A Little Rust in Stokes County

Saturday, October 6, 2018

It is officially Fall here in NC according to the calendar.  The leave should be changing, there should be a certain brisk quality to the air.  I should be in the mountains photographing the leaves somewhere around 4000 feet.  The reality here is that we are still having ninety degree days, the trees are still green, and there is no telling when Summer will actually end.  This is really messing with my head as I was getting into the Fall mood in the closing days of September.  When it came to deciding where to travel for pictures, it should have been an automatic answer of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It was not going to be quite that easy to decide.

I really didn't want to dedicate a full day to traveling to the mountains for more green.  The rainfall has been minimal, so waterfalls weren't really an option either.  Fortunately, I have been getting back into my mode of shooting old cars and trucks.  That gave me a viable option.  I also had some new locations that I wanted to try out as well.  These are two places that I have seen before and filed away in my mind for when the conditions were right.  In both cases, I wanted overcast skies and a low sun.

Come Friday, I had not really had any time to think about what or where I was going to be shooting.  I had no idea what the weather was going to be, and just didn't have the gumption to really go out at all.  I guess this is what happens when the week has some unexpected ups and downs along with considering a complete rework of my website.  Not to mention, I am starting to really put a lot of thought into where I could do a workshop for a small group of photographers.  My mind was pretty much fried.

Inspection Due

As I was getting ready for bed I checked the weather and it showed cloudy conditions to start the day, but partly cloudy fairly early in the morning.  It would likely be a good landscape day, but I just didn't want to photograph any more green landscapes right now.  There weren't going to be enough clouds to do what I was wanting to do with the old cars that I had found.  More than likely, I was going to be out of luck on Saturday and would just stay home.  I wasn't arguing with that one bit actually.  I did have Toni wake me up before she left for work so that I could check the weather one more time.

A quarter of five in the morning happens all too quickly on a Saturday morning, but such is the life of a photographer.  She woke me up and I checked the weather.  It was looking pretty much the same as it was showing the previous night.  I rolled over and went back to sleep.  I figured today just wasn't going to pan out at all.  About an hour or so later I woke up again and started to think about options to shoot.  I looked at the weather again and saw that the clouds were pretty thick outside, and that the partly cloudy conditions were going to be around 70% coverage.  I then had the idea to look at a new app that I installed a few days ago.  This is "Clear Sky" and shows the detail of where the clouds are, and what kind of coverage is expected.  This gave me a different perspective showing good cloud cover until early afternoon.

That told me that I was actually able to go to the two locations in Stokes County if I wanted to give it a try.  The main location I wanted to try was off of Hwy 8 and was an old garage with a busted Chevy sitting out front.  I have passed this location many times and wanted to get a composition, but the lighting had never been right with it.  I also knew that I wanted the overgrowth of late Summer rather than just an empty frame rail.  I was running out of time to shoot this car unless I wanted to wait until next Summer.  With the weather looking good, I decided to go on and give it a go.

I grabbed my gear and set off on the drive into Stokes.  The entire way there I was behind a dump truck that was going between 25-35mph despite the road being a 55mph limit in most places.  There were no passing zones where I could get around him so I just sat in place and took in the scenery.  A bit over an hour later, I arrived at the car.  I have no idea who owns the property, but I decided to take my chances with this one and pulled off on the side of the road.  I picked out my 24-70mm lens and added a Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer to it and mounted the camera on my tripod.  I worked compositions on both sides of the car and tried to include the sign on the shop wall that stated that this was an Official Inspection Station.  I found that rather funny when paired with the Chevy below.

The problem that I was having with this composition was that to open things up and let them breathe a bit, I needed to include the sky.  The sky was brighter than the shadows I was shooting in which caused exposure problems.  Instead of hoping that I could recover the shadows, I just went ahead and added a Galen Rowell 3-Stop ND Grad to control the exposure at the very top of the image.  This worked very well and allowed me to get the exposure that I wanted on the main subject while keeping the sky from blowing out.

