Rob Schop
The Old Barn
When I drove past this beautiful old barn I immediately saw the potential it has. I had no time to stop, so I decided to go back another day, to scout a good composition. I really like the cow parsley in the foreground, and maybe even more the church of Den Hoorn very small in the background, which is well known for anyone that is familiar with the island Texel. (As it turned out this specific barn also is pretty well known, and it’s the one that’s photographed the most of all on the island. So me seeing the potential wasn’t particularly unique!) With PhotoPills I found out that I could have some nice sidelight in the morning, but of course this is very early nowadays. I was on a family vacation in the first place and already captured one sunrise, and sleeping maybe four hours at night is usually something you’ll pay back later in the day. But the circumstances looked right the last morning I was there, with maybe even some fog. And so I went, only to find out that the weather forecast was wrong. No fog, no high clouds, actually no clouds at all! Since it was the last day, coming back another day wasn’t an option. So all in all I came back a little disappointed, and wasn’t excited about the shots I took.
But this is where the latest techniques in post-processing comes into play. Intelligent software is able to create almost the circumstances I hoped for, in just a few clicks. In this case a sky replacement. Of course this subject isn’t new and forms an interesting topic to discuss about. When I first read about it, I thought this was quite amazing, but not for me and it detracts from reality to much. But this time I just wanted to see what it looks like, more as some kind of experiment. And man, I am pretty impressed and I think it makes the photograph much stronger. Even though I thought I would never do this, I was feeling the temptation. I still think it goes a step too far, and takes away from the moments everything does fall in place. But on the other hand, I do manipulate quite a lot already, by removing distractions, change colour temperature and exposure, tweaking colours, using an orton effect etc. This post-processing techniques are considered, by most of the people I speak with, to be fully legitimate. So how much of a step is it really to add some clouds on a boring sky in photograph you’ve worked so hard on?
If it’s up to me I’m going to remove the one with the clouds. Although I think it is the better image, it is not the direction I want to take in my landscape photography. But I am very interested in which one you would show, and I will let your decision be decisive.
So please feel free to let me know how you think about this!
Thanks for having a look! All faves and comments are highly appreciated!
You do me (and hopefully yourself) a big favour by pressing L and then F11, to view at maximum size.
The Old Barn
When I drove past this beautiful old barn I immediately saw the potential it has. I had no time to stop, so I decided to go back another day, to scout a good composition. I really like the cow parsley in the foreground, and maybe even more the church of Den Hoorn very small in the background, which is well known for anyone that is familiar with the island Texel. (As it turned out this specific barn also is pretty well known, and it’s the one that’s photographed the most of all on the island. So me seeing the potential wasn’t particularly unique!) With PhotoPills I found out that I could have some nice sidelight in the morning, but of course this is very early nowadays. I was on a family vacation in the first place and already captured one sunrise, and sleeping maybe four hours at night is usually something you’ll pay back later in the day. But the circumstances looked right the last morning I was there, with maybe even some fog. And so I went, only to find out that the weather forecast was wrong. No fog, no high clouds, actually no clouds at all! Since it was the last day, coming back another day wasn’t an option. So all in all I came back a little disappointed, and wasn’t excited about the shots I took.
But this is where the latest techniques in post-processing comes into play. Intelligent software is able to create almost the circumstances I hoped for, in just a few clicks. In this case a sky replacement. Of course this subject isn’t new and forms an interesting topic to discuss about. When I first read about it, I thought this was quite amazing, but not for me and it detracts from reality to much. But this time I just wanted to see what it looks like, more as some kind of experiment. And man, I am pretty impressed and I think it makes the photograph much stronger. Even though I thought I would never do this, I was feeling the temptation. I still think it goes a step too far, and takes away from the moments everything does fall in place. But on the other hand, I do manipulate quite a lot already, by removing distractions, change colour temperature and exposure, tweaking colours, using an orton effect etc. This post-processing techniques are considered, by most of the people I speak with, to be fully legitimate. So how much of a step is it really to add some clouds on a boring sky in photograph you’ve worked so hard on?
If it’s up to me I’m going to remove the one with the clouds. Although I think it is the better image, it is not the direction I want to take in my landscape photography. But I am very interested in which one you would show, and I will let your decision be decisive.
So please feel free to let me know how you think about this!
Thanks for having a look! All faves and comments are highly appreciated!
You do me (and hopefully yourself) a big favour by pressing L and then F11, to view at maximum size.