Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Hey everybody! Did you miss me? I know it has been a while since I last published a blog. You might remember a short trek out to Shacktown Falls at the beginning of the month as I was getting ready for my next studio session. I had said that things would be getting back to normal in the respect of treks and getting back to my landscape and decay roots. Well, I have been trying, but the weather hasn’t really been all that cooperative with the days that I could go out being rather sunny. I’ve also been spending a good deal of time taking care of all of the Fall chores around the house which got kind of sidelined during all of the portrait sessions. I’ve still been rather busy with things related to this website though, which you won’t see evidence of for a little while still. I’m all finished with the next Behind the Camera which should be an interesting one, and I’ve got the majority of the year-end review done for the first of January. I’ve about got my twelve most significant images of 2025 compiled and am working on putting them in order currently. In short, even though I have been rather quiet here lately, I have still been very steadily working on many different photographic projects. What I haven’t been doing much of this month is getting out with the camera and capturing photographs. I decided to rectify that issue this week.
As I looked ahead, most every day was looking sunny for the most part. The days that would have been decent to go out were spent doing the last of the Fall details which was on the Miata. With that done, I was free to start looking ahead for some days when I could go out and get a few photos. It was looking like Tuesday and Wednesday were going to be the best choices, so I went out on Monday and did a bit of scouting. One thing that I had noticed after two months of really focusing on people photography, I had kind of lost touch with the things that inspired me on my rural road trips. Without anything sticking in my head that I wanted to photograph, I knew that I would be driving aimlessly around looking for something and that wasn’t a good start to getting back in the swing of my normal photography. I needed to go out there and find something that I would want to photograph, and that was what I did.
I ventured into Iredell County and started to look for some areas that I had not been in before. Not really finding anything interesting, I thought about a spot in Catawba County that I have been trying to get permission to shoot for a couple of years now. I started to make my way out there to see if anyone was on the property. Sadly, it was just as vacant as I had recalled it being every other time. To add to that sadness, most of the cars that I was interested in photographing were now gone. The only one that was left was the one right off of the driveway which I had shot before on a rainy day. It would appear that I can wipe this one off the list of potential locations to shoot.
I continued driving around and eventually ran across an old house at a “T” intersection. It was pretty much off by itself and had some broken windows and just generally fit my ideal of a beautiful old home. I pulled out the map to pin the location, but the connection wasn’t really good enough to nail down the exact location, so I hoped that the pin dropped in the right place. I saw a lot of other potential in the area, but nothing that really jumped out at me. It was just the house that seemed to be a good fit for what I was looking to capture.
I figured that a good cloudy day would work best for the house, but the clouds that were coming in on Tuesday were not going to be that thick. It was looking like a pretty well overcast day with high level clouds which generally make for nice, diffused lighting, but still rather bright. I was really thinking more in the line of dramatic deep clouds above the house and to do the photo in black and white. I needed to see what the clouds looked like and make a decision at that point on Tuesday. The way that the plans were working out, I was looking at only Tuesday for being a good day for a trek. Wednesday was going to be a day for washing the truck since it has been a month since it had any attention. The rest of the week was already spoken for.
When Tuesday morning rolled around, the weather was saying clear skies, but there was a nice overcast sky above. I could see clear skies on the way from the West now that the trees were empty. That makes it a whole lot easier to see the weather conditions from inside the house. I decided to give it a bit more time to see what the clouds were going to end up doing. That gave me time to go downstairs and take care of my morning routine. Only that was kind of interrupted by a server outage at Cloudflare who hosts this website. Much of my morning was delayed due to that interruption, but when things came back online, I was able to get everything taken care of pretty quickly.
It was about to be the middle of the day, and the clouds had thinned, but there was more coverage in the sky now. The light was looking good and the weather for Alexander County was looking similar to ours, only about an hour behind. I decided to load up the camera and head out there to see what I could do with the house and see if there was anything else that struck my fancy while in the area. Right after pulling out from the garage, I had to put my sunglasses on which is usually a really bad indication for the quality of light. Under normal circumstances I might have turned around and forgotten about going out, but I was actually really wanting to do some photography. There was no reason to bail just yet. I could at least see what the house looked like under this sky and see if I could work out a composition or two with it.
The pin that I had saved on the phone was at the right place and I was able to take a direct route to it rather than the haphazard directions that I had taken the first time to find it. That route took me down a few familiar roads but extended my time on one of them. As I was driving, I was looking for other subjects that might be worth stopping for. Out of the corner of my eye I did see a red Ford tractor in a shelter that looked like something which might make a good photograph. I got turned around and drove by slowly to see what it looked like. It was a little jumbled and it was in the shadows, but there was something about it that I really liked.