After a while shooting with this lens, I decided to swap out to my 70-200mm and step away from the car to get a bit more compressed look to the image.  I found myself shooting basically the same compositions with this lens.  Without the perspective distortion, the car seemed to disappear into the background of the shop.  In the end, I didn't like any of the ones that I shot with the long lens.  In fact, out of thirty some pictures, I ended up only liking one enough to keep it.  This was part of the reason it took so long to shoot this car.  I knew that getting a good composition was going to be difficult with the lay of the land.  I am quite happy with this image though, and it captured everything that I wanted it to.

I seemed to end this one rather abruptly.  When I decided that I was done I went back to the truck and broke down the camera rather quickly.  I was getting sweaty and hot which was just not cool at 10am in the Fall!  I got back on the road and decided that I would check out another location that I had scoped out a few weeks ago further into Stokes County.  I had pinned the location on my phone so I just let it direct me to the location.  I didn't have a lot of hope for this location since I was expecting it to be gated like when I saw it last.  The car was sitting in front of a pretty bland commercial building, but it did have grass growing up underneath of it at least.  My plan was to shoot with the 70-200mm lens with possibly the 2X teleconverter attached.  That should isolate the car well enough from the road.

Wing and a Prayer

When I got there, I was actually surprised to see the gate open and a truck by the corner of the building.  I didn't drive fully into the property though thinking that there was a good possibility that the gate might need to shut while I was shooting if I could get permission.  I parked and started walking up to the shop.  I saw no movement or signs of life.  I knocked on doors to no avail.  I looked around and figured since the gate was open, and there were no fences I might be able to stick around and shoot really quickly.

I grabbed my camera and mounted the 70-200mm lens as I didn't want to get too close to the car.  I had also seen a couple of other old cars that looked promising as well which I could do easily with the long lens.  Of course, I added the Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer since I was dealing with glass and metal.  I got everything set up and turned the camera on as I heard a lawn mower coming down the road.  By this stage in my tenure as a photographer I knew a lawn mower driving on the road toward where I was could only mean one thing.  The pavement needed to be mowed.  (Pausing for laughter).  It meant that the property owner was on the way to talk to me.  This could mean that either I was going to be leaving shortly, or I was about to have better access to things.

As the mower turned into the driveway I knew I had pegged the situation.  I made sure that the tripod was stable and I walked over to meet him.  I wasn't sure how this was going to go, but I introduced myself and explained why I was there.  He ultimately gave me permission to shoot the cars out in the open area of the lot which included the Chevy that I had seen earlier as well as the shell of a Nash, and a Chevy Nova just on the side of the building.  This was great news, and I was very thankful for the opportunity.  It did come with one caveat though.  It appeared that he was mowing the yard while I shot the cars.  I get it, I really do.  I would want to watch a stranger doing anything around my property as well.  We managed to stay out of each other's way for the duration of the time that I was out there.

Roll the Dice

Now that I had permission to be on the property, I was set to do more than just a quick overall shot before moving on.  I had the long lens on, and did a couple of shots that I had previsualized when I had originally found this car.  They weren't all that great, so I moved on to doing some more intimate shots of the sections of the car that particularly interested me.  One of the sections that really caught my eye was the broken quarter window on the driver's side.  I loved how the glass was shattered and it paired so nicely with the patina on the side of the car.  As an added bonus, there was a skull and crossbones decal on the door under the handle that really set the tone for what this car is...or was.

Deluxe Decay

While I was shooting my intimate shots, I moved to the front of the car for my trademark headlight/grill shot.  Typically I would do this with my normal lens, but since I was usually zooming to nearly 70mm I decided to just keep the long lens attached.  It worked just fine this way, and I managed to get a nice composition from the corner of the car.  The chrome really stood out against the black paint and the rusty undercoat.  The lines all seemed to work together to form an abstract design that flowed.  Oddly enough, there was what appeared to be chrome paint on the bumper corner from an earlier repair possibly.

I was pretty sure that I was done with this car for now.  I needed my 24-70mm lens to try some other compositions, but before I switched that lens in, I wanted to work on the Nash that was parked on the side of the property.  This was just a shell and a hood, but the blue color along with the rust tones were just perfect against the trees in the background.  I knew I was going to need the long lens for this since it was parked very close to a more modern minivan and I was going to need to cut in close to avoid that.  The trees were also taking up a very small section behind before dropping off to show power lines and a house across the street.

