The Greensboro Dairy Barn

September 4, 2016

Dairy Barn in the Summer

This Trek was a little different from ones that I've done in the past in a couple of respects.  First of all, I was wanting to go out and really try a new workflow with my image processing.  Second of all, I wanted to go and have the goal of getting one good picture instead of trying for volume.  In a lot of respects, I have succeeded with both of these goals with this Trek.  I'm hoping to fine tune what I've learned on this one, and apply it to others, while still tweaking what my intentions are for pictures.

Let's look at the first goal.  After a recent computer crash, I have been getting used to a new version of Photoshop, which is now referred to as simply "CC" for Creative Cloud.  With this program, I am no longer purchasing the software, but subscribing to the service each year.  With the subscription comes quite a few other Adobe Programs, most of which I am not planning on using.  However, it was the first time I have been able to use Lightroom which is a program I have been hearing a lot of great things about over the years.  Since I now had it, I wanted to use it.  This was primarily because it was more dedicated to photography, while Photoshop was getting into much more than just photography, and has become rather complex over the years.

I have been reading about Lightroom, and watching many videos on the subject trying to get my work flow ironed out.  Over the past two or three Treks, I have played around with Lightroom, but ultimately ended up processing in Camera RAW and Photoshop.  This is not to say that I am doing a lot of editing in software, because I still feel strongly about capturing the scene as it is, and not manipulating nature.  What I am doing is starting from a relatively flat RAW file (digital negative) that has very little contrast and saturation in the interest of capturing as much information in the digital file as possible.  From this, I am processing it to bring out that detail and bring the saturation and contrast back into the final image.  There is no slight of hand in what I am doing, and even when I am doing a lot of tweaking of the image, I am still nowhere near the "photo manipulation" end of the spectrum....but I digress.

This Trek marks the first time I have been able to come back, and actually import the RAW files into Lightroom, and start to work on them from that program.  It took a little trial and error in some of the windows, but I actually made a final image that I was happy with on a first try.  I then imported it into Photoshop for just a little bit of polishing because I was used to how that worked with my printer.  I also made a B&W conversion of the above picture that I really liked from this shoot.

Dairy Barn in the Summer in B&W

Of course, the subject here is a barn that I have visited many times in the past.  I have shot it under stormy skies, blue skies, and even in the dead of night under starry skies.  Each time, I have captured a different feeling with the images.  This time, I wanted something a little different.  I have been wanting to get this barn with the white fence of the neighboring yard for some time.  My previous attempts have been rather blah because of my compositions.  Either I have been too far away and the fence was a bigger element than I wanted, or I had come in close, with a wide angle lens which has had the same result.  In my attempts to stay away from a "normal" view, which is what I usually end up with when I shoot with my 24-70mm, I decided to use my 70-200mm for some scaling properties.  With this lens, I would be able to keep the visual scale similar between the barn and the fence, and I had decided that I was only going to include a small portion of the fence to keep the balance in place.

It took a bit of time to set up a good point of view where the fence made sense, and the barn was still dominant.  This was part of my second goal.  I was no longer worried about making as many good pictures as I could.  I wanted to capture just one image that represented what I was thinking at the time.  I think that the images above (still only one image) captures that very well.  The clouds work nicely to keep the sky visually interesting, and the fence works with the barn instead of against it as it has in the past.  The rolling grassy field keeps the foreground interesting and feeds into the fence, helping it to make sense, and not look like an added in element.

As I was trying to perfect the composition, I shot from far away all the way up to a point where my 70mm focal length would not capture the entire barn.  This actually turned into an interesting view where I cropped out the long side of the barn, for a more intimate view.  It is this view that Toni enjoyed the most, and I also like how it presents.

Bricks and Boards

As you can see, the clouds are less of an element in this image because there is so little sky above included in the frame.  I was lucky that there was a cloud formation directly above so that the sky wasn't rendered as a stark blue void.  While I like this composition, I think I am still partial to the openness of the other composition.  Either way, I have finally done a full photo shoot, start to finish with a new workflow in place.  It took a little bit longer, but I can see some promise to using Lightroom, and plan on tweaking this workflow over the coming Treks.

Magnolia Manor by Flashlight

July 17, 2014

There are Treks that are planned for months, there are treks that are planned because of the weather at the time, and there are treks that are not planned at all.  Tonight was one of those treks that wasn't really planned at all.  Well....that wasn't entirely true.  I have scoped this location out before, and even shot many a frame here before.  I have been thinking about going out and giving it another try using a technique called painting with light.  So I guess you could say that this was planned, but the actual part where I got up and went was unplanned.  Toni got called into work for a few extra hours this afternoon, and I decided to go in and lend a hand to help out.  I figured that when we would be done, it would be about dark, and we would have to come back past Magnolia Manor anyway.  With that in mind, I loaded up the camera, and a flashlight along with the tripod and we went to work.

