Wednesday, January 1, 202X…5
Long time no speak. That is just a little joke as I know you are getting tired of getting emails from me saying that there is a new blog post out. You are getting those emails….right? All you have to do is subscribe to the blog by clicking this link. Once you do that, you will get a notification that I have made a blog post here and that usually means new images. It is the best way of keeping up with the latest photos that I have been creating. If you wait for social media, you are roughly four months behind.
Anyway, I have been busy here with a bit of a studio session where I photographed smoke and did some creative edits on those photos. That was followed up with my yearly collection of significant images which was a rather difficult one to compile for 2024. In a last-minute trek, I ventured out in the fog to get some barn photos in Yadkin County which I shared last night. Just a few hours later, we had my newest Behind the Camera which was published this morning where I reviewed the entire year. I’m betting you are still reading that one, so I’ll be happy to wait while you finish up those last little details of 2024.
That brings us to the first day of 2025, which is my first opportunity of the year to get new photos. This is a tradition that I started many years ago when I was a cyclist. I would go out no matter what the weather was and ride for some distance. Of course, this was not always fun as my minimum ride was 25 miles, and that could be pretty rough in the cold and sometimes the rain. It is a little easier as a photographer because I am able to dress more accordingly, but there are still challenges with picking a random day and committing to going out for photos.
As we approached New Year’s Day, the weather was looking to be clear skies (which I don’t care for), windy (which the camera doesn’t like), and cold which my fingers aren’t fond of. It was this forecast that prompted me to go out and take advantage of the moody conditions of the last day of 2024. I’m really glad that I went because I love the two photos that resulted from that trek. They were good enough that I was not feeling too bad about not going out on the first.
In addition to the lousy forecast, I also had to stick around the house during the morning while Toni was at work so I could watch our Granddaughter until Toni’s dad picked her up for the day. He got here a little after 11am, which put the sun at nearly the highest point in the sky. This is usually not the ideal position, but I was fortunate that during the winter months, the sun remains rather low in the sky at all times, and it would be relatively soft in certain directions. There were some passing clouds as well which promised to add interest to the sky. Those clouds were going to be fading out during the afternoon though, which meant that I was going to need to get out there and get the photos made.
I had originally planned to shoot either architecture or do a photo walk in North Wilkesboro because both of those work well with clear blue skies. Seeing that there were some clouds, I wanted to try and get something where I could take advantage of those. My mind immediately went to two different barns that I have shot before close to home. The first one is one that I had tried recently on a foggy morning but was blocked by a wood carrying tractor trailer. I was hoping that the truck was now gone, and I might be able to get a good composition with the clear conditions. The red barn would be nice with the blue sky. However, when I got there, the truck no longer had its load of wood, but it was still parked very close to the barn preventing me from getting any compositions. It was all for the best anyway because the light on the barn was just not flattering at all from the directions that I would be working with.
I quickly moved on and decided to head out to another barn that I had only ever shot on cloudy mornings. I knew that the sun would be off to the side of the barn and from the best I could remember, it would be lighting it up rather nicely. When I got out there, I saw just what I had hoped for. The sun was bathing the barn in a nice warm light and the field was mostly clear of visual obstacles. The fence had been replaced since the last time I had been out, but it still looked pretty nice with a high contrast black color. I pulled off on the side of the road and surveyed the barn once more. It was going to make a really nice photo, and if I acted quickly, I would be able to get the fluffy clouds behind it.
I got out and grabbed the camera along with the standard zoom which would give me the ability to include the fence along with a good bit of the background. I clipped on a polarizer to remove the glare from the tin roof and started to find my spot for the composition. The fence was something that I have had difficulties with in the past and that was still the case today. If I included all of the fence, I would have to include the road, and the barn would get smaller in comparison. If I cropped the road out, I would have to crop through the fence which I had not really done in the past. As I looked at the visual weight of the scene, I realized that the fence was going to look too dominant if I included too much of it. I decided to crop into it at the bottom apex which would push the eyes up and over the fence. It would allow me to avoid the road while keeping the barn at a logical scale within the frame. I even had the trees included which I liked.
I shot several variations on this composition until I was happy with how things were looking. This was when I started to really pay attention to the movement in the frame. The wind was blowing quite heavily, and I was needing to stop motion in the tree and grass. I boosted the ISO to a point where I could get the shutter speed that I needed and started waiting on the lulls in the wind. As with the experience I had with both of the barns yesterday, it was the last of that series that I ended up liking the best. The clouds had faded a bit, but the composition, lighting, and stillness of the image were overall much better with this one. There were enough clouds to make it work, and that was what I was interested in.
By this point, I had 33 frames captured of the first subject of 2025. I felt good about what I had shot and would have been happy to have called it a day at this point. I mean, I have shot this barn several times before, so there can’t be too many surprises. Well, I did start to consider my lens choice. This was the same lens that I had used for most of the shots I had taken with the exception of using the 16-35mm at times in order to get the fence fully in the frame. The fact that both barns from yesterday had been shot on that same standard zoom wasn’t lost on me. While that used to be my favorite lens, I have really gotten to where I love working with the 70-200mm telezoom. My mind started churning as I was walking back to the truck.
