Sheave Tower - Blair Mill

[Manfred M]

The Sheave Tower was an auxilliary power source for the Blair Mill, in the former Blair Village, now located in the Cambridge Ontario. A water turbine, connected by 90m / 300ft of cable at the sheave tower, provided an additional 15HP to the corn mill. The Blair Mill is still a family owned and operated mill that produces corn meal and corn flower. It was built in 1876, and the ox-blood red colour is how the tower was originally painted.

The water fell over a turbine style mechanism, rather than a more tradtional waterwheel and the discharge came out between the two large blocks of concrete. The steel sheaves (cables) ran out of the top window of the mill.

The fall colours surround the mill, and this shot was taken at "golden hour" in the late afternoon. I think I am going to look at reworking this shot as an HDR image.

[Brownbear]

Glorious colour and light...

[Manfred M]

[Stagecoach]

Beautifully executed Manfred.

I look forward to seeing your HDR rework as I'm curious to see if it could actually improve on this.

Grahame

[batmura]

Great composition. I like the first one slightly better.

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you for the wonderful photo (I prefer the first one) and for the explanation. It's especially interesting to see that a building providing such basic functionality was constructed with such interesting architectural features.

[Nancy Moran G]

#1 for me also!
Nice colors, do you go back for the snow shots too?
Nancy

[Manfred M]

After I reviewed the material I had this morning, I decided against a traditional HDR image, but instead used the three images I was planning to use (-2 0 +2) stop exposures that were shot on a tripod and did a selective blend. There were really two areas that I wanted to improve in the original image.

1. The fall leaves in the sky were a bit over exposed and I wanted richer and more vibrant colours; and

2. The windows in the sheave tower were “black holes” where all shadow detail had been lost.

I stacked the three images and applied layer masks and painted the affected areas on the mask with 25% opacity brush.

This is the result I got…









Much more subtle and controllable than straight HDRI. I generally like the results better than the brute force of HDRI; a far more "painterly" look results.

[Manfred M]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Grahame - I was thinking the same thing when I woke up this morning and decided against a full blown HDR image.

Nancy - a winter shot would be nice, but there is no guarantee I will be back when the snow is on the ground; this is about a 6 hour drive from home, very close to where my daughter is going to school. If we get down in the winter, my camera and tripod are coming too.

[Mike Buckley]

The last image shows that persistent attention to detail can result in improvements, though subtle, that are important enough to take the photo to the next level. You clearly accomplished your two goals and the image is certainly of the quality that merits your extra effort. Very well done!

[Manfred M]

Thanks Mike - next step is to see what these really look like on my desktop when I get home and tweek them a bit more.

[Digital]

Manfred, very nice photographs.


Bruce

[Wavelength]

All these three are simply great; love them......

[Manfred M]

Another picture built up using the -2 0 +2 exposed image. The sun is even lower in this shot.



Back in the "old" days I used to refer to this technique as the "poor man's HDRI".