Nash in the Grass

I found this a very hard vehicle to form a composition with.  The hood was angled off to the driver's side which pretty much dictated that I shoot from that side.  This was fine since there was a long bungee cord holding the hood to the A pillar on the passenger side.  It distracted from the composition way too much for me to want to shoot that side just for that reason alone.  The lack of a front end of the car made the hood the anchor for the car, but there were no wheels visible through the grass to balance out the front end.  I couldn't really do a full on quarter view since there was very little body.  Essentially, I was taking a picture of a hood and a windshield frame.  The colors were good, and the grass was tall so I went for it.

Gnashing Beak

The sky was not looking great, but for the shot that I felt was really the key view, I was going to need to include the sky.  Looking up, I didn't see much definition at all in the clouds.  This was not going to be good at all to have a blank void at the top of the image.  I flipped on the live view and started to reduce the exposure to see what effect it had on the sky.  I was seeing it go from white to gray, but I could still see no detail in the clouds.  That told me that it would be worthless to add an ND Grad to the lens as it would just turn the white sky gray.  If this was going to work, I was going to have to hope that I could pull the detail out in post processing later on.

As you can see, I did capture some detail in the sky here.  I didn't do anything out of the ordinary to accomplish this.  I just added a grad filter in Lightroom where I reduced the sky exposure slightly, and then worked the "Dehaze" slider ever so slightly to get a hint of definition in the sky.  It worked very well, and I ended up with a sky that was worth being in a photograph.  The blues in the clouds as well as in the body of the car balanced very nicely with the greens and reds  which made up the rest of the composition.  When I was done with this, I thought about trying something with my 24-70mm lens, but opted out of it as there was too much potential clutter in the background if I went any wider than what I was already shooting at.

Winking

I still had one more car to work with.  It was a pale yellow Nova sitting on the side of the shop.  I was not happy to see that it was a four door version though.  I would have much rather shot a two door, but I couldn't argue with the patina on it, so I got to work.  I started out focusing on the front of the car against the side of the building.  I thought by cropping out the back half of the car I might be able to disguise the sedan body.  That image lacked any kind of emotion though and ultimately didn't make the cut.  I worked around more and more and found that my standard quarter shot worked the best for this car using the trees as a background instead of the building.  It wasn't a two door model, but with a 16:9 crop, I gave it a little bit of a sleeker feel leaving the primary focus on the front end of the car.  I really liked that there was a headlight missing which really finalized the story of the car.

Weather Worn

I looked around the Nova to see if there were any isolations that I could do.  Nothing really stood out to me though.  The few areas that I would have typically worked were missing key parts that made the composition in my opinion.  I decided that this one view was all the old Nova needed and moved back to the original Chevy out front.  I was ready to try some different things with this car now.  I swapped the lenses for my 24-70mm while keeping the Polarizer attached.  I got in close to the car for a little perspective distortion and started working the composition.  I wanted to minimize the building behind the car so I elevated the camera to about seven feet.  This gave an interesting view of the car and really concentrated on the patina on the hood.  More importantly though, the building was minimized.  I was able to compose the shot in such a way that I was including the stairs to the door on the right side of the image for a bit of balance in the image.  I cropped it as an 8x10 to keep it simple and add a little visual punch to the image.

Hot Rod Deluxe

I liked how this composition was looking in the camera, but felt that it might not work as well at full size later on.  I really wanted to get down low to show the stance of the car.  The problem there was I was going to have to include the building as well as the sky which was still rather bleak looking.  As with the Nash, I decided to give it a try and see what I could bring out in post.  I dropped the camera down low to the ground and started to frame up a composition.  What I found was I was able to get the angle where the two sections met.  This was good as it helped give depth where a straight building would not have worked.  It helped to lead the eyes to the car which was great.  I also had a minimum of sky to work with which was a plus as well.  The angle was such that there was no way I would be able to get an ND Grad to work, that was unfortunate.  However, as with the Nash, I felt that I would be able to get some detail out of the sky in post.  It was worth a try anyway.

When I got home, I found success here as well.  I did the same techniques as I did with the Nash to bring out the little bit of detail in the clouds.  It wasn't much, but it was effective in setting the mood, and providing just enough visual interest to make it worth including in the frame.  What was really a gamble of a shot turned into my favorite of the day.  Funny how that works out isn't it?  I really do like this piece for the angles that are in it, the lines, the patina, and the shape of the building fully holding the car in the frame.  It was similar to what I had previsualized, but so much better in every way.  

