Sunday, September 15, 2024
I was asked not too long ago if I shot old barns and homes like I did old rusty cars. The question kind of caught me off guard because in my mind I have done tons of barns and houses over the years. However, as I stopped to think about it, I realized that mostly everything that I have shot recently has been old cars and the like with the occasional landscape thrown in. In fact, you kind of had to look back through the blog entries to find the last time I shot a barn, although it wasn’t really terribly long ago. It did make me think that I needed to do some more barn photography as I do really enjoy it. There are also lots of subjects out this way which are not all that difficult to work with. I just needed a good day to go out and make it happen.
Coming off of the last trek which started at sunrise and ended up at an old Tow Truck after shooting a few waterfalls, I was feeling pretty good about photography once again. This was an accomplishment in and of itself for sure after months of really finding it hard to get out and even try to get photos. Since I had a bit more positive attitude about things, and obviously have been up to shooting pretty much anything, I started to think about doing some barn photos. The one that came to mind was one that I shot shortly after moving into the area. I am pretty sure that was the last time that I have stopped to shoot it, but I do pass by it several times a week. Not that much has changed with it, other than four years of time passing which has altered a little bit with it. I was really happy with the first photo that I shot of it, and actually have sold a few prints of it. There really wasn’t much that I wanted to improve on the photo since the conditions were great and I think that I photographed it quite well. The last four years have seen an elevation in my editing skills as well as bringing in a new camera into the mix. The first photo was done on my workhorse 5D Mk3 which was actually replaced a few months after that shot was done.
With the new gear and better skills, I figured that it was a good time to go out and give it another go. I really wanted to include some fog with it, so I started to look for foggy mornings which shouldn’t have been too difficult to find with the changing temperatures and the showers that have been passing by over the last few days. Sadly though, even though I was waking up early in the morning with the forecast giving me hopes of fog, it was just not going to materialize. By the time this morning came around, I was tired of waiting for that one element and started to think that I could work with a good and cloudy sky instead.
When I woke up this morning, the clouds were a bit overcast and didn’t have much detail at all. It wasn’t until a few hours later that the clouds started to break up a little bit and that provided just enough contrast and drama for what I wanted. It was still early enough in the day that the sun would be on the right side of the barn so that any directional light would be in my favor. I grabbed my gear and headed out to the barn. This brought us to the hardest part of the whole experience. I needed to find a place to park. I won’t block a driveway, and I really try hard not to park on any grass that looks to have been mowed. The shoulders near the barn were very narrow and went into steep embankments except for two areas, one on either side of the road. The first time I stopped here, I parked on the other side of the road and walked the 50 or so yards to get to the shooting location. I didn’t really like parking there because it was in a curve, and I felt a little unsafe leaving the truck there. This time, I went on the opposite side of the barn and parked on a straight portion of the road where there was a small cutout in the trees. I knew the composition that I was going for and the truck wasn’t going to appear in the frame parked here. It was about the same distance away, but I was able to see it the entire time I was working which made me feel a little more secure.
Having worked this scene before, I knew that the standard lens would get me where I wanted to be since I planned on including a good bit of the field around the barn to avoid it just being a photo of a barn. I wanted to tell a bit of the story behind it and the location was a big part of it. There were also some golden accents along the side of the property that I wanted to bring into the frame. I picked the area that I thought would give me the best view and set the tripod up and placed the camera atop the ballhead. A polarizer was added to bring a little glare control to the tin roof, and to hopefully saturate the vegetation around the barn.
I started to work on the composition and tried to figure out the best place to focus since I wanted the foreground sharp as well as the barn. I did a little bit of trial and error and found a place in the grass to focus on which gave me sufficient sharpness through the frame. The exposure was much easier this time with the light than what I had experienced before. I remembered well having to run back across the road to get an ND Grad from the truck to control the sky. That was not needed this time, and if it had been, I had my camera bag with me. These are some of the skills that have gotten better over the years. I have gotten much better at anticipating what I might need and if needed, I just bring the bag to keep it close.
There was really nothing at all difficult about this scene though, and I could tell from the histogram that I had plenty of room in the exposure to work the contrasts as I needed. My only concern was from the breeze and the passing cars which made the tall weeds move enough to introduce blur. To counter this, I just dialed in a couple of stops of ISO to allow a quick enough shutter speed while keeping a very wide depth of field. This was also something that I would not have done four years ago because I was still adamant that I needed to stick as close to ISO100 as I could. I don’t have those reservations these days, although I don’t get crazy with the ISO numbers, especially with the DSLR body that I was shooting with.
