The trip out there was easy enough, and it looked like the clouds were going to be cooperating with me for a change. I found the old truck with no problems and saw that it was still pretty much as I had left it several years ago. The sun was just now starting to hit the side of the truck, so the lighting should be pretty good for what I was wanting. I started out with my 16-35mm lens for a change. I wanted to accentuate the cab while visually reducing the impact of the rear frame and dual wheels. Of course, I added my Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer to really bring out the colors in the patina and increase the contrast of the scene. One of the first shots of the day turned out to be keeper which was pretty cool.
Patina Panels
One of the aspects of this old truck that I love is the patina. There is so much texture in the rust and the colors are amazing. Something that I started doing a little bit the last time I was here was shooting isolations on the truck. I have gotten a bit better at it over the years and was all set to work some more intimate patina shots today. I decided that I needed a different tool to make that work so I swapped over to my 70-200mm lens and kept the polarizer attached to it. At this point, I was like a sniper picking bits and pieces of the truck out as subjects. The chrome emblems on the hood really caught my eye since the bright color really contrasted with the rust that surrounded it. The bit of pitting in the chrome pulled it all together. There was a vent in the cowl of the truck that added to the visual impact with the repeating horizontal lines, and I used the vertical lines of the hood, and fender to balance out the composition. I'm telling you, this truck is fascinating to work with, and every time I have photographed it, I have been quite fortunate and gotten many good images. There is just so much character to find, and every inch of this truck is part of the story behind it. The textures that it offers is nothing short of amazing though, and probably my favorite aspect of the whole truck.
Final Sigh
The grill of this old truck has always caught my attention, but it was a little blah when photographed straight on. I tried that not only this time, but the previous time. It just seemed to lack something in the translation and I have yet to be happy with a straight on shot of the front of this truck. However, when I moved over to the side and started to frame up a composition from here, the grill started to make sense. It was no longer two dimensional, it had depth and life, and was rather impressive without being overbearing. The patina detail on the bumper even added to the composition, giving a strong vertical aspect to compliment the horizontal slats of the grill. The greenery was a nice frame to the whole image and the one bit of dead leaves in the background helps to pull it all together. For a simple image, there is a lot to look at here.
Strong and Gentle
While I was paying attention to the front of the truck, I really wanted to do something with the flowers that were right beside the front wheel. I had included them in the overall shot, but they were just too perfect sitting where they were to ignore up close. I liked the grill shot that I had just done, but the flowers would not work with that composition. They were much too related to the wheel. Hmm, I could work with that. I decided to focus on the wheel with the flowers framing the rim. The fender would frame the tire, and the image would be bounded by a bumper corner, headlight, marker light, and the chrome emblem. This composition seemed to really flow, and it had a softer side to it thanks to the flowers. Even though this is just a small section of the truck, the sense of power that is conveyed here is unmistakable and the colors are rather dynamic which makes this an interesting image.
Vent Age
Speaking of the chrome emblem, the sun was peeking out from behind a cloud and the truck was getting bathed in a warm glow. The rust was absolutely on fire on the side of the truck. I reacted quickly and got into position for another composition on the side of the hood. This time, I was looking for a collection of lines, I wanted to reduce the composition down to the emblem, and the vent with just enough of the fender to balance out the composition. I framed the image very tight, at about 160mm and waited for the sun to hit it just right before releasing the shutter. When I saw the image come up on the LCD, I knew I had a winner. Even with the contrast and saturation reduced, there was color galore and the histogram showed a perfect exposure. This one was going to turn out really good I thought, and I was right! I tried a few other things, and even tried shooting into the cab through the open window, but the compositions were not as strong as what I had already done. I looked on the other side to see if I was missing anything interesting. There just was nothing really to keep me here much longer. With the morning sun climbing into the sky, I wanted to continue on my journey to find some more rural subjects before the light got too harsh. I packed up my gear and got into the truck for a destination not quite known to me. I drove around Sparta, and into Piney Grove before getting really lost. I was heading in a Northwesterly direction knowing that eventually I would come into Virginia. Of course, that did happen rather quickly as I was at the top portion of NC to start with. I believe I was entering Grayson County and found that there were a lot of great potential subjects, but power lines and bad lighting were getting the best of me. I just won't even stop if I don't see a pretty good potential picture. I was getting deeper and deeper into Virginia and was starting to get a tad discouraged as the morning was marching on quickly.
