Pennsylvania Barn Series 6

Catching up time... Thought I'd stylize these a bit... Explanation in the GEEK STUFF below

Here's the Southern Side... Or a northern view of the barn. There's a large parking lot off to the left rear with room for overflow under construction behind the fence to the right. You'll recall that there are two distinctive details to the Pennsylvania Barn. I discussed the overlay or overhang back in Series 7, well this is the other side where the construction is banked to allow ground access to the upper floor where we find those glassed access doors enter into...

This is a monster space capable of holding 750 people for parties, meetings, and weddings.This image covers only the eastern half - note how the room's constructed to allow north and south light avoiding the glare of morning and afternoon sun.  Hmmmm... and  I guess it might also host funerals? One could hold the funeral downstairs then come up here to join the family for drinks and luncheon. Or... maybe not, depends if they'll all have to caravan to a cemetery. Heck, if it's a cremation or an Irish wake, they can bring the urn and/or the coffin right on up to join in the celebration of life.

I'm really lit but that circular staircase, it's a woodworker's art! Again, everything is red oak without nails... Instead holes are drilled then wooden pegs are glued into boards. There's a loft upstairs but I wonder if gowned-women will negotiate that staircase. They've installed professionally lit makeup bays off the the left corner above with a huge-multi sinked bathroom to the right rear. There's also an ice box to keep the champaign chilled. There are lots of USB ports and charging stations along with blue tooth speakers to play favorite music from the bride's cellphone. The TV screen is on the wall behind me where I think that beyond full cable options, they've added CCTV to watch the guests arrange and congregate in the Great Room and on the grounds around the lake.

What's good for the geese is great for the ganders. Here's a fully equipped man-cave with broadcast, movie, and sports channels. There are also blue tooth speakers to allow groom to play loud music (the room's soundproofed. There's planned CCTV to watch the guests arrive, and a game box under the TV with controllers on the couch. Of course there are abundant USB outlets and charging stations. The wet bar is part of fully equipped kitchette and that's a large changing room/bathroom in the right corner. 

GEEK STUFF: Unfortunately I had to resort to paintings for these last two images since I was invited to capture the exterior at sunrise and consequently did not tote along indoor lighting. Bummer. These are all multi image panos stitched together from hand-held Canon 7D images then processed with various tools. 

The Pennsylvania Farm Series 5

Go on back and study the 3rd in this series which I posted on June 26. See there on the lower right... behind the spring house? There's a natural spring fed green lake. This one... In the Fall...

Now look up there on the upper right. See it? There's a heart carved into the crop. Remember, this is a working farm. And in October, well, there are few more gentle places on earth. Can you envision a bride in the foreground? Some of the party lolling in the chairs... Drinks in hand? Once this was a swamp which the family dug out and created more efficient drainage into a stream. See there on the lake's right? Yep that's a diving and fishing dock. The float on the left is the drain as well. Centuries of hard work. 

And now, directly behind me here sits the restored barn. Nope, not shabby at all, huh? BTW: Look at the last post in this group... Series 4. Follow your eye to the far right about a quarter of the way down. See the chairs? Yep, there they are up above. This is a large scene, perfectly executed. 

GEEK STUFF: Yep, hand-held with my Canon 7D Mk.II through its 17-85mm glass - I captured a 3 panel pano. Then it got stitched together in PSCC-2018 where I fixed the distortion, optical range, and relative dynamics. Then I added pieces of various imaging from Topaz Clarity and finished the work with the power of Alien Skin's Exposure X3's Agfa slide film. 

The Pennsylvania Barn Series 4

Ahah! See - there's the barn and how it fits into this scene. Told you that it looms over everything. And since this is a wide angle view, well - this still understates its mass. Anyway, look at its overbite. 

Okay, that's really an overlay, the way that the second story overhangs the space below - it's a key feature of a Pennsylvania barn. It kept farmers and animals out of the elements, and allowed wagon and truck loading and unloading as well as pulling stuff to the animal stalls up there. Easier to clean out as well. The place is huge.

GEEK STUFF: Hand-held my goto 17-85mm on the Canon 7D Mk-II. Processed with PSCC-2018 and worked with Clarity in the Topaz studio then finished with AlienSkin's Exposure X3's Technicolor - at least in spots. Really love the color density that it affects. 

The Pennsylvania Barn Series 3

Ok... still haven't reached the barn there on the right in this series. Lens distortion caused the foreground to appear bigger - while in fact - the barn actually LOOMS over the caters' truck entry and the professional full kitchen... Cool the way the designer incorporated the food support wing to look nothing like what it is. 