Style and Decay

Now that I had my workhorse (for automotive photography at least) lens back on, I set to work picking out more details on the body.  The rust was wonderful, and this car still had a good bit of its chrome still in tact.  I started to look for abstract compositions that excited me.  The sides gave me all sorts of views that worked well I thought.  I looked for textures, and transitions between the paint and the rust.  Occasionally, I was able to get the rust stained paint that glistened under the diffused light above.

Fractured Finish

The rear fenders really held my attention with their lines.  The chrome trim at the tops of the fenders was great on both sides of the car.  In an attempt to capture the awesome shattered glass once more, I worked out this composition that had lots of rust staining, abstract lines, textures, and just all around great patina.  I'm usually not a fan of shooting black cars in this condition, but I have to say that this one is among my top choices with patina.  The contrast is just so perfect and the paint still has a good bit of gloss that really draws the attention to the rust.  I'm so glad that I had the ability to get up close and personal with this car.

Where to Go?

Before I packed up the camera, I set up a shot that captured the steering wheel which still had the Bowtie emblem on the horn.  The dash was pretty much in tact, and I was able to compose a shot that included the side mirror and hood ornament as well.  The chrome of the door frame made a great leading line and frame for the cockpit as well.  It is a little bit of a different image for me, but I'm starting to like doing them when the opportunity presents itself.  This is also a great example of what a polarizer can do for you.  The glass is in tact for the most part here, and had a glare on it from the clouds.  By adjusting the polarizer to this point, I was able to eliminate the glare and be able to shoot into the car with no issues.  

At this point, the property owner was finishing up mowing and was going around to the side of the building.  I was pretty sure that I had gotten everything that I could from this location.  I started to pack up and went around to let him know I was leaving.  We chatted briefly and he told me about another location with some older cars and said that he would try to get in touch with the owner of that property.  It sounds really promising, and I really hope that it works out at some point in the near future.

By this time, I wasn't sure how many images that I was going to have as keepers, but I knew that I had shot a total of 72 frames, evenly split between the two locations.  The first location I had been mulling over for a year or more and felt that I had a lot of good stuff from there.  This second location was my alternate subject that I really didn't have much enthusiasm for.  It turned out to be my favorite location of the day with lots of variations on compositions, not to mention three different cars to shoot.  It really is funny how the success of a shoot doesn't necessarily relate to how much thought or planning had gone into it.  I love that about photography, and it goes to show that to be successful in this game, you have to adapt to what is there at the time.  Planning will only get you so far, reading the scene will get you the rest of the way.

Pot Branch Falls

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Swooping In

A couple of weeks have passed since I have been out making any photographs, and my goal for this weekend was to change that.  The weather was looking good with clouds both Saturday and Sunday at home as well as in the mountains.  My initial thought was to spend the day around Graveyard Fields on Saturday to catch some of the early fall color.  That would leave Sunday available to get two framed pictures to the Dixie Classic Fair for competition.  It would all work out quite well.  Well, you know how planning goes for me...

Saturday turned out to be completely sunny across the state and there was nothing that I could do with a camera, or at least nothing that I wanted to do.  I decided to take my pictures to the Fair early in the day in the attempt to miss the football traffic from the Wake Forest game at noon.  There was no such luck, I wasn't even able to get to the parking lot.  I abandoned that hope and went home.  I started to work on a Plan D or something like that.  The weather was looking great for Sunday with clouds, showers, and even the potential for fog.  That forecast was pretty much from home to the mountains.  The trick here was, I needed to be able to get the pictures dropped off between noon and 4pm as that was the only time I could get them there.  To avoid last minute problems I needed to aim for something around 2pm for a drop of time.  That was going to cut my available outing time down to a minimum.

With the weather looking gloomy I decided that waterfalls would be the best bet for the day.  I didn't want to revisit one that I had shot before though, so I started to research other options.  As I thumbed through the waterfalls in NC, I came across one that I had not seen before called Pot Branch Falls, which was located in Golden Valley, NC.  It was about two hours away from me, and the hike seemed rather simple and quick based on the description.  I was pretty sure that I could get there and have time to shoot it, and even have a little excess for another subject along the way.

