Saturday, March 28, 2026
I know that it has been a while since we last spoke, nearly two weeks as a matter of fact. That was a great morning that I spent dodging the storm in order to get some nice clouds in the frame. Since that time, the skies have pretty much been clear, or just lightly overcast which is just not my favorite kind of lighting for most of what I do. To be fair though, I did have a very good photo shoot session this past weekend with some clear skies. You might remember me talking about the session with Jackson Stover, a model out of Charlotte, who is represented by Models 1st Management. It was the agency that reached out to me for the shoot and within a couple of weeks, I had spoken with Jackson and decided on the way that we were going to do the session. My plans were to hand over about 20 images or so, but that dream left the dock pretty early on. I ended up delivering a total of 83 images to Jackson and the agency covering three different looks from two different locations over the course of about three hours of shooting. It was enough to wear me out from processing photos for a while, so I didn’t mind not getting out for my own treks for a little while before and after that session.
Now that the photos have all been delivered and I’ve had some time to recover from the session, I have been wanting to get back out with the camera to get some more of my landscape and decay photos. The problem has been that the weather just isn’t cooperating and over the next week or so, my chances were not looking to improve much, if at all. The warm days have given me a chance to get the Miata out for some driving out in the country which turned into a bit of an inspiration for some ideas on future treks. I spotted what appeared to be an old Chevy business coupe beside a building that I was interested in shooting. There was also an old house that had recently been uncovered from the trees that hid it from view. Both of these locations were subjects that I thought about long after the ride was over and started to plot and plan how I wanted to shoot them.
Scouting the locations with street view proved to be problematic because the car was not visible from street view and the house was completely covered by the trees. The only way to really get an idea of how I might want to shoot them was to go back out there and start to look at the scenes critically. This was not something that was requiring a certain kind of weather, but if I could possibly get out at a time when it would work, that would be great.
In order to give myself the best chance for a possible attempt at photographing anything, I wanted to wait until well afternoon so that the sun was in a state where the light would constantly improve rather than going out in the late morning where the light would just get worse over the next few hours. If nothing else, I might be able to linger a bit and get a few photos. I might also be able to find something else entirely to work with.
Toni had some plans for the afternoon, and she ended up leaving a little after 2pm which was not a bad time for me to head out and see what I could come up with. The sun was a bit high in the sky at the moment, but it would be dropping quickly through the afternoon providing some better light with some directionality that I could work with. With the camera loaded in the truck, I set out to see what things were looking like.
The first stop was the old house that had recently been uncovered. I found it and found that the afternoon was just not going to work at all for a photograph. It would need morning light, and ideally some moody conditions with either fog or dark clouds overhead. There was one angle that I could shoot it from, and I thought that it looked pretty good from a compositional standpoint. I just needed to get better lighting which would make this a much better subject.
The next stop on my scouting trip was the Chevy which was a bit further out. It was easy enough to find backtracking my route from the Miata ride. I really liked the car, but the building that it was parked next to wasn’t all that great. I saw some good opportunities for isolations which was a nice thing. The lighting just wasn’t right at the moment with the car in the shadows of the building. Either I would want the sun to the East, or I would need some clouds to give a better quality of light for the rust colors that I was seeing. It just wasn’t going to work out for today.
I didn’t feel overly upset that I wasn’t getting any photos from this trek as it was just going to be a scouting trip in a vehicle that I could see the subjects better from. I’m not real fond of the blue sky situation that I was finding myself in which didn’t really make me want to do any photography anyway. I did decide to carry on with the ride to see if anything happened to jump out at me. I found a few turns that took me into areas that I hadn’t been before in Southeastern Wilkes County. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was driving, but that never stopped me before. I just kept on going and making turns where it looked like there might be potential. This is my tried-and-true method of finding great subjects and locations.
After a little while of driving around, I spotted an old barn off on the side of the road. It was a plain barn without a lot of character, but it did have some age and decay to it that I liked. More importantly though, the sunlight was hitting it just right providing some really nice modeling of the structure. I could see that there were some Spring colors in the trees that I liked, but the trees were primarily bare. I slowed but continued past the barn. The more I considered the scene, the more I started to think that the blank blue sky could work to my benefit for this subject.
You heard me right, the blank blue sky was actually a good thing for this scene. My logic was something like this. The trees, while still bare, were providing some texture and interest in the sky. The blue sky would keep that background from going white which I didn’t like. It would also give a nice cool color to balance out the warm light and warm colors in the Spring foliage. The sunlight that accompanied the blue sky provided the shadows that really made the scene pop. I could see this as color and black and white. In short, I had great light, and fantastic conditions in which to capture this barn. I didn’t think that clouds, or another day would give me anything better, so I got turned around and pulled off the road.