GEEK STUFF: Canon 7DMk II, Canon 7D, EF-S17-85mm, Processed in PSCC-2018, multiple iterations created then blended on the macro side with Alien Skin's ability to capture such emulations of film with Exposure-X. I grew up using Agfa slide films with its decisively elegantly rich palette. On the micro side, after the usual cleaning up in Photoshop Topaz tools allowed me to enhance every little part of the image. Together with Photoshop's adjustment layers - there's every tool imaginable. 

But perhaps others can imagine more?

The Pennsylvania Barn Series: 2- Daybreak - 6/19/18

The Caterers Quarters

   The restored Pennsylvania Barn session I did last Tuesday was sort of a convocation for the place. The owners have built an "Event" structure aimed at hosting any number of celebrations, particularly weddings. 

   Now I'm walking slowly around the building in the background is the spring house displayed in an earlier post, in the foreground is where a catering truck can enter directly into a fully equipped professional kitchen so they are out of the elements with a LOT of room laden with all of the equipment for a team of cooks to work. This building is connected to the stone barn behind it and stairs together with hidden hallways allow wait-staff to access multiple levels of event rooms.

   Look there on the upper right behind the farmhouse. There's a huge heart mown into the hillside grass.

GEEK STUFF: Not much to add from the earlier captures, same camera and lens, however this is a five shot pano stitched together in PSCC-2018 in post where I used Alien Skin's powerful Exposure X3 to add a Kodachrome II palette while painting in the sky and highlights with PP's curve adjustment layers. while the lighting was just pre sunrise and relatively flat, I added the romantic glow with my own tools to emphasize the key details and to allow edges to fall into vignette.

The Pennsylvania Barn Series 1

You're entering a Lancaster County farm. OK, you know I guess that this county sits atop America's richest non-irrigated land. Friends own the spread and they've just refurbished their stone 

barn. So they let me take sunrise pictures last Tuesday (June 19th). There was a storm brewing in the east as the sun rose just beyond those trees. No, that's not their farmhouse there beside the road, nor is that the restored barn to its right. Today they're both storage structures. See the cobblestone drive? They're from Europe. Once upon a time, empty or partially filled sailing ships needed ballast on the way over. The blocks were quarried on that side of the Atlantic and dumped over here into large mounds around Chesapeake and Philadelphia ports. Hence they were free resources to early road builders. They are just one authentic touch on this 18th century working farm.  

Now turn around 90 degrees and facing West... Look how the cobblestones wander through the alleyway with a spring house on the right and on the left - Yep: Here's the authentic 1840 Pennsylvania barn. 

The Pennsylvania Barn’s main feature is the projecting 7-8 foot forebay, or overshoot. But, it is important to remember that in order to be considered a Pennsylvania Barn, it must have these essential features: a projecting forebay and banked construction, almost invariably with the eaves side in the bank.” The Pennsylvania Barn appeared late in the 18th century and flourished from about 1820 to about 1900. It is most common in the southeast and central parts of the state (although it can be found in many parts of the state). Although people from all social groups built Pennsylvania Barns, they are most closely associated with the Pennsylvania Germans. And at the center of it’s epicenter of interest sits Lancaster County with this barn on the Armstrong farm in Refton built in 1820 and entirely restored in 2018. 

GEEK STUFF:  I did the series using my Canon 7D, assorted lenses and post processing with a combination of tools from PSCC, Topaz, and Alien Skin. For particular drama, the sun rose through a cloud bank of a gathering late-spring storm providing a combination of strong light at first then flatter light perfect for avoiding the super contrasty early morning sun.

More to come...

Aliens Land

They came from their strange craft… The most alien intelligence with which we shall ever live… 

Heh heh… Now this is a Technicolor morning in Lancaster County, eh? Caught it and them through my tiny G10 on a bike stop feet away from that last post below. Hardly any post processing in PS4. Some AlienSkin Technicolor tonal intensity. Love the texture and sharp… sharp… sharp depth of field huh? Plus, lookit the dynamic range there. There's shadow and highlight detail throughout. That little camera's a classic masterpiece. Imagine Canon's now up to a G16… this thing's ancient. But it fits in a little pack on my bike, films in RAW and jpg. This image was just a jpg capture! Yet lookit it!

I can't even imagine what the new versions of this baby do. You know what? If you're looking for small carry everywhere camera with all the override features of your top SLR… Go and buy a good used G10. I'm telling' ya… the thing ROCKS!

Okay… couldn't resist puttering around with the image. Liked the old, faded feel that this vehicle seems to emanate. Fun huh? 

