Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Here we are, cooking on the surface of the Sun…I mean Earth. It gets hotter and hotter every day now, and we have traded the regular evening storms for most clear skies. I went out yesterday and really struggled in Elkin to find things to photograph under the intense light of the very high sun. While I like the photos that I came back with, it wasn’t a very fulfilling trek and felt very forced in many ways. Looking ahead at the forecast for today, it was looking like more of the same with some midday clouds potentially coming in, but never offering more than about 40% coverage in the sky. The biggest difference was that the clouds today were supposed to be a bit lower in altitude which would give them better structure in comparison to the higher altitude clouds from yesterday. Another very important difference was that while the temperatures were suppose to be in the lower 90’s yesterday, they were ramping up to the mid 90’s today.
I don’t like heat, and I make no excuses for that. I would much rather stay at home in the air conditioning and be comfortable than roast myself in the field. However, that really isn’t an option when my creative pursuits take place outside. I’ve been on a roll for the past eight months or so and really don’t want to to lose that momentum which is very easy to do when I get out of the routine of making photos. I am literally having to tell myself to go out and use the camera. The nice thing is the request isn’t coming from a place of lack of creativity and desire, it is coming from a sever dislike of the current conditions which will probably be with us for the next couple of months.
Since I had to make a run to Harbor Freight, I decided to take the camera with me and hope that the clouds were going to come in when they were supposed to. I left a little before 11am figuring that by the time I was done at the store, the clouds should be coming in and I could start looking for something to shoot. While driving down the road I was taking notes of the lighting and determining that it was very harsh and not really flattering at all. I saw no clouds anywhere at all which was kind of a bummer. I wasn’t looking for another day in the field under the big orange ball that makes everything high contrast to look at.
When I was finished at the store, I started to look up in the sky again and was not happy to find that the clouds were still not showing up. About the only thing that I could think about to shoot was some architecture at Wilkes Community College which I could do in the harsh sun pretty well. When I got there, I drove around campus for a while and just didn’t see anything at all that excited me. In fact, I wasn’t even seeing interest in things that I had shot before. That was a bust, so I pulled back out on the main road and headed out towards Lenoir. There was a red Nissan Hardbody pickup truck that I was interested in photographing on the way and figured that the bright sun might make the red pop a little against the green trees.
It wasn’t long before I got there and started to look at the truck critically. This was when I started to see all the background issues that I hadn’t really considered before. The light wasn’t all that great either, so instead of wasting the ask for less that promising conditions, I decided to continue out to Lenoir. There is a Ford Fairlane behind a business that I have wanted to work with for quite some time. I had the number to the business and have tried to call many times without success. The lady that lives next door says that they are there every morning around 6:30, but I was hoping with the heat, they were at the shop today instead of out putting on a roof. I called and got no answer once again. I had been out there recently and knew that there wasn’t much that I could shoot on a day like today and it wasn’t looking like I was going to get anywhere with calling the business.
The only bit of good news was that there were some clouds starting to show up in the sky. They appeared to be to the Northwest and well to the left of where I was driving. I did a quick check of the current weather in different places and found that Boone was under partly cloudy skies which looked about right from where I was driving. I corrected my course and started towards the big town of Boone in hopes of finding something interesting with some clouds overhead.
About the time that I got in a good direction for Boone, I was seeing that the clouds were looking further to the North, like over Ashe County. Once again, I corrected my course and the fact that I was now driving right towards home and where I had started out like an hour before didn’t escape me. I thought about just calling it a day and going home before it got too hot outside. That felt like quitting though, and I wasn’t quite ready to quit…just yet.
The further I got up the mountain, the better the clouds were looking. They weren’t really blocking the sun much, but at least the sky had some interest to it which was a nice sight to see after so many days of clear skies, or thunderstorms. The temperature was also dropping instead of climbing. I saw a pretty quick 10 degree drop by the time I got to the top of the mountain which made me very happy. I still kept the A/C going though because for once I had a vehicle that I could do that in.
Quick side note for photographers located in hot and humid conditions. Don’t run around with the camera in the passenger area of the car with the A/C blasting. Yes, it feels good to you, but the minute you get the camera out of the vehicle, it will fog over pretty heavily and you will have to wait for it to acclimate to the humidity. When I was driving around in the 4Runner, I couldn’t run the A/C on days like this because it would render the camera useless for when I needed it. It was uncomfortable for me, not doubt. It was miserable for Toni for the few times that she rode with me to help with portrait shoots in the Summer. There was just nothing that I could really do about it in the 4Runner. However, now that I had the Frontier and the camera was stored in the bed undercover, I could keep the cabin a comfortable temperature so that all that would fog up upon exit would be my sunglasses which didn’t count at all. The lesson here is, if you want the A/C, be prepared to leave the camera out in the ambient conditions you are going to be shooting in.
