The ‘Ol Fetcher Barn

Photo of the Day

When you are driving in Colorado you come across all kinds of abandoned barns and structures. I had been down this road in the summer a couple of years earlier, but I did not make it all the way to this barn. I was promised an old barn and an awesome view, and that is what I got. I tried a couple of things from the road near the barn with my wide angle lens, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted. Moving a bit further back and changing lenses seemed to be the thing that was needed. I went from the 10-24mm to the 70-200mm which would compress the look a bit. I really like how this turned out. Everyday I get an email giving me a new post from a website called Postcards from Colorado. When you look at that kind of beauty everyday you really long to be out in it. Luckily I was able to spend a week out there. I saw all kinds of weather, and I think that in that week I got a sampling of winter. It is views like this that will keep me going back out there.

Technical Data

This shot was a tricky one for me. I wanted to show the natural beauty, but the clear sky was just too much for me. I need some clouds or something up there. To start I wanted to remove some of that blank sky. I used a crop that I saw R.C. Concepcion use on one of his videos. It is a 2.39 x 1 crop that really gives a panoramic feeling. From there I applied the HDR in black and white preset from Matt Kloskowski that I downloaded on the plane ride out to Colorado. From there I really worked to tweak the sliders to get the shot looking great. The slider that I worked the most on was the black clipping slider. I really wanted just the right amount here. You can hold down the option key in Lightroom while working the black slider to see where it is a perfect black. That works well most of the time, but I wanted a little more here. By changing the black and white clipping I was changing how the sky looked above the mountains. That was was I needed to get right. I finally balanced the shot out, and it was ready to post here.