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It’s prudent to be mindful of your surroundings when you’re out exploring.
Always on the lookout for good locations, we passed by this scene and I couldn’t help but note the John Deere tractor parked next to an old shed. The placement looked idyllic – a perfect setup.
We turned around in a driveway down the street and came back for the shot. The tractor and sheds were set back from the road quite a ways, and I wanted to get closer. But, a small, abandoned house was just to the right, and there was a prominent, hand-painted sign hung on an old tree that conveyed a clear message: “No Trespassing.” The driveway where we had just turned around was for a newer house, and as is often the case, the newer digs are built off to the side while these old beauties dissolve into the landscape.
The whole setup was just creepy enough that I didn’t choose to find the owner for permission, and I sure didn’t think it was a good idea to go any further onto the property. People can get ornery around here when you mess with their stuff.
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Processed as an HDR image with texture overlay and sepia toning via Silver Efex Pro. I wanted to create deep, mysterious shadows on the edges while maintaining a lighted path for the eye to travel to the tractor. Hopefully, the overall effect gives the viewer the same trepidatious feeling I had when taking the shot.
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I can almost hear her chirping, “Hellllloooooooooo….”
The pole beans are coming in nicely now, and we’ve given them some sisal support lines to run on. While tending things last night, I spotted this debutante — higher up than any others — waving to the adoring crowd below.
Even though the clouds in the background were fine, I thought I’d make this composition a bit more festive by overlaying a texture from pareeerica, available on Flickr.
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This image is decidedly not in the ‘rurex’ category. Interesting how we can go from “Elbow Grease” to this.
This was from a Real Estate shoot I did for an associate a while ago. It’s always nice to wander freely around a place like this… not nearly as many weeds and bugs as some locations I’ve been to. Actually, it was so nice that I decided to have a bit of lunch on the dock while the camera was firing off the brackets.
Life is good in a place like this.
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Sometimes, you just get lucky.
We were driving through a rural area and passed by an interesting place, so we wanted to turn around to check it out. Just before our turn out, we saw a man and woman approaching an old, abandoned house through a yard full of weeds and grasses. As we passed the house again, we noticed the woman standing on the porch.
The place we wanted to see was closed, so we turned back to our original route. As we approached the abandoned house once again, we saw the couple waving us down. Perhaps there was some sort of trouble.
The couple had seen us passing by for the third time and thought that we were ‘locals’ who were checking them out. As they told us later, “Everyone around here is related, so we thought it would be a good idea to let you know that this house belongs to our family.” Good information to have on both counts, I thought.
We heard their interesting story about how the man and his sister had been adopted by different families, and had only found each other recently after a 17 year search. The old house had belonged to the sister’s father, who passed away some time ago, leaving the house unoccupied.
Being the curious sort – and, of course, armed with a camera and tripod – I asked if I could poke around a bit. What had once been a beautiful old farm house was now collapsing in on itself. Along the front and sides, all of the doors and windows were blocked with plywood. Rats! (Um, not real rats. I just couldn’t see inside.) Around back, though, there was an old mud room door with no glass in the windows, just some loose cardboard that had seen better days.
“Would you mind if I just stuck my camera through this window?”, I asked. I find it never hurts to ask. “No problem.”
It was so dimly lit inside that I didn’t even know what was in there, and given the musty, moldy smell coming through, I wasn’t about to go inside. Apparently, it had been quite some time since the detergents and mops were used there.
The “skylight” is courtesy of last year’s Hurricane Irene, which had peeled back a significant portion of the tin roof. It’s a look.
It’s just a simple Rurex (Rural Exploration) composition – one not particularly noteworthy, at that – but it gave us the chance to stop along our route, do a little exploration, meet some interesting people, and then check for ticks.
Pete and Kelly, if you see this on the blog, please drop me a line at my email address. Thanks for letting us peek into the old place. It was a pleasure to meet you.
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The main workbench at Limmer & Sons Custom Boots in Intervale, New Hampshire.
