It matters where you stand

These two shots were taken ten minutes apart. Absolutely different images.

There was a rain cloud in the south and broken cloud to the north. At first I was very reluctant to try shooting the shaded part of the barn due to the wide dynamic range. However the mosquitoes drove me to move, even with a bug shirt on (think of a bee keepers hooded smock) the bites on my hands finally drove me to shift position. Took me several test shots to get the proper balance of overexposed cloud edges and exposure on the dark grey barn wall.

Looking northeast

http://i64.tinypic.com/mw5cns.jpg


Looking southeast

http://i63.tinypic.com/27wucsz.jpg

HI Trevor,
The view due southwest has a dramatic scene with the clouds aloft, which IMHO worked best way with the bright daylight still prevailed over the wooden barn and the field, good contrast.
Ike

I really like the lighting in the second shot with the angry sky.

Unfortunately bug shirts don't do much for the hands, so I understand. I have sometimes taken to wearing lightweight dive gloves with my bug shirt to minimize the amount of skin that it exposed (these have velcro cuffs).

Love them both, nice work.
#2 my fav based upon drama.

Yes the unusual sky in number 2 makes for a more memorable image. Nice work

Exceptional pictures especially #2. The only thing I may have done differently with #2 is have the barn on the left side of the photo. But that's just my preference. It is a great photo. Keep dodging the mosquitoes for these lovely pics! :)

I too like #2 better. The contrast makes it more interesting.

I hadn't thought about it, but I flipped the image after reading Sandy's post, and I agree with him. It's another example of the pattern that people have often posted about: things often look better with negative space on the right.

My one other comment is that on my laptop screen (calibrated, but not as good a screen as my regular one), the image looks a bit oversaturated. I realize that may be the lighting--late afternoon, almost horizontal light sometimes creates anintense yellowish-green like you have in the grass. However, I tried dialing back saturation a bit, and it looked better to me.

This may or may not be relevant, but one way to increase saturation accidentally is to use a contrast adjustment like an RGB curve with a normal blend mode. It increases the contrast of each color channel. I've had this happen often. To avoid it, switch the curve layer to a luminosity blend mode. (You can also switch to LAB mode for the contrast adjustment, but that's more work.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by skitterbug

Exceptional pictures especially #2. The only thing I may have done differently with #2 is have the barn on the left side of the photo. )

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You mean like this? While I had the light I shot several variants on the theme. After waiting ten years for these exact conditions I was not going to waste it

http://i67.tinypic.com/x3c08h.jpg

And here is the old house from the site. I did not explore this as thoroughly, because i knew I would lose the light and wanted to move on to the barn. Lost the light before I thought to run back to the house.

http://i68.tinypic.com/1zdu3ux.jpg

Trevor, both are nice photos.


Bruce

Hi Trevor - Yes! These are really special photos! Winners in my book! :D

Nice capture of the differing conditions.

Your exercise is somewhat akin to the photography thought "the best scene is often right behind you".