Sorry for that bit of detour to the story, but I figured that was a good bit of information to share. Anyway, I was starting to really look for something that caught my eye, but wasn’t really seeing much of anything along the road I was on. I knew that a bit further up was a nice red barn that I had found several years ago in my travels. I had photographed it in the rain, in the fog, and under clouds. I think that the typical season had been in the Fall, but never under a bright sunny sky in the Summer. I wasn’t quite sure what direction the barn faced, but felt like it might be a good gamble to go and check it out. I mean, it is a famous barn in my portfolio after all.
In case you missed the news, last year I was one of the photographers highlighted in a book from McFarland Books called Photography in Ashe County, North Carolina by Doug Munroe and Kim Hadley. I covered my part in this book a while back in a Behind the Camera installment which was in a video format. If you haven’t heard about this, check out that last link, and if you want to order the book, the book title is a link to Amazon where I get a little affiliate fee which won’t cost you anything extra. In fact, they are offering a 30% coupon on the book right now, so it might be time to jump on it. Anyway, one of the photos that I submitted to the book project was of this barn when I shot it back in 2021, and you can read about it here. It is one of those barns that is relatively easy to get a good composition with, and just looks great sitting there. The issues that I have had in the past was that the sky was never all that interesting, but I had some great moody settings for the barn. I had a feeling that this time, I would be able to get a broader image of the barn with more of the surroundings included which excited me.
As I got closer to the barn, I happened to see some rust over to the left and what looked like a VW Microbus which was kind of interesting to me. I didn’t want to sacrifice the clouds that I was seeing overhead for the barn, so I continued on to that destination which turned out to be a lot closer than I suspected. I was essentially there. I pulled into the small road next to the property and pulled off on the side as I had done on several other occasions. This time, the barn was situated under a blue sky with some really nice puffy white clouds in the sky. This was first for me seeing it like this and I really liked it. The light falling on the barn was flattering which I hadn’t really expected, but I was happy to take advantage of my luck. I shut the truck up and opened the oven door….I mean the truck door and stepped into the fire. Well, not really the fire as much as the ground. It was in the 80’s which actually wasn’t that bad, but the sun was really warm compared to the blasting A/C in the truck.
I went around to open the tailgate and pull the camera out. As I was putting it on the tripod, I was very happy to see that nothing was fogging over and I was ready to shoot once I formatted the memory card and added a polarizer to the lens. The lens happened to be my 24-70mm which I knew was the best lens for this barn from experience. I would like to try the wide-angle lens at some point, but I would have to get in much closer to the barn for that to work. I noticed that there were indicators that the field had been planted and I didn’t want to disturb that, so there was really no reason to go to the house and try to get permission to get closer. Everything that I needed to do, I would be able to do from the shoulder of the road and not get too far into their property.
I started making some wider compositions to incorporate the sky as well as the barn. To keep from putting the barn right on the edge as I had to do in the past, I chose to include the smaller barn in the background for most of the shots. This gave the main barn much more breathing room in the frame and made the sky a more important part of the composition which was exactly what I was wanting. I spent the next 20 minutes moving around from my left to the right and a bit closer, and occasionally back across the street looking for the best composition that I could use with the clouds as an important element.
I felt like I was shooting a ton of images, but I really wasn’t. There were just several variations of each composition as I waited for the clouds to move in the frame to the most advantageous position. The first keeper of the batch happened 16 frames into the mix. I was starting to get closer crops to the barn by this point as the clouds were starting to thin out. I liked getting a bit closer to the barn because it had a lot of personality and I thought that it deserved a bit of a closeup view if possible. I just didn’t want to give up the incredible sky and end up in the same compositional predicament that I had been in with the fog and low clouds where the sky was more of a hinderance than an asset for the frame. This time, I wanted to be able to look into the sky and see the setting that the barn was in.
This was actually the first image that I edited from the day because I liked the directness of it. The barn, while not exactly front and center, was in a very central part of the composition and filled a decent amount of the frame. I did the first edit in color because I thought that was fitting for the composition as the red would be a bit punchier in that position within the frame. I knew that I wanted to do a black and white photo also as I haven’t been able to make that happen just yet. The conditions were great for black and white this time with the high contrast created by the sun.