A Sunday Bike Ride

About ten miles outside of Lancaster City into the southern end of Lancaster County we can really see the legendary rolling hills of central Pennsylvania. Spring's come, the seeds are in, but the trees haven't fully budded. Soon all of this will be corn, much to fill that finger pointing into the sky. Life's good, huh?

Oh… I did adjust the dynamic color range here to emulate my very favorite slide film… Agfachrome 100. It was my trusty light little  Canon G10 that caught this feeling. It's all pretty magical, eh?

How magical? Here's the original sort of. In fact this image resulted from stitching together five panels in PS4, then cropping it down to this square.

The challenge this time was to create an out-of-the-camera reality in the final version at the top of this posting. I wanted to avoid any sense of "manipulation" or "augmentation". One of the real challenges was the lack of balance from that horizontal horizon. there is too much weight on the left side of the original. I needed more mass on the right. That led to two pieces of process. First a weighting of the tonal and palette range to augment the appearance of more heft on the right bottom. The secondly to grow the hill there on the south eastern quadrant. 

but the weight was designed to compliment a setting for the main feature, the silo… To draw the eye, and feeling toward that finger without battling it. Of course I eventually added vignette to once again spotlight  the silo. 

Great fun and I'm thinking if the trick's not revealed like I now have, that it sells belief. Right?

Paradise Panels

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What is the difference
Between picturing
A truck and
Pondering
Truckiness?

And if something
Is trucky yet just
Pieces of
Things that are
Trucky-like
Have we then
Merely pondered
Trucks?

The truck ruins sit garaged, or barned in a place nearby to Paradise, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And since I found it in parts… it seemed best displayed… in panels, huh?

great big

Canon G10, PS4, Topaz Adjust 5, Custom photo-pop brushes and texture screens.

Winter Nears Blue Ball

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When you’re in summer,
The warm goes on forever
And winter’s little more than
A figment at day’s end.

When you’re in winter
Each wind is much colder than
The memory of summer’s
Way of making things live.

Near Blue Ball, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Canon G10, PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: SnapArt, Water Color, Custom textures and brushes.

A REAL Photograph?

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It’s called by some
The Simple Life
What the Amish have.

On a Summer day
Riding Lancaster’s
Backroad farmland hills

I wonder if simple
Captures what it means
To live here like this?

Hmmm… Some have wondered if I still take “pictures”? I’m guessing they mean, photographs? In fact friends wonder if I can still take pictures? Okay… here are the basics, right? It looks like a picture, a photo… um… don’t you think? Of course, nothing is reeeeely as it looks, is it? :-)

Near Blue Ball, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Canon G10, PS4 (pano w/image merge 4 wide-angle pans), custom brushes

NOTE Okay... maybe I did move the barn, um, into the image, uh, along with its cow and pasture. But... but.. it's still a picture, right? And well, perhaps there were only a few of those orange flowers snapping open, but.. but.. well, there should have been more, huh? And yeah, the skyline could have been messed up with a few inconvenient buildings off in the distance. Well who has an appetitie for inconvenience anyway? Not me... nope. But... but... except for those tiny details and a tad of romanticizing the dynamic range and color palette... HEY... basically it's a photograph, huh?

In Intercourse

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Beside the road this weekend. Stopped my bike. Grabbed my Canon G10. Brought it home. No more story.

Spring Breeze

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Sunlight is gold,
Not golden.
Squint,
Dazzle,
Glare…

It’s the chore
Of Spring
Breeze cleaning
Whatever the
Nocturnals left
That’s flyable.

Amish Farm, Lancaster County, Pa
Cannon G10: PS4: Topaz, AlienSkin, SnapArt, Watercolor: Custom brushes & textures.

Wish You Were... Hear?

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I'm wondering what comes between imagination and mumbling, "FINISHED!"

And I'm thinking that the crack between the two is where talent lives. "FINISHED!" is what you are capable of doing with what you imagine. Hmmm... do I mean 'talent' or do I mean skill? And where does creativity make its appearance? Suppose you can imagine a reslut but can't execute it.... reveal it. Or... or... is process where you actually discover the totality of your imagination? Hmmmm or its limits. Or...

Okay, my head's starting to burst....

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Took this on my bike ride last weekend not far from Willow Street. Now, Willow Street is not a street. It's a place outside of the City of Lancaster to the south east. Maybe six miles? And it's smack in the center of Amish country. And here's a piece of Amisher farm equipment that they tether to mules to work that field. Off to my right was a little red wagon filled with three Amish boys - who I could not picture because it simply not a nice thing to do. And the watched me, then waved as I biked off of their post card home place.


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GEEK STUFF: Canon G10. middle of the bright afternoon. PP with PS CS4, custom textures, Topaz and AlienSkin filters and personalized brushes.