With the Curve

In order to give myself the most time, I decided to get up when Toni left for work at 5am.  This would get me to the waterfall by first light and leave me with the majority of the morning to work it.  I could tell when I left that it was cloudy, but not quite the full overcast I was expecting.  As I went further West, I found myself under heavier clouds and even fog.  This was going to be perfect!  I was glad that I had opted to shoot waterfalls over Graveyard Fields since I would not have gotten the colors that I wanted in the dense fog.  The excitement kept building as I came into Morganton, but started to fade when I saw the sky as the sun came up.  There was some obvious blue up there, and the clouds were thinning out substantially.  This was actually great conditions for doing the Autumn landscapes, but I was woefully out of position for doing that at this point.  I opted to carry on and continue to my destination hoping that I would find something else along the way that was promising.

With my hopes dashed a little bit, I did continue on and found a good bit of fog developing as I made my way through Morganton.  I saw an old Ford N Series tractor on the side of the road that looked really nice in the fog, but I was wanting to capture this waterfall if the conditions held.  I decided to wait on the tractor till the return trip.  I was proceeding with a new found dedication to seeing Pot Branch Falls.  It was short lived though.  As I approached Jonestown Rd, the last paved road before the falls, the fog cleared as did the sky.  Oh well, I was minutes away from my destination.

Eroded Steps

The old service road was actually a great deal of fun to drive down for the 3 miles it took.  There was even a small creek crossing to get to the falls.  What I did notice was that the sun was hidden on the other side of the mountain, so that gave me a great deal of hope to have the waterfall in the shadows.  When I finally arrived at the parking area the sky was pretty much bright blue with a few clouds here and there.  I needed to hurry and take advantage of any shade that I could find.  Fortunately the hike was quick and easy to navigate.

Scooped Rocks

When I arrived at the waterfall, it was indeed in the shadows which made me very happy.  There were several sections to the waterfall and each had a different feel.  What I was after was the long drop through the rocks that could be viewed from the bottom of the waterfall.  It was a simple scramble to get down to the bottom, but there was a problem that I had not anticipated.  There was a large tree that had fallen and was laying across the base of the waterfall blocking the view of the best part of this location.  I tried to figure out a way around it, and even had a fleeting thought of trying to pull the tree out of the way.  Don't worry, I didn't try as I know how heavy those things are, and knew I had no chance at relocating a tree.  This was very unfortunate, and I had to regain my composure to figure out how I would shoot this waterfall.

What I decided to do was to shoot isolations of the upper sections which were rather interesting on their own.  For this, I decided to use my 24-70mm lens with a Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer attached.  This gave me a lot of flexibility about how I captured the elements of the waterfall.  I even used it to get a panoramic view of the top of the main drop (pictured above).  I stitched together what amounted to five images in portrait orientation.  I was standing almost on top of the water, and I was shooting at 24mm.  I wasn't sure if it would work or not, but by carefully moving through the composition, I was pretty sure that I had the raw material needed to stitch it together the way I was envisioning it.

Cavity

After I played around with the 24-70mm lens for a while, I decided to bring out the 70-200mm for some real isolations.  Of course, I kept the polarizer attached to the front element.  I started to work isolations of the section just upstream of where I started.  There was a few interesting little creek cascades with the eroded rocks I found so interesting.  I even set up another panorama of this section (Eroded Steps) in order to capture a little different perspective.

It took me about an hour's time to work this waterfall to the point that I was satisfied with my images.  I was really surprised that the lighting remained really good for the duration of my time.  I just wished I could have gotten the shot I was there to get.  I will have to wait until the tree is no longer there to get that shot though.  I did have a lot of isolation images of the different elements of the waterfall which was my secondary goal for coming to this waterfall.  At least I was able to achieve that goal, and I shot a brand new (to me) waterfall.  It would seem I am back to enjoying the thrill of exploring new waterfalls, and will likely continue that through the fall and winter when there are less people around on the trails.

I made the hike back to the truck and made my way back out to the road headed to the house.  I was looking for the old Ford tractor while enroute though.  The only problem was the sky was pretty blue and the lighting was getting rather harsh.  Oh well, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I missed out on the tractor.