It was the last of 38 frames which was the next to get processed. I started to do it in black and white, but the barn got lost in the frame and I decided that I really needed to have this one in color. I moved the processing choices over to this image from the first one that I did and started to adjust to the specific needs of this image. After a few minutes, I had a full color image that I really liked showcasing the big red barn against the green background of the hill. It was very similar to the first image that I had processed, so I decided that I didn’t need both of them. This was clearly the better color image because color was instrumental in telling the story. However, I felt that the first image might handle the removal of color better than this last one.
I started reprocessing that first image and did it in black and white this time. It was kind of a slow process as I had to get the right color profile to allow the barn to really stand out the way that I thought it should. Once I got that part figured out, I went through the process of fully processing the file to get it as close to my vision as possible. The end result is one that I am very happy with and feel confident that this was the right choice for this frame.
There were now two images out of 38 frames which I deemed as keepers. There were five different compositions shot during the day and these are two of them. They both tell different stories, and the processing choices compliment those stories I think. I still love this barn in the Fall during a foggy and misty day, but there is no denying that it looks fantastic under a high sun on a partly cloudy day. I had my first subject in the can and was ready to get some more photos shot before heading home.
Not wanting to basically drive a block away and turn the truck off again, I did a little exploring in the area to try and find another target of opportunity. There was nothing that presented itself, though I did see a scene that would look great in the winter, so I will hopefully be back when the vegetation dies off again. Eventually, I did end up back at the shop where I had seen the VW. It was there, just as my memory had suggested after that brief glance. Looking critically at it, showed some possibilities for photos, and the light wasn’t really all that bad with the van being mostly in the shadows. There was a sign on the door indicating that nobody was there and there were two phone numbers printed for anyone wanting to get in touch with the owner.
Normally, I would look at this as a business and without signs indicating “No Trespassing,” I would generally feel good about getting the photographs without asking for permission. With this location though, it was kind of hidden from the road which would make any of my actions look suspicious. It also didn’t look like a business that was regularly open which added to that concern. The sign said that the owner was five minutes away which I suspected might be an indication that he was keeping a check on things. Not wanting to cause any heartache and since there were numbers left, I did the simple thing and called both of them.
There was no answer at either and I ultimately left a message hoping that he was screening calls due to those incessant robo calls that we all get. I took one last look at the van and saw another VW Bug on the other side of the building which might be worth shooting as well. With no calls coming in, I decided to do a bit more exploring in hopes that he would call me back before I got back down the mountain.
I received no calls, and took a lot of the side roads in search of other targets of opportunity. Nothing at all presented itself and before long, I was headed down the mountain again. I got to watch the thermometer climb up another 10 degrees which put it in the mid 90’s by the time I got back into Wilkes County. It was just too hot to stay out any longer and I was ready to see what I had gotten from the barn. About 10 minutes later I was back in the house and had just taken my shoes off when my phone rang. I recognized the number and picked it up.
The gentleman on the other end was very nice and let me know that he had no problems with me doing a bit of photography at the shop. I let him know that I was back home, but would try going out there again tomorrow or the next day depending on the weather. He was fine with that, and I thanked him for getting back to me.
As I look at the weather for tomorrow, the clouds are looking similar starting at noon and getting thicker until about 2pm when the rain is supposed to start. There is a real good chance that I can get up there and take advantage of the clouds before the rain hits. As of right now, that is my plan, so hopefully you will see me back here tomorrow with some more new photos.
In the meantime, I hope that you have enjoyed this trek as well as the two photos from this barn which is now kind of famous thanks to the book. If you are debating on whether or not to get the book, I highly recommend it. I think that they did a fantastic job with it and it is well worth having in a collection. Of course, if you would just like a photo of this barn to hang on your wall, I can do that for you as well. Whether it is one of these new captures, or one of my older ones, I’m always happy to make prints for my clients. It is usually the only time I get to see the images printed since I have no room to store prints currently. On that topic, I am currently working on selling some of my personal collection of custom framed prints, most of which are award winning prints. If you are interested in coming by the studio to see them and select one for your wall, just let me know and we will get an appointment set up to come and select your favorite. These are all ready to hang in frames, with UV resistant “art glass” which removes glare and keeps the print safe from all kinds of light. I hate to see these go, but there are so many of my current batch of work that I want to see hanging on my walls that I need to clear out some of my inventory to make room. My loss is your gain.
Hopefully, I will see you back here again tomorrow, but if not, I’ve got a great Behind the Camera in the works that will be published in a week, so keep your eyes out for that. If you haven’t already, be sure and subscribe to the blog so that you get email notifications when each blog is published. That way you can be among the first to see the new photos that have been added to the collection.
Until next time….
