3 Quarters Today

My Life, my photography, my passions

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#16/52: My Favorite Country Barn, Edited with Lightroom

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I love country barns  (okay, it’s really a corn crib) in Nebraska is one of my favorite photography subjects, yet this shot is my favorite. I pass it at least twice a day and it sits in the middle of a field with nothing around it, solitary, no trees, just in the middle of a field with either corn or soybeans growing on all sides. It has different moods depending on the light and looks different in the early morning and at night with the sun setting behind the western sky.

My favorite barn gets my attention every time I drive past and have often taken photographs to capture the mode. They never come out exactly how it looks in real life though. But with the help of Adobe Lightroom this has changed, I can actually say that this is truly what the barn looked like that day.

Photographing Country barns
Barn against a Cloudy Sky

From what I understand in reading various photography blogs and sites a camera has difficulty collecting all the dynamic ranges of lights and darks. In simple terms you expose for the sky or your subject. That leaves the other parts of you picture over or under exposed.

The newest version of Lightroom 4 has an amazing capability of pulling out shadows, highlights, whites and blacks without leaving artifacts in the image. This was shot in RAW and I’m very impressed, puts my Photoshop CS2 to shame. The later versions of Photoshop do have more advanced algorithms that achieve the same thing, but I can only compare the programs I use.

I will still keep using Photoshop, Lightroom is only another tool to use and does not have text or graphic design capability. I still love adding drop shadows, borders and creating custom layouts.

Stay tuned for more Lightroom 4 examples, and possibly redo’s of previous photos as a comparison.

More Historic Country Barns

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A Drive in the Country, barns, country, country living, keeping with the. Later in the day I visited Star Lake and ran into this fellow who was pretty much minding his own (business) … A Drive in the Country, barns, country, …

Barns along Polling Station Road | Hoof Beats and Foot Prints

Drive along with me on a windy country road. Polling Station Road in Harwood, Maryland offers views of a variety of country barns. Most of them from a past era of tobacco farming in southern Maryland and stand in the …

D.L. Marriott » Blog Archive » Living in a Fairy Tale

It draws up images of pumpkins and scare crows, hay bales and country barns framed in russet leaves. I grew up in the city, and although my husband and I have spent all our child raising years in the suburbs, pretty far out in …

Moon Venus Conjuncture

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Twice this month my friend Beth and I have gone into a cornfield to take pictures of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter conjuncture. In layman’s terms it’s when the two planets share the same space with the moon.

Our favorite barn serves as a backdrop, yet both nights we had weather challenges. The first night was so cold our fingers froze. Tonight the wind was blowing 30 mph. Here’s what I got, may not be technically perfect, but I accomplished a goal. I learned how to take a bulb shot on my Canon ES Rebel.

Moon, Venus and Jupiter together in the western sky
Moon, Venus and Jupiter together in the western sky

The sky was hazy and cloudy, made for a difficultly viewing the moon, but did create a wonderful sunset.

Moon, Venus and Jupiter conjuncture
Moon, Venus and Jupiter conjuncture


The photo below was taken the end of February, note the position of the moon and planets is now a little northward and Venus is closer to the moon.

Moon, Venus and Jupiter together in the night sky
Moon, Venus and Jupiter together in the night sky
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#7/52: Chevy Truck in the Barn

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Old Chevy Truck

Had some time to play around with Photoshop tonight and have been sitting on this photo for a few weeks. I miss Photoshop and post production.

For those interested I created duplicated image layers. Posterized one layer heavily, the set the opacity to 73%. Used gradient, from upper left to lower right and added a orange color overlay at about 20%. I always create adjustment layers in an action, some I use, others I don’t, but the action saves time. For the car I bumped the contrast and adjusted the levels.

#2/52: Early Morning Commute, Country Style

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Early morning commute
Week 2: Early Morning Commute

I pass this barn between Elmwood and Murdock every morning as I  drive to work. My commute is about twenty eight miles and takes about 35 minutes to arrive in the parking lot at Hamilton Color Lab. My first fifteen minutes looks about like this before I get to the I-80 interstate.

The full moon behind the barn was just too good to pass by, maybe next time I’ll remember to put my camera setting on RAW.

This is Week 2 of my Project 52, here’s hoping to better and better pictures with my new camera my son gave me for Christmas.