The Red Roof
Doing this type of exploring, I have gotten used to a whole lot of nothing punctuated with a quick blast of "Oh Boy!!!" That was just what happened as I was traveling down one of the state roads. I saw a barn set just off of the road with no power lines. It had this amazing red roof and the barn wood was perfectly aged. As I was passing it by, I caught sight of a Chevy Biscayne all by itself next to the hill. I even stopped in the middle of the road for a brief second and took it all in. The car had some aftermarket wheels straight from the 90's on it, but other than that it looked perfect to me. I got turned around and slowly came back. I could get the barn from the road, but the car was really going to need some permission to go that deep in. Looking at the properties around it, I was able to determine that the house across the street was probably the one associated with the barn. I parked in the driveway to the barn and walked over to the house. I picked a door that looked like a guest entry and and knocked. I could hear sounds inside so I was pretty sure that somebody was home. As I was looking around, I saw a dog coming out from one of the structures on the property beadlocked on me. He didn't look fierce or upset, so I just held my hand out and spoke with him. He came over and sniffed and then licked my hand. At that point, I knew I was in good shape with the dog. I rubbed his head for a minute and made friends. He even sat down right next to me while I waited at the door. I could still hear sounds, but the door wasn't opening. I decided it was time to move to the next door that looked like it went to a sun room. As I got close, I raised my hand to knock on the door as the door was opening. The resident came out looking down at the ground. I knew he did not know I was there, and I didn't want to scare him with my fist up in the air. I quickly raised both hands and said "don't let me scare you." He looked up startled but calmed quickly and we introduced ourselves. He confirmed that the barn was his property and even volunteered about 100 acres of land for me to photograph on.
My first order of business was to work on the Biscayne at the rear of the barn. I grabbed my gear from the truck and walked back there. The exposure was going to be difficult because the car was in the shadows and the sky was pretty bright. The clouds were nice though, so I was willing to work with the scene to make something great. I went ahead and built the camera with my 24-70mm lens and added the prerequisite Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer. Knowing that the exposure latitude was going to be too great, I added my Lee Filter Holder and slid in a Singh-Ray 3-Stop hard edge Galen Rowell ND Grad. After the first couple of exposures I had a realization... I have yet to do a video on the ND Grads for Singh-Ray, so I decided that this would be a fantastic time to do just that. I pulled out my phone and set it up to shoot video. Then I started to figure out how to make my one remaining hand be able to manipulate the filters. I bypassed some of the steps just simply because I didn't have enough hands to be able to go through all of the steps and demonstrations, but in the end I think I got the general idea out there.
Biscayne
The resulting image turned out quite nice and really shows the patina that caught my eye in the first place. The sky exposed well using the 3-Stop Grad. There was just something about this car sitting there beneath the hill that captured my imagination. The colors on the car really suited the environment it was in with the blues relating to the sky, and the green and rusty hues matching the landscape. The chrome bits complimented the lighter parts of the clouds. Everything just seemed to flow with this image
Deep Fins
The sky was starting to clear at this point and the sun was hitting the car pretty hard. I really wanted to do something to highlight the wicked cool fins on the back of the car. I moved to the rear of the car and set up close to the ground. I opted for a pretty wide angle shot to really pull the attention to the lines in the back of the car. The harsh sun actually helped here by showing off the shadows deep under the fin. Without this shadow, the dramatic lines would not have been as obvious. For this shot, I was able to remove the Grad filter since the sky wasn't as bright in comparison from this angle.. I worked around the car for a bit, but surprisingly was unable to find any isolations that I really liked. The overall shots turned out so much better than any of the isolations that I did, so that is what I decided to keep from this shoot. With the sun rising, and the clouds looking different, I decided to move onto other things. I wanted to go out and shoot the barn real quick, so I grabbed my stuff and moved back out to the road. I was able to keep my 24-70mm attached based on the distance I was shooting from and I started to fine tune the composition of the barn. Now, according to the owner, this was a school originally before the civil war. After that period of time, the school was moved to the current location and reassembled as a barn. It is still in use to this day.