I spent a little bit of time with this composition and fired off different frames as the light changed and the wind speed dropped. After about 10 or so frames, I started to look for alternate compositions which I had done before. I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss anything that might make for a good photo. I narrowed the scope of the shot and really filled the frame with the barn, but that just seemed boring. I brought in some of the yellow flowers on the right while still keeping the frame tight on the barn, but that just looked cluttered and chaotic. It was looking like my first composition was the one to beat. It gave lots of breathing room to explore. There were faint mower marks in the grass that created leading lines while the tall weeds on the bottom right corner gave a great diagonal. There was a patch of trees on the left that gave more depth and showed how the field turned to the left. All of these aspects worked together to create a photo with a story that I really liked. Any other composition would not show nearly as much and would make it just a postcard shot of a barn.
The more I thought about it the more I decided that I didn’t need to spend any more time here. I texted Toni and let her know that I think I had a winner from this location and said that I wanted to try one more spot before I came home. The sky was just too good to pass up finding one more location to work with. I had the spot in mind too, and it was another barn that I had shot several times before. It has been a frustrating location for me because the barn is kind of plain, but the scene is better than the subject. I’ve tried working the scene using both the barn and the tree, each of those elements in their own photos, and even done panoramas of the barn. The sky has just never really been on my side and the lighting has always been a little off for what I really wanted. I’ve used this location for mentoring before and have spent a lot of time looking at ways of photographing this barn. Looking up at the sky, I really felt that this was the right time to get a better than average photo of it.
It didn’t take me long to get there and when I saw the barn I wasn’t sold on it. The field of corn stalks were much taller than I had remembered them being, but in all fairness, I had seen them at the beginning of Spring, so they had grown. The base of the barn was blocked by the corn, but that sky was still speaking to me. As I pondered how I might want to shoot it, I started to think about doing a panorama as I had the first time I had photographed this subject. That brought me to another idea, I could use this as a topic for my next Tuesday’s Tips which hadn’t been recorded yet. I don’t do panoramas all that often, so I haven’t really had one to demonstrate a stitch on since I started doing the videos. This could solve a couple of minor problems if the photo turned out good. I went ahead and parked the truck and got my bag and tripod because I just had no idea what I was going to need just yet.
I started off with my telephoto lens which gave me the right reach for several single frame compositions, and I knew it was going to be the right choice for the pano when I was ready for that. I added the polarizer for the tin roof, but held off on the ND Grads since it was looking like the exposure latitude wasn’t going to be too bad at all. The frustrating part was starting at this point and that was deciding where to place the camera. I wanted to make sure that I had the trees behind the barn to provide separation from the sky above. I also had to decide whether or not to include the opening that showed the distant mountains. I liked this element, but I had to make sure that the relationship between the barn and opening made sense to the photo. Once I had all of that figured out, I did a few single frame exposures which looked really good. The sky was exposed correctly and there was plenty of shadow detail. If the pano failed, I would have a few of these postcard shots to choose from.
It was the pano that I was after though, so now that I had the positioning of the camera figured out, I leveled the tripod and made sure that the camera swept from left to right without showing any angles. Once I had that figured out, I double checked the exposure and dialed in the polarizer to get the tin roof just right. I started making exposures at that point and was shooting between five and seven frames. After two panos were shot, I moved my position slightly and went through the procedure once again before doing two more series of photos. This gave me a total of four panos to choose from during the culling process.
Just to make sure that I had all of my bases covered, I shot a few more single frame compositions as safety images and packed up the gear. It had been a quick trek, but I was feeling pretty good about things. I had shot 66 frames over two locations. I knew that I wasn’t going to get six photos out of this, and really only expected three, maybe four counting the alternate compositions that I shot from both locations.
When I got home, I brought all of the photos into Lightroom and culled them down. I found the pano that I wanted to work on and went ahead and filmed that process. it went smoother than I had expected which was nice. I finally had a tutorial to direct folks to who ask me how to build panoramas. In the past, I had just talked them through the process with no visual aids. I think that this will be much better and hopefully will help a lot of folks.
As expected, the pano that I had demonstrated with turned into a solid edit and my favorite from this location. I had mixed feelings about it when I shot it, but I was very happy with the outcome. In fact, I was so happy that there was really no need to process the alternate compositions. They were much weaker than the pano which just had a certain presence to it that I couldn’t help but be impressed by. As for the first location that I shot, it was one of the early compositions that I had shot which turned into the keeper. I had another two that I wanted to look at for processing, but there was just no reason to edit them because they were the same angle on the barn, but not nearly as engaging as the one that I had already edited. In the end, I had only two frames of the 66 shot which were keepers. Normally, I would be upset at that hit rate, but because both of these turned out so good, I just can’t find anything to complain about.
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek and the photos that resulted. For those who have forgotten that I shoot barns, this one was for you! If either of these photos speak to you and you would like a print, I would love to speak with you further about that. You can also order some stock sizes directly from the gallery store if you prefer. I will say that the panorama will be much better done larger than I can print here and would benefit from either canvas or metal as a media choice. Those are all simple options that can be special ordered, so just let me know what you would like to do.
Until next time….
