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Leaving Moosehead Lake in Maine, we found this relic on the side of the road, causing a quick turnaround to take some shots. Luckily, the owners of the property were nearby, and they allowed me to have a look around (but not inside, thankfully.)
I was a bit surprised when I went around the back of the house and found a donkey on a line. Yes, a real donkey. Although I tried to avoid him, he kept coming after me, either looking for a handout or a free portrait.
I didn’t have any food on hand.
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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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In northern Maine, far beyond the tourist-laden coast and southern cities, is a place called Grand Lake Stream, renowned for its trout fishing. While it’s fairly remote and not at all built up, people come from all around the world to fish here.
Too bad we don’t fish.
But, we did have a couple of great nights at a local ‘camp’, staying in a waterside cottage. We spent the days wandering around, taking in the local sights. I’ve always loved the concept of boathouses, especially older ones such as these, and they take me back to some of my earliest memories of New England.
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.
Rob Hanson Photography Blog 