As it turned out, when I got to the tractor and really started to look at the setting, I decided that it was not quite the find that I had thought it was.  It might have worked better in the fog, but currently, there was too much clutter around it to make it work as a photograph.  I shrugged it off and continued down the road.  As I was coming up on a gas station, I could see a rusty car off on the side of a neighboring field.  I saw it in just enough time to hit the brakes and pull off on the side road which ran alongside the field.

Mercedes Scorn

My eyes had not deceived me at all.  That glimpse of rust turned out to be an old Mercedes sitting next to tree line.  The lighting was pretty good on it as I was coming back into the cloud cover.  I looked around and didn't see any indications that there were trespass issues, and I saw no structures at the field where I might try to ask permission.  Since I was totally in the open, I decided to take my chances and I pulled into the field and grabbed my camera with the 24-70mm lens attached.  Of course, I added the Color Combo Polarizer to the front and got set up for my first exposures.  There wasn't a lot to work with around the car, so my overall shots were dependent on things like the branches overhead to really make a cohesive composition.

What I did like about this car was the bent hood and broken windows.  The chrome bits were still there which was pretty awesome to me.  The front end of this car really caught my attention as a matter of fact.  After I did some overall shots of the car, I started to get in closer and work my way through the weeds to get some intimate shots of this old Benz.

Where Did the Time Go?

As I was setting up a shot off to the side, I decided to get low and have the headlight looking off to the side.  With the composition I was able to get, I swear the car looked like it was pondering something pretty serious.  That is what I love about headlights on these old cars, the personality and soul of the vehicle shines through.  The patina of this car was amazing and the textures just jumped out at you at every angle.

Handle It

I started to look for ways to capitalize on the patina and found that the passenger side door had a great deal of character in the surface.  I used the door handle to anchor the shot and got in really close to fully show off the old paint, scale, and rust.  It has been much too long since I have shot a real rusty car and I have to say, I've missed it.  There is just so much that can be done with these old cars.  After every shot I made of it, I was looking over my shoulder expecting my time to be cut short.  Fortunately though, nobody seemed to car that I was here.  I wasted no time, and kept working different compositions of the car, and even started to look inside for ideas.

Take the Wheel

What I loved about the view from the passenger's door was the strands of headliner that were hanging loose from the ceiling.  The window was mossed over, and there was obvious mold in the seats.  It just screamed age, but there was still a lot of recognizable features inside the cabin which told the story of the car.  The rusty frame of the door kept your eyes centered on the interior which I liked as well.  I tried a few different compositions here, and was really wanting to open the door, but I have a hard and fast rule that I shoot them as I find them unless I have an owner with me who allows opening doors and such.

Benz Attitude

One thing that I couldn't get away from was the front end of this car.  The fact that the chrome was mostly in place was amazing, and I loved the bumper and the grill.  I thought about shooting a perfectly symmetrical composition here, and thought about a straight on, off centered view as well.  In the end though, I decided to go off to the side and make a head light and the grill the main points of the photograph with the opposite headlight as a balance element, all linked together by the bumper.  I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but after seeing it on the computer monitor I was happy I went this route.  It is a little different than my normal shot, and suites this car all too well.

Locked Eyes

Even though I had seen some success with an angled composition, I was still wanting to try something a little more intense from the front of this car.  I got positioned right at "eye" level to the headlight and squared up with the front of the car to get this very dramatic view from the front of the car.  What I really liked about this view was the patina that turned into the background to the headlight and marker light.  The slats under the hood were less than pristine, and the chrome surround made for a great framing element on the right side of this composition.  The fronts of these old cars really make for great abstract pieces.

Patina Luxury

When all was said and done with this car, I had a total of 80 frames shot divided up very equally with 40 at the waterfall and another 40 at the Mercedes.  It was a simple day with only two subjects in front of the camera, but considering the weather playing tricks on me and a fallen tree that blocked my view of the waterfall, I really can't complain.  The day went pretty much as planned and I was able to drop my two pictures off at the Fair with plenty of time left to spare.  I'll have more on those pictures in the next installment of my Behind the Camera feature around the first of the month.