I got turned around again and pulled off on the side of the road. I went to the back of the truck to build the camera and decided to use the 24-70mm lens and a polarizer. I walked over to where the tractor was located, planning on staying on the shoulder of the road. There was a guy walking towards me, and I recognized this for what it was. This was the property owner, and I was actually glad to see him. I hadn’t planned on knocking on any doors because the shot that I really wanted was easily done from the road. He asked if I was with the trash folks as he was expecting a dumpster to be delivered soon. I was a little taken by that question as I haven’t had that one before. I let him know who I was and what I was wanting to do. He was a really nice guy, and we chatted for a bit. At the end of the conversation, he gave me his blessing to get as close as I wanted to the tractor for photographs. I was really happy he had come out to talk with me because now I had more options on how to capture this tractor.
I did start out with the shot that I had planned from the beginning. It was not an easy shot by any stretch as the composition was a little difficult to arrive at and then I had the extreme contrast of the scene to deal with. To keep the tractor out of the shadows, I had to add an ND Grad filter to pull back the sky. Once I did that, I had enough information in the shadows to make the image workable. I did a few frames with slightly different compositions and framing to make sure that I had the best option when it came time to decide which one to process.
I then moved in a bit closer and decided to get a shot where the tractor was the biggest thing in the frame and the sky was eliminated. I wasn’t able to omit the entire sky, but I was able to get the majority of it out of the frame so that I could get a better exposure on the tractor. This was a little more direct and showed off the textures of the tractor better than the establishing shot. I’m thinking that I like the overall composition better because of how the shadows are running through the foreground. Both of them turned out pretty nice, and those were the basic compositions that I had planned on doing when I arrived. Since I had permission to get closer though…I decided to take advantage to see if there were any isolations that I could do on this tractor.
There was no way to not think about a recent trek into Yadkin County when I shot a similar tractor in the middle of town. One of my favorite compositions from that day was a long nose shot, and I still look back on that one as a pretty cool idea. This had the same design, but the lighting was different as well as the hood being cattywampus which messed with the lines. I still liked the idea of the close in isolation and decided to give it a different slant. I looked at it from both sides and found that when photographed from the tractor’s left side, the background was thrown nicely into shadow which is what I wanted. I framed up the shot with the hood emblem as the visual anchor while the corner of the grill turned into another visual element. The long slats of the grill filled out the lower portion of the frame while the hood added some interesting lines in the top portion.
I tried this from a couple of different camera heights to make sure that I had the perspective that I really wanted. Once I had that shot in the bag, I started to look around the tractor to see if there was anything else that I wanted to capture while I was there. The light wasn’t all that great for being able to work a lot of things around this tractor, but I was pretty sure that I had used the light to the best of my ability for the photos that I had shot. It was an extra location so all of these frames were bonuses in my book. I still hadn’t gotten to the reason that I drove out here yet.
I loaded up the truck and started on down the road for the last seven or so miles before I got to the house. The clouds were still in the sky, but they were very thin, and I could still see a good bit of blue sky behind them. It wasn’t what I had visualized, but the direction of light proved to be interesting when I was looking at the house from the side road. This was the least convenient side to shoot the house from because of the brush up against the fence. The easier side would require a bit longer of a lens, but there was a clearer view of the house. That side was all in shadows and with the time of year, I didn’t think that would change much during the afternoon. The best light, and therefore the best composition was the one that was a bit more difficult to get to.
I pulled off on the side of the road and went to build the camera with the standard zoom one more time. I immediately noticed a truck pulling up on the opposite side of the road and slowing. Again, I recognized this for what it was and was happy to see the property owner. I went up to him before getting much done with the camera. He asked what I was doing out here and I was very forthcoming with him as to my intentions as I teach during workshops. His tone changed after he realized why I was there and we actually started to have a very nice conversation. He had family with connections to the same police department that I had worked for during my 20-year career. As I had done with the previous property owner, I gave him my card and explained that I would be happy to return with a print if he liked the photo. Since this was a family home, I knew that there was some emotional connection to the property. He was very happy to let me photograph it and indicated that I could go into the field, but he wouldn’t recommend it since there were renters that had some cattle that might be aggressive. There was really no reason to enter the property, so I assured him that I was only going to be on the shoulder of the road.