We got done with work a little early, stopped to get a bite to eat and then it was out to the location to get set up.  I still had plenty of daylight left and I had plenty of time to find my compositions and get the camera set up for the first one.  Things went very smooth, and we actually found ourselves sitting and waiting for over an hour before the lighting got just right...and by just right, I mean waiting for it to almost go away completely.  There was a good bit of sky visible behind the tree and I needed it to render a color other than white.  Using a minimum of a 30 second exposure made that rather difficult to say the least.

So, what exactly is painting with light?  Simply put, it is the practice of using a light source to illuminate exactly what you want to during the exposure.  Sunlight is broad reaching and will illuminate evenly except for shadows.  When I paint with light, I am adding light to precisely what I am wanting, and at the intensity that I am wanting.  The really cool thing about this technique is, no matter how many times I trip the shutter, I will always get a different image.  Its a creative technique that just can't be readily duplicated.  As you see in the picture above, I was using a maglite to "paint" the tree in nearly dark conditions.  While using a long shutter speed, 30-90 seconds in this case, I was able to paint light where I wanted it on both the foreground and the background.  I was able to control where the shadows were, and what appeared the brightest.

Complexity

My first composition focused on the rather unique structure of the tree.  This is what has made this a favorite portrait setting for when Toni and I did portrait shoots years ago.  The branches are strong and each one seems to dominate the other.  There is a level of complexity here that is just not normally seen in trees around here.  Because of that, I really wanted to focus on just that quality.  To do that effectively though, I needed to get low to the ground and shoot up.  Obviously, the sky was shining through the leaves above which during the day would have left me with bright white areas that were blown out.  In order to get the sky to appear blue, and to have a good exposure on the trunk, I was left with only one good option, and that was to wait until the blue hour (the hour after sunset) to paint the tree with light, while exposing the sky as a deep blue color.

It took several exposure to figure out just where I needed to put the light, but once I did, I was able to get the image that I had in mind with about a minute exposure.  In that 60 seconds, I lit the tree from two different places, one on either side of the camera.  This is another benefit to this type of photography, I choose the direction that each element gets lit from.  Talk about complete control!

From there, once I was satisfied with my image, I moved to my secondary location which took in much more of the scene.  The tree was now going to become just an element in a larger composition as opposed to the sole focus of the composition.  For this, I wasn't as concerned with the sky because I would be shooting from an elevated position, and there would be much less sky showing through the branches.

Ghostly Greetings

As you can see here, the tree has a nice little platform built out to the front of it.  With the long reaching branches on the right, I chose a position to the left of the entrance to let the platform balance out the longer limbs.  When I framed the shot, I knew I had it spot on with what I was seeing in my mind.  It was getting quite a bit darker, so my exposures were getting longer and longer.  I shot as long as 90 seconds on some of the shots, but nothing was under a minute.  This gave me time to really paint the scene slowly and meticulously.  One thing that I realized about midway through my session from this location was that the tree seemed to benefit from me lighting it off to the right.  This provided a strong sense of side light, and a lot more visual drama.  I was going for an image that send shivers down a spine, and this lighting was looking to give the best chance.

When I got home, I started to fight with color temperature and such, only to find that I wasn't overly happy with any of them.  Something was missing, I just wasn't sure what.  On purely a whim, I decided to go in and do a monochrome conversion to bypass the whole color dispute I was going through with myself.  At first, I was mildly excited with the outcome, but when I started to adjust how the tonalities were relating to each other, I saw much more potential.  Ironically, I applied a preset for infrared to the image, and the tree and stone steps seemed to jump from the background.  The shadows became much more intense, and the feel of the picture....well....gave me shivers.  This was what I was going after with the image all along.  I abandoned my color information and decided to make this a dedicated monochrome image.  Of the two images that I shot tonight, I think that this one is my favorite of the two simply because it captured the mood so well.

It wasn't a long trek, and it was one that kind of fit in with other things going on today, but I have to say, I'm glad that Toni and I decided to give it a try on the way home.  We both had a lot of fun working the scene, even though there was a lot of just standing around waiting for the sun to go down.

The Guilford Mill

June 21, 2014

The Guilford Mill

It has been too long since I have been out Trekking.  I suppose I have a good excuse though.  You see, I was sick pretty much my entire time off last week.  I had no energy, and a temperature of 101+ so I was pretty much grounded from going out of the house.  I didn't mind one bit though because every time I tried to get up, I would feel like collapsing.  I was quite content staying and home and letting Toni take care of me.