A Rural Kind of Evening

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Rural Twilight

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.

When Things Just Don't Go Your Way

Monday, July 30, 2018

Since I had a community function to do at work on Saturday, I ended up with a Monday off, and I wanted to try and do something real quick in the morning before spending the day with my family.  I needed something that was close by, and could be shot with low clouds.  My original thought was a barn that was out near Union Cross that I had shot a few times before.  I had gone out to get it for a sunrise in the early Spring, but that didn't pan out because there was an enclosed semi trailer backed up to the door.  This time I wasn't planning on any color in the sky, and was actually looking forward to deep clouds, and possibly a light fog over the barn.  I was going to shoot this as black and white to accentuate the mood I was going for.

When I arrived at the barn, it was shortly before sunrise and I could tell that the clouds were not as low as I was hoping.  In fact, there was no definition at all in the sky, and the lighting on the bar was not good at all for how the scene was developing.  Instead of waiting there, I decided to abandon that idea and move out to Walnut Cove to see what was at my favorite restoration shop.  The last time I was out there there were a couple of Edsels which caught my eye and I thought with the diffused lighting of the cloudy morning I could so some more work with them.

As I was traveling down the road, I looked over to the left and saw a blue Chevy truck parked up against another shop with a white brick wall.  The framing on the window was blue and it matched the truck.  The lighting wasn't right for the shot just yet, so I continued on my way to my "plan B" destination.  When I got there, one of the Edsels was gone, and there wasn't anything particularly that was jumping out at me.  It was also starting to drizzle a little bit.  I was starting to feel beat down at this point.  I had gotten up early, and was driving around for what appeared to be nothing at all.

I started on my way home, but I wanted to check out that one blue truck as I went past it.  When I arrived at the shop, the lighting was a good deal better with the sun fully up.  It was still very diffused thanks to the clouds, but the clouds had brought a steady mist.  It wasn't enough to really hamper any photography so I pulled off into the side lot and grabbed the camera.

Beaded Blue

I fitted my 24-70mm lens for the simple fact that I was going to need to be in the 50mm range for this shot.  There was a newer Dodge pickup parked just to the side of the old Chevy that I wanted to avoid.  There was also a bunch of junk on the side of the building.  Had I gone any wider than 50mm, I would have been including too much of this.  On the other end, I wanted to include the window that was on the side of the shop since it matched the truck and provided a very nice visual balance to the scene.  Shooting with my long lens would have isolated the truck, but would have missed much of the window, and flattened the truck too much.  I also wanted to saturate the colors and remove glare, so I added my Color Combo Polarizer.

I went ahead and started to frame up shots, and quickly realized that it was starting to rain pretty hard.  It was hard enough that I was going to have to abandon this location rather quickly.  I moved in close and opened the field of view up a bit and was able to grab this shot which I though was one of the best out of the six frames I was able to get.  After getting this shot, it was time to head to the house.  The rain was just too much for me to deal with.

When I got home and started to look through the images, I realized that the water on the truck actually worked to take some of the high gloss out of the equation.  Since I was used to working with non-reflective surfaces, I liked how the water added a touch of texture to the shiny bits.  The blue in the window frame mimicked the blue paint just like I had seen in the early morning hours and the white wall of the building complimented the bumper and grill on this this truck.  

Shop Truck

While going through my images, one of the first ones that I shot also caught my eye.  It wasn't the color of the scene like in the previous one though.  This one just had a certain feel to it that I liked, but it deserved a different treatment.  I actually started by converting it to a black and white image.  I worked on the tonal relationships and did some dodging and burning here and there before I really started to like how this one looked.  I added a touch of grain to the image as well to give it a bit of a dated look, without going overboard on it.  The key parts to this image are the door art, and the window once again which provides a nice visual balance to the whole composition.

My morning certainly didn't go as planned, and I didn't even get my intended barn shot at all.  I was able to find a truck that I had not seen before, and was lucky enough that it was in a setting that really fit it.  I would like to go back another time to see if I can shoot it in different light, but I have a feeling that this was a fleeting chance to capture this truck, and had I not been out looking for that "plan B", I would have missed the opportunity to capture it at all.  It might not have been the morning I was expecting, but some good did come from it.

Rural Virginia

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.