Fall Before The Fall

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This soon may be gone!

Rode my bike through the Pekway region of Lancaster County yesterday. Fall’s come onto the Amish farms.

Next month the EPA will begin enforcing rigorous standards here to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. Runoff from these farmland’s had an impact upon the Bay which people downstream claim is negative. Even though this is a record year for the heavily fished bay area, the pleasure boaters and fisher people have colluded with the Obama administration to impose draconian regulations upon the nation’s richest non-irrigated farmland here in Lancaster County.

The results may have the same impact that the EPA’s had upon the Central California Valley where in order to protect some odd species, they’ve shut off that area’s water supply almost entirely. The result? Ruined farmers, a greater dependency upon imports (from countries with no similar endangered species regulations}, and an increase in food prices which fall, of course, most dramatically upon the most fragile American families who are struggling to survive in this recession. I suppose those are the unintended consequences of well meaning people trying to do utopian stuff, huh?

So I’m making images before Lancaster County’s farmers, and urban areas are laid waste with EPA regs that will topple them into bankruptcy. Why the urban areas? Because they built water reclamation plants before the EPA was founded. Those operations do not meet the new standards. However, while the Federal government provided funds for communities which never built any treatment plants, it refuses to provide funds to upgrade the existing facilities (remember the Stimulus Bill and all of those never materialized shovel ready projects?).

Since every city in Pennsylvania is teetering upon insolvency as a result of other sorts of mandates imposed but not funded by the Pennsylvania state government, these waste treatment costs will probably be the last straw, creating ghost towns throughout what is the commonwealth’s most economically diverse and lowest unemployment region.

Go figger, huh?

Oh well, enjoy it before winter sets in….

Canon G10
Lancaster County, PA

Processing: Canon G10: 3 handheld wide angle images stitched together in PS/CS4: AlienSkin/SnapArt, Topaz, custom brushes.

PART TWO

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And thirty miles or so south of that image up top there was this one taken last week at a friend's house overlooking the river meeting the tidal waters of The Chesapeake Bay. Here's on the shore of Northeast, Maryland we're watching the runoff of centuries of Yankee farming flowing into the headwater's of the American South's most treasured Atlantic Coast bay. And here they're arguing that the tons of fertilizer and animal droppings carried by the river system have changed the very nature of their life.

Once again this is PS/CS4 stitching together six handheld Canon G10 images taken with its widest angle at ISO 600 as the sun set. I used Topaz to additionally enhance the dynamic range.

Rebecca knew better but...

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naughty Samuel had skittered through the door into the darkness toward the crumbling Herr place. She ran behind him in a night momentarily lit by a Fall moon breaking the cloud spattered sky.

Grabbing up Sam, Becca twirled toward home when from the abandoned place she heard, or perhaps felt, a whisper.

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Camera: my Verizon cellphone’s 1.5 mpx. Had it with me just as I heard… or perhaps felt… the whisper :-)

PP: PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: Bokeh2, SnapArt:2 -> Pointillism. Custom brushes. Construct from images found at a country tag sale and lonely farm-in-the-night pix.

Bokeh2 - Tester

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Alien Skin has asked me to test the beta version of its newly developed Bokeh2. Here's a first try, done very quickly. The only filter tool is Bakeh2 in PS4. It is very smooth.

Outted

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Of course the house is out. What house isn't.... out? So, why do they name this one out? As opposed to what? An in house? Unless an in house is one imagined by a hot designer. Like... like a painter, director, actor, or singer who is... in. On the other hand... in is an anachronism. Nothing is older than old slang. Well, yeah. There is something older.

Something that no one wants any part of anymore.

"What?" you ask? "What will no one have anything to do with?"

Why... an out house, Right?

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40D - 17-85mm: f16@1/500sec ISO 400; Topaz & SnapArt2 all enhanced in PS: CS4

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This image got lost when Mac took down my website. I thought I'd post it again here, because I like. Is that reason enough?

County Road

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Sun-stained road
slicing through
farm flat
county.

Going to or
Coming from
Home.

It depends, huh?

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The craftsman says, "look, here is what you like."
The artist answers, "Look, here is what I like."

The commercial artist says both of those things.

The academic artist says neither of them.

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Picture by the Canon G-10. Image with AlienSkin Bokeh, Lucis Aperture, AlienSkin SnapArt.... but mostly with... Ted.

Eats

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Recall the tale of the ant and the grasshopper? Like a haunting tune, it's hard, just now, to get out of my mind. I think it's a news thing? Anyway, it's cheerful to have this memory - the kids will cherish it, huh?