This week is a good bit different though.  I am feeling much better and am in need of getting out and doing some photography.  The plan for this morning was to go up to the mountains and work a couple of waterfalls in Little Switzerland.  That plan fell through when I looked at the weather and the cloud cover that I needed was non-existent.  I rolled back over and went back to sleep.  All day I was paying attention to the clouds and watching them come and go in various formations and intensities.  I have been eyeballing the Guilford Mill for some time now, but knew I needed a sky with blue in it, but not too much to make my vision work out.

At dinner time, the sky was pretty much a blank white canvas and I was all set to call it a day and start fresh tomorrow with something else that I had in mind.  However, as we were finishing dinner, I could see some potential in the sky, and thought that I had better go out and give it a try.  As I was driving, the textures in the sky started to minimize, and I was losing my much needed backdrop for the old mill.  I didn't give up though, I just kept plowing on to my destination.

Stone Ground in B&W

When I arrived, the sky was looking better again, but the sun was cloaked behind thick clouds to the West.  That was unfortunate, because I was counting on the sun to provide some diffused, warm light on the side of the mill to make it pop against the sky above.  That was strike one.  Strike two was the fact that I had not done my job in scouting this location since the late winter.  I was shocked to see the growth of brush lining the stream by the mill.  That eliminated one of my compositions immediately, and I was not happy about that at all.  I almost decided to drive off and search out a secondary opportunity.  However, I decided to give it a closer look and see what I could do with what I had.  I noticed some rock piles in a couple of places in the field across the way which might be of use.  I also found the rock wall which I have used before as a foreground interest.  It was something at least...

I went ahead and pulled the camera out with the 24-70mm lens still attached.  I added a polarizer to boost the colors and take some of the glare off of the metal roof.  I started to compose my first shot and quickly realized that the sky was just too bright without having the sun lighting the mill.  My only choice was to fit my Lee filter system and start adding some ND Grad filters to even out the exposures.  That was the trick that I needed, and from that point on, I was able to get some very balanced exposures which was not the easiest thing to do under these conditions.

Grist Mill

I found my favorite compositions by the rock wall on the far side of the field.  With the very soft light I was able to get all sorts of detail in the wall.  The dead tree, with its bare limbs on the left made for a very fitting natural frame to the composition as well.  While this is a working grist mill to this day, there was a feel of decay here today.  Maybe it was the shrouded sun, or the time of day...whatever it was, I was tapping into the somber mood with my photographs.  These are a far cry from my first attempts at this location back in 2005 when I went in the middle of the day and shot under a full sun.

First ever attempt at photographing the mill

I still remember going out there on that early March day.  It was the second time I had gone out with my brand new Sony F828.  I knew very little about lighting as you can tell.  This picture is actually kind of hard to look at because of the harsh line between light and dark.  You can see that the mill has aged a good bit in nine years, but still looks the same.  Its one of the more photographed places in Guilford County I would imagine, but it does hold a certain warm spot in my heart.  It was the setting for interview with Roy's Folks back in 2010.  You can view the full piece in the About the Photographer section.

A Frigid Tractor Shoot

January 28, 2014

There I was, driving around at work minding my own business.....

I have been patrolling around this area for years at work and have been by this old homestead many times over the years.  I have even seen this tractor, but haven't really seen it as a photographic subject before.  As it turns out, a couple of days ago, I was talking with one of the family members of the property owner and he was telling me about how he grew up and worked the land out here when he was a kid.  I heard stories about him on the old Farmall tractor loading hay by himself.  He would leave it in low gear and let it idle by itself while he did what needed to do with the hay.  If it started to get off line, he would have to jump back on and correct the path before returning to the hay.  All of a sudden, after hearing this story, the tractor came alive for me and ignited my interest.

The problem with this tractor is its location.  It is under an overhang from an old barn where it just fits inside.  This means that lighting is difficult at best with the shadows involved.  To get the shadows exposed correctly, I would have to sacrifice the highlights on the outside of the barn as in this cell phone picture I snapped while scouting the location.  During the day, the nose of the tractor is hanging outside of the shade which again introduces issues with the shadow detail that I think is absolutely necessary for the image.  I had to do some thinking about how to properly render this image.  My best thought was to come out before dawn, so that any light that I would be getting from the sun would be low, and potentially able to provide some lighting into the shadows.  I was going to have to get in close, and come up with some very creative compositions in order to eliminate the outside as a distraction.  I knew that in low light, I would still be at a loss when it came to the shadow detail, so I figured that I would do a little painting with light.  The warm light from an incandescent flashlight should complement the wood tones of the barn siding quite well.

I had my plan, I just needed my day.

That day just happened to be my first day off.  The forecast was calling for cloudy skies early on so that would help to diffuse the light and potentially extend my time for this subject.  It was going to be cold, and actually get colder as the morning went on, with a pretty significant wind chill to add some interest.  When I left the house it was 27 degrees, by the time I got home it was 21 degrees...that was over the course of maybe an hour and fifteen minutes.

