Eastern Washington Afternoon
Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70mm F/2.8, f/10, 1/250, iso 200
We have here an image I am officially excited about. Especially the post processed version, as you see above. A lot of people tell me they enjoy seeing the original version of my processed images, and the steps I took. So we'll do that. But first, back to this image.
This was taken the same day as Thursday's "Reflecting" post, my day spent shooting with Toni Johnson. We had driven to one of many "wide spot in the road" type towns, that have just a few small homes and a grain elevator. We had really come here to shoot a ramshackle barn type thing, pentagon shaped. Very unusual. Starting to come undone. As I was shooting it, I noticed this grain elevator in the background, and the wonderful sky. I used to think "Big Sky Montana" had the market cornered on America's skies. Nope, it's Eastern Washington, folks.
Anyway, I took a few shots, I wasn't super impressed, but it was a nice scene. I also took a couple of fisheye versions. I showed one of the originals to my tour group in The Palouse and got favorable comments. I think for one thing, it was different from anything in the Palouse.
This morning at home on my big monitor, the image really came to life. From a subject matter point of view, of course the sky is a standout, but also the fact that each building is different. This is somewhat unique. From a compositional point of view, what makes it work for me is the angle I have on the buildings. This was purely accidental. Had I just driven up to them on the road, I likely would have shot them straight on, a much less dramatic scene. So hopefully that is something we can all remember, walk back and forth on a subject like this and look for more drama.
When I first started working on it, I also took note of the power poles, and I thought maybe I would be channeling Sherri again. (Let's hope she feels the magnetic pull!) But Sherri's images don't usually contain this kind of sky, so I'm going to claim this one for myself.
Click on the continue link and I'll show the original, plus talk about the post.
Original Version
Here in the original we have the true colors at that time of day. You can also see I "shot up." I.e. my camera was tilted up above level. Generally, you want to avoid this. But I wanted more sky. You fix this with a "perspective crop" in Photoshop, so it isn't that big of a deal.
I decided the look I wanted was some type of "vintage." A timeless, hot afternoon, that seemingly never ends, kind of feeling. I settled on one of the Lightroom Presets: Color Creative - Aged Photo. From there I did several tweaks, including painting Clarity (plus) over the elevator, which had a nice effect while not affecting the sky. I added just a tad of neutral density to the sky in the upper left.
Have I mentioned Lightroom 3 is officially released? It came out two days before I left on my trip, so I quickly bought the upgrade and installed on both my laptop and desktop. While up in the Palouse, new friend Stan Silverman showed me that LR now has its own perspective correction, and some other tricks along these lines as well. Yee Haw, another reason I don't have to use Photoshop! This correction was a piece of cake.
I hope this image comes across as well on the web as it does on my monitor. I think to really appreciate it, viewing it as a print 30" wide or so would really be ideal. I guess you can tell I'm pretty happy with it. Certainly my best shot of this particular day.
So if you want to let me know what you think, there's this little comment thingy right below!