How much sense would it make to have just talked about how many of my significant images of 2024 had been shot with the telephoto lens, yet here I was using the old 24-70mm two days in a row? When I got back to the truck, I decided to swap out the glass and see what I could do with the long lens. Once the camera was ready again, I turned my attention back to the barn. This time, I was going to be shooting from the other side of the street where I had parked. This would allow me to make the clouds much larger behind the barn, while overshooting the fence. My goal was to make a much simpler image of the barn while capitalizing on the clouds.
I tried a few different compositions and eventually moved down the road about 30 feet to change the angles on the barn to something that I thought was more suited for the framing that I was capturing. I was still on the opposite side of the street and having to watch traffic. There was another concern that popped up at this point which hadn’t been a real problem up till now. You will recall that the wind was making things move in the frame which I had to adjust for with shutter speed. Well, I had the motion in the photo handled by using the same shutter speed with the long lens. The problem now was the wind was causing camera shake. Since I had the tripod extended all the way, it was not as stable as it had been. The lens was also quite a bit heavier than the smaller 24-70mm which amplified the movement caused by the blowing wind.
I now had to time my exposures when the sun was shining on the barn, the wind in the trees was minimal, and the wind across the camera was less brutal. Having all three of these things happen at the same time was not all that easy. I was also really trying to get the cloud in the background to be in the right position for the photo which added another concern. I did end up with eight different exposures using this compositional concept. I was hoping that one of them would work out for me. By the eighth one, the clouds had dissipated to a point where I wasn’t going to be able to use them as an element.
With that, I had shot 41 frames in maybe 15 minutes. It had been quick, but I was pretty sure that it had been a great little session. I knew that I had the first photos of the new year in the bag and that always makes me feel better about things. With the clouds fading away, I went to Lowes Hardware and picked up a deep freezer since our fridge is yet again on the fritz. That is another story, and one that just makes me mad, so I’ll leave it alone.
I did get home and started working on the photos, and the editing and processing were a bit odd this time. I always edit from the last images to the first ones because I figure I am closer to getting the best images the longer I work the scene. I ended up with two from both lenses that I wanted to look at more closely. I dialed it down to one each and started to process the earlier photo that included the fence first. My gut told me that this would make a great black and white image since the fence was so dark in the foreground. I processed it fully in black and white and felt that it looked decent. It was the last one that I had shot using the standard zoom, and it was the best option to work with, but something wasn’t quite right about it.
The next photo that I started processing was the fourth in the series using the telephoto lens. I started going through the basic global edits and then zoomed in so that I could deal with a couple of sensor spots. This was when I noticed that the barn was not as sharp as I had expected. I scanned the frame for a bit and realized that it was camera shake from the wind that was causing the blurring. My secondary option happened to be the last frame shot once again. That one was tack sharp and the lighting was just marginally worse than the photo I had started to process. I moved my attention to that photo and processed it in color because I thought that the colors really worked well in that composition.
When I was done, that one didn’t quite look right to me. There was too much color in the frame with the red roof dominating the scene. I created a virtual copy to try another presentation in B&W. For simplicity, I copied the adjustments from the first photo that I had done and applied them to the copy. Almost immediately, I much preferred this one in black and white. I started to work the sliders for this image and eventually changed the color profile to a different black and white rendering. After a few minutes I was sold on this one being done in black and white.
Now what about the first one that I had done? Did I really need two black and white photos of the same barn? Nope, I certainly didn’t which meant that I was probably going to toss that first composition as a redundant photo that wasn’t as strong as the other one. Before I did that though, I created another virtual copy and applied the same edits that I had done to the tighter crop to the broader version. I was now looking at a color rendering with the black fence and it made total sense to me visually. I made a few more tweaks and did more local adjustments to it before stepping back and looking at what had been created.
There was no question that I had been wrong in my choice for black and white or color with both of these during the first run. I much preferred the opposite approach on each of them and ultimately applied those selections to the master RAW file and deleted the virtual copies. I made a few more little tweaks to the new versions and got them ready for upload to the website.
Out of 41 frames, I had two keepers which I really liked. Considering that I wasn’t really excited about the possibilities of getting out today, the trek was a resounding success. I also like that it was a quick one because I didn’t want to be bogged down with doing a lot of work in Lightroom and writing a lengthy blog after having done so much work here at the computer for the end of the year. This was a great way to start off 2025 and I hope that I can keep up with the theme of less involved treks, but more of them. These make it much easier to keep the energy up.
I do hope that you have enjoyed this first trek of the year as much as I have. If these photos speak to you and you would like to own a print, please let me know, or you can order directly from the gallery store if you are wanting the prints done in the stock sizes that I have available. For larger prints, or different media (like canvas or metal), we will need to discuss options and pricing for your needs. No matter what you choose to order, rest assured that you will be getting a top-quality piece of artwork that stands miles apart from anything that you can see on a digital device. It really is a special experience to hold a photograph printed on specially chosen media with everything exactly as the photographer envisioned. Since I have no control over your device, I cannot guarantee that you are seeing the photo exactly as I intended when I completed it. In print form, I know you are getting just what I envisioned when I pressed the shutter button.
Until next time….