Intimacy

I arrived at the old farm long before the sun was over the horizon, but with the clouds, I wasn't likely to see the sun at all.  It was pretty much still dark when I was getting my camera bag out of the truck.  For the first time this winter I pulled out my photographer's gloves and put them on as my hands were already stinging in the wind.  I got the tripod set up and with the help of my flashlight, I framed the shot that I thought I had in mind from the previous day. I dialed in the focus and guessed at my needed depth of field.  I then set the shutter for 30 seconds which would give me enough time to provide all the light that I was going to have available for the image.  In the 30 seconds, I put a lot of light on the walls, and did a quick wipe over the tractor itself.  The resulting image (first exposure of the day) is seen above.  The effect that I wanted was there, but the result was lacking something.  Toni loves this one for the abstract quality, and she had the honor of naming it as well.  I'm still not sold on the image, but I can see potential in it through Toni's eyes.

While still in the early hours of the morning, I worked on some more compositions as I dialed in my vision for the shot.  For me previsualization is so very important for photography.  I have to have an idea of the final piece before I can set up the shot.  I worked in closer and closer until I had a view that I was pretty sure was what I was after.  It was another intimate shot, but composed completely different.

Powerhouse

The resulting image captured what I had in mind from the powerful face of this International tractor to the detail in the wood of the shelter.  The headlight, much like an eye of a person stood out in a generally even toned image.  Yeah, I liked this one, liked it a bunch!  When I got home, however, I found out that while it captured what I was seeing in my mind, what I didn't realize was it was missing the emotion I was going for.  While editing it, I decided to give it a try as a monochrome image.  When I did, and started playing with the tonal values, I found an image that all of a sudden popped off of the page at me.  THIS WAS IT!  This had the feel, and more importantly, the emotion that I was going for with this tractor.

Powerhouse in B&W

I had that gritty image that really stood out, and captured the enduring power of this old tractor.  Oh, did I mention, it is still in use to this day!  The patina of the finish would suggest otherwise which is probably why I am so drawn to this tractor.  It looks long since forgotten, but still has a sense of pride about it.

With the sun coming up, and things getting a bit brighter, I decided that I would try some other compositions of the tractor just to see what worked and what didn't.  I stepped back a good bit, and framed a tight shot that I wasn't quite sure I would be able to pull off.  Surprisingly, with some careful positioning, I was able to not only eliminate the outside, and the roof line, I was able to give the illusion of this being completely enclosed in a barn with me standing beside of it.  I was liking this view quite a bit.  I snapped a shot with the available lighting and was happy with the resulting capture.

Straight out of the camera exposure

I was happy with it, but it didn't sing like I was picturing it in my head.  Something was missing.  It lacked warmth, and it lacked some visual weight on the wood behind.  Well, I was still shooting in the range of 10-15 seconds so there was still time to add a bit of light with a flashlight.  I wanted more warmth, and more "mood lighting".

International Harvester

When I saw the resulting image with the additional lighting, I knew that was the trick.  It had the mood that I was after, and more of a visual balance between lights and darks. I was even happier with this, and it actually turned out to be one of my favorite images of the day.  But just because I was that happy with the image didn't mean that I was done with it.  I could see other potential to this composition as well.  To add to the old feel of it, with the very similar overall tone, I was seeing this as a sepia rendering.  I don't often use sepia in my prints, but I thought I would give it a try anyway.  I have to say, I actually like the sepia just as much as the full color image, which is odd for me.

International Harvester in Sepia

There was just one more view that I really wanted to get on this old tractor before I left.  I wanted the detail of the nose and hood.  That patina was just calling out my name.  I got in close again and framed up the shot that I was looking for.  I was able to get the hood emblem as well as the tractor label in all of its aged glory in one shot.  As with the previous shots of the morning, the wood needed a little painting with my flashlight to really capture the detail.  With a limited depth of field, the wood was slightly out of focus, but the grain could still be made out while keeping the sharp focus right where I wanted it.

McCormick Farmall

I was having a great time with this tractor, and there were some other things that I wanted to try around the property.  However, I could no longer feel my fingers, and the gloves were not helping at all.  I had lost the ability to move the zoom ring on my lens, and could just barely work the focus ring.  It was time to pack up and go.  The only problem with that was, I couldn't put the lens cap back on.  I dropped it three times before taking my gloves off (I had two fingers exposed) and by using one hand to hold the cap in place and the other hand with three fingers to squeeze the clips, I was able to put the cap on despite having no fine motor skills left.  I was done...and my hands were worthless now.

On the way home, I had the heat blowing on my fingers and they felt like a vise was squeezing them.  I was not a happy camper, not at all....but I had gotten what I figured was at least one good image from the morning out of about 16 exposures.  Little did I know that I had quite a bit more than one keeper out of these.  I'm quite happy with the morning, and am very happy to be back home with Toni and the heat!