A couple barns.

[mpreslar]

Just a quick post. I have been pretty busy this week and this weekend will be even worse, with my son playing goalie in a hockey tournament. These are two of my "Project" that I am working on, to document as many of the local barns as I can fit into my viewfinder! Let me know what you think!

[gahspidy]

Marty, I like both of these, and your idea of shooting all the barns in your area as they are interesting subjects. In both of these shots, you have very nice things going on. The sky and clouds are great , the lighting looks very good as if taken late in the afternoon, and your compositions are very good as well. The first image with the barn and the silo is centered, but I feel it works well anyway. the second you have used alot of sky and very little foreground and placed the barn all the way to the left of the frame. This brings out the great sky and the vast amount of land around the subject . Very good.
I think your off to a great start and hope that you can also include some barn shots where the skies might be threatening and stormy, bringing out a different side of the subject.
Keep up the good work

[payn817]

I really like the second shot. Nice composition, lighting, and sky. Good work.

[readingr]

Marty,

I assume you plan on selling these to the owners of the farm - if not perhaps you should think about it.

Excellent #2

#1 I think needs a little more room around it but its ok.

Roger

[LeeIs]

I like the rich tones and the skies in both shots. Although those trees in the 2nd kinda take out form the shot, the great scale of the skies and the clouds' perspective negate that and add good depth IMO.

[srobb]

Hey, you took my idea! ;)

Not much to add here from has been said already. Very good job on both shots. I like the suggestion of trying to shoot some in different weather conditions also.

[Chunk]

Nice work. You have a big job ahead of you, Marty. There are a LOT of barns around there. These seem a bit oversaturated on my monitor and seem to jump out of their environment. The second one really captures that wide expanse of sky that you feel down there.

As I went past Champaign last Monday I was thinking that I am going to have to get down to the flat lands and get some pictures of the farms, grain bins and elevators, and small towns in that region. Usually I just ride through there as fast as I can to get to somewhere with hills and curves in the roads.

[julsoph]

Marty, I love, love, love the 2nd shot here. The colors are gorgeous...and I love how flat the land looks around it. Beautiful.
The first shot, I agree that it looks like it needs more room around it. However, again, I really like the colors. It's cool that this particular barn has a muted red as opposed to the 2nd shot.

Emily

[Freuzel]

Very nice shots! Good that you place the horizon just at the right location at the bottom of the frame! The sky is the interesting part, completed by the different colors of the barn! Great!

[mpreslar]

WOW! Thanks for the all the responses!

Gary: re: the centered barn and silo - I like the rule broken here. I wanted to fill the frame with the two structures! And yes, I am keeping an eye out for stormy days that I can get shots of some barns too! If there's one thing we have here in Central Illinois it's weather changes! The problem is too many days are drab overcast. Good for colors, but not so good for pretty skies in the background!

Roger: I hadn't thought of selling them! The first one, the house on the property is obviously abandoned (though the barn looks in use?) The other I could probably contact. They are actually accross the street from each other!

Liban: The clouds in #2 are DEEP aren't they! I have been working on getting deep DOF by setting the focus to a particular distance and using the DOF Preview button to see what it will look like. I had just been focusing on infinity, but I think there is more drama when the focus is set this way. (Love the Mandela quote BTW!)

SRobb: Good thing there are lots of Barns! Nobody could shoot-em all! (Love your quotes too!)

Chunk: Yes, I bumped the saturation a bit. If I was shooting chromes, I would shoot Velvia! I like the strong saturation and almost always bump it up a notch. (I frequently go back to a place I shot and realize that the color is much less vivid than what I adjusted it to, but I like it that way! reality isn't always right! )

Chunk and Emily: I have grown to love "The Flatness". When I moved here 16 years ago, I felt like I wanted to drive past it until I found hills and curves too! Then I quit grad school and my wife had a job she liked, so I found a job, then when my wife didn't like her job anymore I liked mine, so she went back to school to become a nurse. Now we have two kids, two cats, a dog and a mortgage and we are flatlanders! (We still vacation in Wisconsin and Michigan when we can though!)

Freuzel: Yep, I almost always put the flatlands at the very bottom of the frame to get that BIG SKY feel! (Unless it is boring and grey, in which case I zoom in on the subject more or just shoot another day!)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions and comments. I intend to make my wall calendar for the office all barns next year, so it is good to get feedback about these shots!