Tag: decay

Rusted Relics

Rusted Memories of a Bygone Era
Rusted Memories of a Bygone Era

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While I was down in Alabama I took a drive out past the place where my Grandparents lived. The old house is gone now and I drove a little further down the highway to see if there was anything that might make a good photo along it. I came upon a log cabin, sitting in the middle of a field, that is covered in old metal signs and has several old gas pumps in the yard. This image is a detail of one of the pumps.

As is my practice today I shot a three bracket set of images for HDR processing. Another advantage of shooting brackets is the near certainty that one of the images will be a good exposure if I need something quick for a deadline. I don’t often need to do that but it sure is handy when the need arises.

The first thing I did was merge the three frames in NIK HDR eFex Pro 2 for tone mapping and detail adjustment. I used one of the Realistic presets as my starting point. I then took the HDR image into OnOne Perfect Photo 6 where I used a few different effects to add a vignette and enhanced some of the color. On e of the nice things about Perfect Effects is that it allows me to create layers and apply the effects in varying amounts. By stacking a few effects and adjusting the amount of each one from zero to 100% it is possible to get the feeling I’m looking for. After I had the image nearly finished I returned it to Aperture 3 where I adjusted the shadows and highlight, contrast and sharpened the image.

Keep Out
Keep Out

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This bird house seemed such a great subject with it’s weathered texture and the sign below it. I ran it through the same basic process and settled on this final version. I’m glad I started exploring the OnOne Perfect Photo 6 Suite again. In the future I will be using it more often when I want to convey more emotion than using only HDR techniques affords me.

King Cotton’s Abandoned Temple

King Cotton's Temple
King Cotton’s Temple

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Tuesday I was down in Moulton, Alabama to attend my maternal Aunt Helen Parker’s funeral. She had a long life of 94 years and though it was sad to know she had passed on it was also reaffirming in the way the passing of a loved one draws a family together. Aunt Helen had started her life as the daughter of sharecroppers in the Alabama cotton fields but through hard work she and her family rose into a comfortable middle class farm life. She, as so many others in the south, had worked hard and risen above the tough times that almost all rural southerners endured especially through the Great Depression. Throughout her long life her faith and love for her family strengthened and supported her through the loss of two husbands and many others in her large family. Aunt Helen ended her life surrounded by her nieces and nephews who all loved her dearly. Her life was one of persistence and compassion and we will all miss her and remember fondly her lilting “I love you” which she always said when she hugged us as we were heading out her door after a visit.

On my way to Moulton I passed through Decatur Alabama and saw these large buildings alongside the railroad tracks on the west side of the city. I had never been down that particular street before and in all the times I had travelled down there I had not seen these unusual structures. I am always drawn to abandoned industrial sites and decided that on my way back home I needed to stop and photograph them. When I asked my cousins what they were they told me they had once been part of a large cotton oil and cotton meal manufacturing complex.

When I arrived there I found a business office in another building nearby and asked if I could go in and photograph the place. The receptionist said that they belonged to the city of Decatur and that she didn’t know any more about them. I decided that I would find an opening in the fence around them and see for myself what mysteries they held. The sky was heavy with cold gray clouds and a light mist was falling as I unpacked my cameras and scouted for and found an opening in the fence around the property. The wind was pretty strong and the metal on the buildings rattled and creaked; it was as if the buildings were speaking to me telling about their earlier days as productive structures now left to decay and eventually return to the earth.

I shot everything that day in a three frame bracket set of -2, 0, and +2 EV. I then merged them in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 before finishing them in Aperture 3. In some of the interior shots I went into OnOne Software’s Perfect Effects and played around with some of the many presets. The images below are from that experimentation and application within the Perfect Photo 6 Suite from OnOne after being merged and tone mapped in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. I like the way that the two software programs complimented each other and allowed me to bring out the greens that the moisture inside these buildings had created by feeding mosses and molds on the corrugated steel. My final processing with all these images was in Aperture 3 where I used various adjustments and completed the sharpening prior to exporting the final images you see here.

