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After meeting up at Jeff’s place, where Grandfather’s Legacy was taken, we cruised out to a couple of good ‘Rurex’ locations for more pictures. These are locations where Jeff – with permission – carefully dismantles old buildings for repurposing into birdhouses and furniture. It’s a way of giving a second life to these old and neglected beauties.

Sadly, in many cases the houses and barns have been hit by vandals, who seem to have no respect for their history. While not unusual or surprising, it is a bit startling to see the damage they can do to a place.

We carefully picked our way through the center hall of this 1920’s American Foursquare to the back of the house, and I was struck by the juxtapositional nature of the ruins against the spring green fields and vining wisteria. Left alone, they would eventually become one.

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While Susan was taking a Saturday class, I took advantage of a beautiful day to do some backcountry cruising in an area I have never visited before. Driving along a secondary road between High Point, NC and Hanging Rock State Park (where The Last of the Mohicans was filmed), I almost dislocated my neck when I saw a suite of old trucks and farm equipment tucked into the woods. Too good to be true?

I came about and went back to the spot, which lay along a private drive. I pulled into the drive and checked the few houses there, but no one seemed to be around for permission.  Up in an oak grove just off the main road, there were multiple specimens of trucks, farm vehicles, and rusty goodness. They looked to be set up in some sort of display, so I figured that the owners wanted people to enjoy their collection.

So, I did.

I had my way with these beauties, and hope to present them in turn in the upcoming days.

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 at 28mm f/5.6, 11 exposures from Promote Control.

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Another beautiful Farmall tractor from Clyde Jr’s property.

On the highways around here, from the coast to Raleigh, there are billboards featuring a nubile, curvaceous young woman, advertising cosmetic surgery. I wonder if they take referrals?

You can see other images from Clyde’s property at Entangled, Reclamation, Clyde’s Rides and American Ickers, and Gentlemen: Try to Start Your Engines

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Dominance

Click here for a larger version from my Landscape gallery. Opens in new window.

One of the best things about living in North Carolina is that you can drive down rural roads and pretty much guarantee that you’ll find interesting old barns, houses, or tractors to shoot.  When I once complained that this sort of agricultural scene seemed to be the only interesting stuff around here, a photographer friend told me, “Shoot what you have available and make the best of it.”  Wise words.

Sometimes in post-processing, you have to return to the basics.  Although I often (read: usually) process with HDR, it’s not always called for, requiring a fallback to another strategy. The fact that it’s time-tested is just a bonus.

In this situation, there are two elements that did not allow this image to be processed with the usual HDR programs.  First, the wind was blowing very hard, so any HDR program had a problem with ghosting on the foreground tree branches as well as on some of the background foliage. (I’ve heard that the next release of Photomatix Pro will address this.  Yay!)  Second, this was taken with a Nikkor 70-300mm lens, so the amount of fine detail (leaves, pine needles, grasses) caused a microcontrast nightmare due to compression of the scene.

This image started out with Adobe Camera Raw in order to make it look as good as possible going into Photoshop.  Once in Photoshop, I applied a basic curves adjustment layer and a few Hue/Saturation layers to tone down or bring up some color. Layering on two different textures in Multiply mode added an interesting element, particularly to the sky, but also brought a bit of sepia tone to the subject area. Finally, I used NIK Color Efex Pro to adjust color contrast, and to add a darken/lighten center adjustment, bringing the eye to the building.

I don’t think this could have been done better with HDR, but then again, it isn’t a very high-contrast scene.