In the Barn
Once I finished with the barn pictures, I made my way back across the street and worked my way to a small shed over in the corner of the property. I had seen an old Ford tractor sitting in it while talking with the property owner. This tractor was still in use, but had a certain rustic look sitting in the shed. The lighting was not great with the back part of the tractor in the full sun and the light shining in from the rear pretty bright. The nose of the tractor was fully in the shade, and I really liked the textures of the wood siding. I decided to get a tight crop shot of the front of this tractor using my 24-70mm lens right at the frame of the entrance. The Singh-Ray polarizer helped to make the red bumper pop and to control the glare on the hood of the tractor. I tried several positions, but found that this one from about four feet off the ground worked the best out of all. These N series tractors are always a lot of fun to photograph when I'm given the opportunity. I was wishing for more compositions, but with the lighting, I was lucky to get the one that I did. It was now time to move on to the next opportunity. Having been given the overview of the property, I remembered that the owner said that the view from the top of the hill behind his house was fantastic. Since he said that I could go check it out, I decided to put on my landscape eyes and give it a go. I walked up to the top of the hill and checked things out. Yes, you could see for miles and miles in two different directions. You could make out Mount Rogers in one direction, and see into West Jefferson in the other. It took me a few minutes to really determine how best to capture this view.
Mount Rogers
Looking at the sweeping views, I really wanted to take advantage of all there was to see. I swapped out my lens to bring my 16-35mm into play. I added the Color Combo Polarizer to bring out a little more contrast in the sky. The composition needed something to anchor it, and I decided on a huge tree which dominated the landscape. At the wide end of the lens, the tree was no longer as heavy in the scene and actually provided the perfect visual balance to the slope of the hill that I was on. The strong diagonal helped to bring the attention to the distant mountain range and Mount Rogers in the distance. The warm rolling hills transitioned into the Blue Ridge Mountains which blended nicely with the sky. It was a simple landscape, but I thought it was an effective one. My next concept was to get right beside of the tree and do something with the small rocky outcrop that was just to the right of it. When I got over to it, I could already see a composition taking place right in front of my eyes.
The View From Here
One of the things that immediately caught my eye was a pond in the valley below. It was just perfectly nestled at the base of the trees and helped to guide the eyes through the image. The clouds seemed to mimic the ridges in the distance as well. My initial thought was to shoot this as a sweeping landscape, but it lost the sense of meaning by doing that. When I flipped the camera on the side and recomposed, it all made perfect sense. My eyes were going exactly where I needed them to go within the frame.
A Rolling View
Just below the big tree where I was standing currently was a field with lots of hay bales scattered about. I have always enjoyed photographing hay bales and decided that I would give these a shot or two before heading back to the truck. Leaving the wide angle lens on, I started to put together some compositions. I found a few bales that would give me a leading line into the scene and got in close as to really make the bale prominent in the scene. In this picture, I was actually about 10 feet away from the first bale. I liked how my eyes moved from one bale to the next until the leading lines of the distant field pulled you the rest of the way in. The dark green trees provided a great framework for the image, and the clouds again seemed to mimic the features in the landscape with the largest hanging above the largest grove of trees. I tried this scene as a landscape shot as well, but it just didn't have the same visual impact and the eyes seemed to rove all over the image as opposed to following a course. I looked around for some other shots as well, but I was seeing nothing else that caught my eye with the current light. I went ahead and walked back out to the truck. Before loading up, I went back over to the Biscayne and shot a few more images with different light. At the time, I was thinking that these were going to turn out better, but after getting home and seeing them on the monitor, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the original ones had turned out better by far. This pretty much wrapped up my day, and it was time to get back home since it was nearing noon. I wanted to spend the second half of the day with Sierra since it was her birthday. That is why it took so long to get the images processed and the blog entry done. I didn't start it until 5am the following morning. I had shot a total of 92 images from essentially two locations which was pretty good. I was thinking it would be somewhere more in the area of 75 frames. I had estimated about ten of the images would be keepers, and I managed to make a collection of 12 shots that made the cut. It was a successful day and I was able to get my old iron, and even added a rustic scene with the barn. I even got to do some landscape work which I usually don't get to do when I'm working on rural exploration.
Now, it is time to put the finishing touches on the webinar presentation, and get ready for that. It will air on Friday the 20th at 8pm. To view it, you will need to register with Singh-Ray which is free to do. Once you are registered, you will be able to view it live, and will have access to the archived recording as well. I hope to see you there!