Inside the Temple #1
Inside the Temple #1

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Inside the Temple #2
Inside the Temple #2

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Inside the Temple #3
Inside the Temple #3

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Exploring an Abandoned Distillery (Part 3)

Looking Back to Another Time

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I can’t stop working with these images. I’m so intrigued by the architecture and the way nature is slowly taking back the place. I keep trying to understand what this place is and why it was allowed to fall into ruin. It is highly unlikely this property will ever be restored and therefore in time nature will completely consume it and the stories it could tell.

The image here is another bracketed set of five exposures that I merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 before applying the Realistic Deep preset. I made some adjustments to the tonality and tone compression sliders and then returned the image to Aperture 3 where I added a vignette, adjusted the saturation and vibrance and finally sharpened the photo.

The composition is a symmetrical composition which I don’t often use but in this case it seemed to be the best choice to capture the scene and convey the mystery and stillness of the place.

Exploring an Abandoned Distillery

HDR Panorama of a Gazebo and Pool at Old Taylor Distillery
Temple to the Whiskey Spirits

Yesterday after lunch I decided to take a motorcycle ride down to the State Capitol in Frankfort. The weather was much nicer than it had been in July and I needed to get out of the studio. As is often the case when I take one of my rides I had no particular destination in mind I simply wanted to feel the road under my wheels and to savor the joy I get from riding my Harley. I found a little road outside Frankfort that followed a small stream and decided it needed to be explored. As I rode along this road I came upon an abandoned distillery complex that I wanted to photograph. I pulled off near one of the gates to the property, got out my camera and tripod, and started looking for a place to access the property.

I spent nearly an hour probing the fence around the property but could not find an access point to the complex. I could see through the trees and brush along the fence that the buildings were collapsing and that there were a lot of photo ops but since I couldn’t get a clear view of the place I decided to take a few shots through the brush and move on. I headed further along this road when I came another group of whiskey warehouses that have been engulfed by the forest but that property was truly unaccessible and there was no place to park the bike. I’ll have to go back there again and see if I can find a way in though because they are so interesting with the forest slowly consuming them.

Down the road a little farther I came over a rise and saw yet another abandoned distillery complex. There were several interesting buildings as well as a place to park my bike that would be safe and keep it out of the photos I knew I was going to be shooting. I found an easy access point into the complex and started exploring the grounds. I love to shoot derelict and abandoned industrial subjects and this place was a treasure trove of rusted equipment and decaying structures. As I went around one of the buildings I spied an ornate roof poking through the small trees that have begun to reclaim this property. I went up the small path leading into the woods and was astonished to find the remains of the largest gazebo I’ve ever seen. It covered a stone pool that may have been a swimming pool or simply a water tank; it was impossible to know but it must have been something incredibly opulent when it was in use. It is at least 100 feet long and 30 feet wide with stone columns supporting the roof. I went into the structure and was amazed at the design and craftsmanship that I saw. At the far end was a circular area and above it stood this huge circular roof with a massive iron chandelier hanging above the water. There were steps leading down to the walkway around the circular pool so I went down to that level and set up my tripod to shoot the scene.

Once I was down on the lower landing I realized that even with my 18mm lens I could not capture the scene as I was seeing it so I decided to shoot it as a vertical panorama. I knew immediately that I was going to shoot bracketed exposures because the light level inside and outside the structure was too wide a range for a single exposure. I started at +2 and watched my histogram to be sure that I had a complete range of exposures for later HDR processing. As it turned out I only needed four exposures to get the histogram where I wanted it +2, +1, 0, and -1 exposure values at f8 worked well. I shot four frames at these settings and then repositioned the camera vertically and shot another set of four exposure. I wound up only needing three vertical frames to capture the scene for my panorama.

Once I was back at my studio I loaded each bracket set into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and merged them using the default setting in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 before saving them back to Aperture 3. Once I had all three vertical frames merged into HDR images I took them into Photoshop CS5  to merge them into the panorama. After cropping and saving the panorama I returned the panorama to NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I adjusted it using the Realistic 2 preset and made my initial adjustments to the tonality of the image before retuning the image to Aperture 3 where I straightened the horizon, boosted the detail and clarity and did my sharpening.