You might recall this location from other images, “The Bootmaker”, “They Never Call”, and “Consigned”, among others. Let’s suggest that it’s a target-rich environment for an HDR photographer.
When talking to Pete Limmer last fall, he had mentioned that some of those earlier pictures were “very detailed.” I never really found out if that was a good thing, or not, but for this image I thought I’d hedge my bets by presenting a more realistic, less ‘hyper’ image. In fact, I had processed this scene some time ago and kept it on file, but when I opened it up for review, it was sort of an assault on the eyes. So, I reprocessed it completely to come up with this version.
I’m planning to create a new video tutorial soon, titled something like, “Why Photomatix Pro alone isn’t enough.” Often, when trying to come up with a realistic-looking HDR image, Photomatix falls short for me — I find that the output can often be soft. Other programs such as HDR Expose (from Unified Color) or ImageFuser tend to be better choices, although I almost always wind up blending in some Photomatix versions before doing more detailed processing. For this version, I started with the output from HDR Expose, adjusted it using 32-Float, and then layered in a Photomatix tonemap at 24% Normal and a Shadowmap at 22% Hard Light as a base before setting about with other adjustments (brightness, skew, de-fringe, etc.) and filter techniques (Nik Color Efex Pro.)
In the end, I think it created a balance between the high-detail of a very complicated environment, along with a good dose of realism. I also really appreciate Peter and Ken letting me into the back of the shop during working hours to capture this unique scene.
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Each spring, we become aware of at least one momma rabbit who sets up her den somewhere in the yard. It’s predictable that at some point, we’ll see one if not several young bunnies exploring the new, glorious, nutrient-rich environment that we call “garden.”
This year has been better than previous years. We know of only one young’n – this one – and he seems perfectly content to munch on what’s left of our field of crimson clover. So far, he has bypassed all the good, human stuff.
Like the Carolina anoles, under the right circumstances a bunny can present a great photo op, as they freeze perfectly still when confronted with danger. In this case the danger was in the form of some big, two-legged galoot with a 300mm lens. While shooting, I told him that we have to learn to coexist for our mutual benefit.
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While shooting the interior of the house featured in “Life Amongst the Ruins“, I noticed that heavy growth of wisteria had taken over the back of the house. With its vibrant color, I thought it would make a good subject against the backdrop of weathered wood siding. It’s a fascinating plant in that for a week or two each spring, the colors really pop. After the decline of the blossoms, though, it begins to resemble nothing more than an invasive vine.
It wasn’t until I was post-processing this image that I noticed a little visitor. If you look closely just above the vine, near the bottom of the first slat, you’ll see someone who loves the flowers even more than we do.
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I’ve found that Carolina anoles make great subjects for photography. They’re unusual and useful animals, they tend to stay still long enough to get the shot, and when seen closely, their antics are charming.
This little guy climbed up seven feet onto the top of one of the birdboxes in the meadow, and from there put on a courtship display. To whom, I have no idea. He’d get up on his toes, pump up and down a couple of times, then take a deep breath and puff out his call sign. I can only trust it works for him.
After first checking to make sure he wasn’t smuggling our strawberries, I moved in for a series of interesting close-up shots. After I had moved away, we began to wonder where he’d go from there. Almost as soon as we had the thought, we saw him BASE jump off the birdbox into the tall clover below. We never knew he could do that.
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In North Carolina, as well as in other parts of the south, azaleas in bloom are the harbingers of spring, not unlike farther north with the return of robins or the melting of snowpack. Unfortunately, the blossoms only seem to last a short while before they drop to the ground, leaving only green foliage for the remainder of the summer.
“Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad; hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.” — John Updike
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One morning recently, Susan told me that there was something interesting in the garden, that I might want to get the camera. Outside, on a section of floating row cover, she had found this little momma zealously protecting her egg case. Despite the fact that the spider looks big and mean, she’s less than half an inch — more like a 1/4 inch — from left to right.
I went in for the macro. She started waving me off. Finally, she raised her front legs as though to say, “Yeah, just try it, Bucko.”
We anticipate the birth of a few hundred offspring. Ah, the sound of little footsteps.
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