With his blessing, I went back to finish building the camera and started to find the right angle for the composition. From the road it was easy to spot the angle that I wanted which put the tree in the front yard just off to the left of the house. The issue came in getting to the fence to get a clear shot through the brush. I hopped over the ditch and climbed the short embankment and found myself right in the middle of the briar patch. I had picked the area that had the least amount of growth at least.
While this spot gave the clearest view, I was still standing in the briars, and they were grabbing at every bit of clothing that I was wearing and any bits of exposed skin that it could find. I was having a really hard time getting the camera in place and when I did, I wasn’t able to sight it in because of the briars grabbing ahold of me. I was forced to systematically pull the branches off and tuck them into the fence to give me a clear area to work the camera. When I finally got the briars off of me, I had to clear out just as many in front of the camera to allow for a clear view. Reaching some of the taller ones was problematic and I had to compromise by elevating the camera to where I was now leaning into more briars that had to be cleared, but the view from the camera was clear.
When I got it all situated, I started to worry that I was going to need a grad filter to pull the sky back as I had done with the tractor. Getting back to the truck would have been a lot of work and not something that I was really looking forward to. Fortunately, I could see just enough detail in the shadows and highlights to avoid needing the extra filter. I had everything that I was going to need right here with me. It was just a matter of finding the right exposure values to control the wind either by showing it in the tall bushes or by freezing them. That was all a balancing act with the shutter, aperture, and ISO values which I tried many combinations once I had my root exposure figured out.
When I was pretty happy that I had what I wanted from the briar patch, I carefully pulled the camera out of the tangle as well as getting myself back down the embankment. I walked out to the cross street to see if the other composition would work. The light really wasn’t on my side for this composition, and I didn’t really like how it was looking after shooting the first one that I thought was the strongest composition possible of the house. Could it be that simple that I had one composition and I was done? You know me, I’m going to work the scene as much as I can before I call it quits.
I started to walk around the house on the well-lit side and spotted the broken window with the curtain blowing out of it. This was something that grabbed my eye from the road as a very unique feature of this house. I liked that the white curtain grabbed the eyes and the fact that it was flying on the outside of the house added to that visual interest. I really wanted to do something with that window, but I knew I had the wrong lens for that job. Since I wasn’t locked down in a briar patch, it was easy to go back to the truck and get a different lens. For this, there was no question that I was wanting my telephoto lens.
When I had the glass changed out on the camera, I came back to the fenceline and started to find a clearing. This section was much more welcoming, and I didn’t bleed once getting into position. The only question that I had to work through was whether or not to include the weeds and small tree that were growing alongside the house. I could use them as elements to balance the composition, or I could go for the minimal look and concentrate on the curtain more than anything. Without being able to decide which was the best option, I did what any other photographer would have done in the same situation. I shot both variations so that I could look at it when I got home to really decide which I liked better.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, I liked both variations equally as well. It was also a change to get a black and white image into this mix because the more minimal shot was all about the white curtain and the wood didn’t really offer that much in terms of color importance. The wider scene needed the color to add to the contrast, and I ended up processing them with those considerations in mind. What I ended up with was two different compositions of this window which I liked, but for different reasons. They both have a very lonely mood to them, and I think that they both say a lot without saying a word. What do you think?
After I shot the photos of the broken window, I had a total of 44 frames in the camera from two different locations. I wasn’t sure how many photos that I had, but I was figuring two from each would be a good crop. I was really surprised that I ended up looking at three photos from each location for a total of six. That seemed like nothing at all to edit since my last photo session had yielded 128 keepers out of a bit over 300 frames. Editing six photos would take no time, and even in the realm of my recent treks, this was a pretty quick blog entry.
I do hope that you have enjoyed this adventure as well as the photos that I came back with. Remember, if there are any photos that you might want to see on your wall, please get in touch with me to order a print of your very own. I do love seeing my work in that tangible form and not something that is compressed for viewing on a monitor. There is just something special about seeing a photograph in its intended form hanging on the wall. When you buy a print, you are showing your support of my art in a very constructive way which allows me to continue producing it. With it being the end of another year, I am forced to make some pretty hard decisions about the direction that I will be taking for the next year, and times are getting tough for artists which means that I might be having to make some cuts here and there. You may have already noticed that I have done away with my workshops and have decided to put that effort into doing mentorships. If you are interested in upping your photographic game, I encourage you to check out the options that I have available to you. Unlike workshops, these programs are fully customizable for you and your needs. It is the best and most efficient way to learn photography, at least in my opinion.
Stay tuned to see what comes next. I’m hoping for some more treks before the year is out, I just don’t know when the next one will be.
Until then….
