Missions Barn Flathead Valley Montana

[Dan Leithauser]

This barn somewhat of a landmark in the Flathead Valley between Ronan and Pablo on Old Highway 93. Photographic opportunities are sometimes limited by water vapor haze, smoke from fires, and just general weather. I drive by here once a week, and most of the time I don't stop. The clouds made me stop this time. The final photo is a HDR image processed from 3 bracketed exposures with Dynamic Photo HDR software.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2380/2594281822_8acc0d7f00.jpg

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Dan,

As I replied in your other thread, these photos deserve to be appreciated a bit bigger (e.g. 800 pixels wide). As it is now, I can comment on the general composition and the light but the details of the barn and focus/bokeh are not really visible.

Re. the compostion, I like the 3D feeling it gives. The layers of structure (coulds, plants, mountains) and dramatic lighting add to this feeling. I think that it is a very good picture, thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

[TJ Avery]

Beautiful scene and great clouds! Interesting perspective - it looks like the barn is floating in a sea of yellow :-) The blue/green/yellow color combination is nice. The sky looks a little funky - there seems to be localized areas of lighter exposure. Maybe this is the HDR software at work?

For scenes like this, I find that simple, manual blending in Photoshop is easist (at least for me). Just put the darker exposure over the lighter one and use layer masks to blend them together (i.e. digitally simulate how a graduated ND filter would have worked). I know it's labor intensive and it takes time, but the results can be superior to other methods of exposure blending.