After I got out of the truck, I moved over to the side of the road with the barn and started to evaluate the composition that I would want to shoot. I picked out the angle and decided on what kind of framing I was going to want. This helped me determine what lens to choose. I was restricted by a fence that kept me far enough away from the barn that I wasn’t going to be able to use the wide-angle lens, and I found that there was no reason to use the telephoto lens. There would be plenty of options within the range of the standard zoom which was what I decided to use. There was also the matter of the polarizer which would allow me the ability to determine how dark to make the sky right there in the camera as well as saturating the Spring colors in the foliage.
With the camera built and my basic ideas set, I went back to the side of road where I had established the angle on the barn. I set the tripod up and started to frame up composition that included the interestingly shaped tree to the side of the barn as well as a grove of trees on the other side for balance. I placed the barn in a portion of the frame to add a bit of visual tension to the composition for some added interest and fired off the first frame. That was the first one in the bag and also the first one that I processed from the stop. I didn’t even need to get a safety image for that composition because I knew that I had nailed it right out of the gate.
The next composition that I tried was the one for the black and white image that I had thought about. I reduced the amount of the polarizer and shot another horizontal image. I then flipped the camera to portrait orientation and started to work the composition out in vertical. This one concentrated more on the trees which framed the barn. For this one, I needed to pay attention to the way that the shadows were represented as well as how the blue sky looked. I tried the black and white picture style in the camera along with each of the digital filter effects to change the tonalities within the frame. None of them quite reached the image that I had in mind, but it gave me an idea of how the different tones were going to be represented.
Just to be safe with the exposure, I went back to my standard color profile that allows me to use the histogram to the fullest and shot those next images looking at color but thinking in black and white. It was the last of the images that seemed to work the best, and that represented the fifth one that I had shot for the day. I liked it, but the black and white didn’t quite do the scene justice after seeing the color images from the day. I still kept with my initial thought because the vertical composition didn’t really lean on the colors like the horizontal ones had.
Now that I had the initial composition figured out and shot, I started to open the lens up to get more of the scene. I was wanting to see this in a more wide-angle form, and at 24mm, I was able to capture more of the Spring color without including too much of the sky in the frame. I kept with a lot of the same elements of the original composition while including much more of the trees to the left which had all of the Spring color. Because of the color on that side, the barn and the interestingly shaped tree were balanced out for visual weight. I did see an opportunity to flip the image in post which allowed me to put more emphasis on the trees. With the image flipped, the barn was the first thing that we saw, and then that oddly shaped tree pointed up to the colors of the neighboring trees. This was a very literal roadmap to the image, and I think that it worked very well after the processing was done.
For those that believe in luck, you will find it interesting to know that this last keeper was the 13th frame that I shot, and the last from this location. It is also my favorite of the images that I shot here at this barn. The part that really surprised me was that I managed to pull this off under a blue sky with the sun still pretty high in the sky. This is not my preferred way of capturing scenes like this, but with the season and colors, it somehow seemed right. The atmosphere was there that suited the scene, only it wasn’t an atmosphere that I typically gravitate towards. Every once in a while, I will shoot in these conditions and find that the photos turn out very nice. I do like the added color saturation that the sunlight provides as well as the contrast from the shadows. The thing is, this is difficult light to work with because my angles are very limited and the subject really needs to be in mostly open light so that the dappled light doesn’t interfere with the impact on the main subject.
It just so happens that this scene was perfect for the lighting that was present, and it very likely wouldn’t have worked out under my preferred lighting. This is why I love driving around and responding to scenes that I see under the conditions that I have at the time. This technique allows me to respond to the emotion of the scene rather than trying to make it fit a certain look and forcing it. Working with clear skies just takes a lot more digging to find the most appropriate subjects to work with, and this makes the successes even more satisfying.
Under normal circumstances I would have been very happy to stop here and head home. I kind of did, but I wanted to check one more location before I called it a day. I’m not going to make this a multiple part blog series this time because the subjects are quite a bit different and the locations are as well. I’m just going to do it as a separate blog with its own title and everything. This will make it easier to reference later on, and the thumbnail will represent the photos included much more accurately.
Thank you for joining me on this part of the day, and I hope you will stick around to see how it concluded with the next blog. If you would like to be sure to not miss any of the blog entries, be sure and subscribe to this website for updates. If you are relying on social media to tell you about new entries, there is no way to ensure that you will see those posts. Most of my posts are only getting visibility with a couple hundred accounts while I have nearly 15K followers. The vast majority of those who follow me aren’t getting to see my posts. By subscribing here, you will just get a simple email notification for every new blog entry which will include all of the new photos. It costs nothing, and ensures that you can follow what I’m doing and where I’m going.
I’ll be back here soon…
