Tuesday, December 6, 2022
Here we are into the last month of 2022. It seems like only yesterday that I was talking about my first trek of the year. Somehow the time has just slipped by in a very fast fashion through the year. Since the end of September, I’ve been on a roll with going out and getting photographs, not to mention doing a fair amount of portrait sessions along the way. I knew at some point, my creative energy would dwindle a little bit because of that creative tempo. It has pretty much done that finally and I’ve been very content to just stay home and now worry about new photos. It is all part of the process, the ebb and flow if you will. That is something that I intend on discussing in an upcoming Behind the Camera sometime in 2023, so keep an eye out for that.
With a workshop coming up, I wanted to get out and at least get my mind actively thinking about photography once more. I didn’t really have much in mind that I wanted to shoot and decided that I would look at revisiting an old house in North Wilkesboro that I had shot a couple of years ago. The day actually turned out pretty good, so I haven’t been all that interested in trying the location again. While it is good that I was very happy with the outcome, there is always the opportunity to improve and there were some aspects of the photos that haven’t worn as well with me as I would have wanted. The photo I am referring to is the black and white one that I shot from close in. The color one from across the road works well as it is.
This is the photo that was shot two years ago almost to the week. The morning was great with partly cloudy skies allowing the sun to peek through and light the house up. I loved the contrast that it provided, and the sky was nearly perfect. It was my composition that had failed me in the long term. I had been dealing with some signs that kept influencing the composition in negative ways and I ended up landing on this composition that cropped into the stone wall in the foreground. As time went on, I decided that I really loved the stone wall and wanted it represented a bit more prominently within the frame. I also didn’t like the floating tree to the right that just entered the frame with the branches only. I really wanted it to have a trunk and an anchor in the frame. Those were the two things that kind or irked me with this photo as the years ticked on, but I really didn’t see the need to go back and do it again.
Here lately, I’ve been doing more with my 14mm prime lens and started to think that I might be able to get the composition that I was after with that lens. I had been by the house a few times and noticed that the signs that had been there before were no longer an issue which really helped my chances of finding a better composition. The only sign that I was left worrying about was a No Trespassing sign on the gate by the driveway. The sign next to the front door of the house would be easy to remove as I had done that before with just a couple of seconds of work. I just had to think about the conditions I wanted to shoot it in.
With all of the textures created by the bare trees and the yard, I wanted to simplify the image a bit more than last time. I really wanted to capture this on a foggy morning to soften the trees a bit and lose the detail in the sky. I still wanted the directional light of morning though because I didn’t want the sky to expose too brightly. With this week being full of rain and clouds, this was probably going to be the right time to give this a try. I had planned on going Monday morning, but the conditions turned out to be less than ideal with high clouds and no fog. Looking at the weather, Tuesday was looking like a much better chance with low clouds and a good chance for fog.
I had set the clock for 5:30 to make sure that I was up in time. When it went off, I checked the weather and saw that the rain was going to hold off for a brief time during the morning and the fog chances were pretty good. I still wasn’t totally motivated to get out and work the scene though, so I rolled over and contemplated things for a while. Eventually, I decided to get up and give it a try. The trip out to the house wasn’t but about 15 minutes so I was there shortly after sunrise when I was hoping that the fog would be at its best.
When I arrived, the light levels were very low as the clouds were dark and full of rain. The low-level light made everything in the scene very flatly lit which I do enjoy working with. My idea for the composition had been formulated around the 14mm prime and that was what I fitted to start with. This lens is a spectacular piece of equipment, and I was looking forward to using it here. It was harder to get the composition set up than I was thinking it would be using this lens and I ended up doing a vertical frame that I was going to crop into a 4:5 ratio. I got the exposure figured out and realized that because the light levels were so low, I was having to force a shutter speed of 3.2 seconds at f/11. That wasn’t going to work with the passing traffic causing a breeze that made the grass sway. I ended up boosting the ISO to 400 which allowed a more respectable shutter speed around 1/5 of a second or so. That was enough to freeze the grasses and allow me to get the photo.
The more I looked at the framing, the less I liked the vertical framing, so I went back to a horizontal and considered doing a 4:5 crop there as well to eliminate the traffic and the sign on the gate. That still didn’t work as well as I was hoping which just meant that this was not the lens for the job. As much as I wanted to use it here, I needed a different tool. I went back to the bag and got my 16-35mm lens which I knew worked well here. I left the filters off of it because there was really no need for any.
I went with the same basic composition that I had two years ago, but this time, I included the wall and more of the gate. There had been distractions before that kept me from doing this, so I was happy to be able to get these elements in the scene this time. I had the lens at 16mm which wasn’t much different from that 14mm, but in the wide-angle world 2mm is a huge change in focal length. The composition came together nicely, and I was liking this version finally. Once I was happy with the lack of movement in the grasses, I moved to the front of the house to try and get something with the stairway leading up to the door. This just didn’t work at all because the door was blocked by vegetation, and I didn’t have enough room to get far enough away to get the perspective that I wanted without standing in the middle of the street. After about 30 minutes or so, I decided to call it quits for this location. The light wasn’t getting any better, and the fog never bothered to materialize as I had hoped for.
I drove around for a while after and tried to find something else to work with before going home, but I could tell that my heart just wasn’t in it. I wasn’t inspired by anything, and I eventually saw no further need to be out. The rain was starting to come in which was that final clue that I needed to be done.
When I got the images into the computer, I looked through the 27 frames that I had shot and wasn’t all that excited about any of them. None of the 14mm shots worked like I had been hoping, and it was only the one shot at 16mm in horizontal format that worked as a composition. I really liked the composition, but the fog wasn’t there which hurt the concept of the image. The fact that I had been able to include the entire wall was a big enough deal that I went forward with editing it.
I knew that I wanted to make it a black and white image, especially with the blank overcast sky. That was the easy part, but then it became a matter of building up the contrast to where I liked it. That took some doing and a lot of finessing of the tones. As I got finished with it, the grayscale black and white looked a bit flat to me which was a product of the lighting. It was needing something, but I wasn’t sure what. I wanted to see cooler tones in it though and decided that I would try for a toning treatment of the image to cool it a tad. I liked that, and it set a mood that I was agreeable to with it, but it still wasn’t quite right. I decided to eliminate that toning and try a split toning effect with blue and copper. This process is very easy to do in Lightroom in the color grade tab. I toned the shadows in blue and the highlights in copper for a very subtle effect with the image. The split toning seemed to capture the mood that I was after for this, and I was pretty happy with it. A quick dodge and burn through the image added a bit more contrast and I called it done.
I’m not sure if I like this one any better than my first attempt though. I think that the composition is a bit stronger with the entire wall and an additional tree on the right. I just don’t think that the lighting works as well here with the overly soft and diffused light. I think it was better lit with the sun shining on it, and the contrast looks better in that light. I imagine that I will go out there again at some point now that I have a composition figured out. I just need to get the lighting a bit better. I will say that this is my first experience with split toning, and I think it suits the image well. I’ll do more of this in the future I believe.
I hope that you have enjoyed this very quick trek and the resulting photo. If these, or any of the photos that I share in the blog or my galleries appeal to you, please consider supporting my work by purchasing a print. You get a piece of art to hang on your wall, and I get to pay my bills. Also keep me in mind if you have the need for a portrait photographer. I’ve got a studio all set up and ready for you.
Until next time…
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