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Leonards Mills II

Ron Morse

New member
Leonards Mills was a community back in the woods built around a water powered saw mill. Started around 1790 and ran I believe through the 1890's. It has been partially rebuild with a water wheel powered working sawmill. I like to go there every fall to get pictures of the fall colors.





I got interrupted by the oil company bringing me over $1000.00 worth of home heating oil. Damn!!!

Back to the post.

The saw mill.


 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ron,

This is superb color. Keep shooting. What's the widest lens you have. This is where you need to shoot with all your lenses. There is so much rich detail for macro and close up as well as panoramas. I hope you will return to this as it's a thrill. I hope you will do some sketches and walking round to sample much more of this exceptional environment. All the pictures are interesting. The collections really paints a picture of the place.

Splendid! You have a good hunting ground and there's much more work there!

Asher

P.S. Hope you have enough heating oil because when the snow comes, you'll need it!
 

Ron Morse

New member
Thank you Asher. It is a rather unique place. These pictures were taken about two weeks ago. I still have about 75 to sort through.

It has a lot more to see than what I have shown so far.



Beyond the covered bridge.
mg6581xn5.jpg


The day I was there two bus loads of school children came to get a tour and a variety of different activities.
 
Well Ron, I think this is another nice view of a wonderful location. We don't really get fall colors too much around Houston so I always enjoy looking at what other people are experiencing this time of year. Personally I think I enjoy the second version the most only because I can see more of the detail from the darker shadow areas. It has a nice painterly feel to it as well and that is always pleasing to me. The only thing that I would change if I could would be to get rid of that branch in the left foreground. It is quite distracting to me.
James Newman
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Ron,

Thanks for the go ahead on exploring your images further. This picture with a river carrying the reflections of autumn trees is one that I'd have loved to have seen in person.

mg6581xn5.jpg


I feel that there's more potential in seeing the startling color of the fall leaves and the bark of the trees, and the rich blue sky. I was not there. However, I've lived in Boston and seen the fall and crunched so many brown, gold and purple leaves under my feet, that I feel I might have seen the picture this way:

mg6581xn5_AK.jpg


What I've done is added a curves layer with a gentle S-curve and then masked out the lower part of the picture. After that, I left and returned to use just a small amount of those changes. Then I lightened selectively regions of river reflections using the dodge tool. We have a beautiful scene of the richness of Western United States at its autumn glory. This is something celebratory and we have social customs of driving through this foliage with our friends and family to take in such wonderful sights. The whole bloom of color is for us a positive exhilarating thrilling experience when we feel at one with the cycle of nature. All we need is to see a small splash of such fall color and all the positive cultural values of "Fall" with friends getting together, wonderful drives and a hot cider with cloves and such memories come to mind. The autumn leaf is such as strong signal that this alone can be used in a fall fashion campaign to set the mood.

Then I explored B&W. Why you may ask? Well, it's simple, you cannot have the "full Monty" for real color and form at the same time. This is because the very nature of color is to influence our attention away from the directions given by shading, form and texture alone. It might seem counterintuitive to have a "Fall Scene" in B&W. How could this work without sienna, gold and red? Well let's see:

mg6581xn5__BW_AK.jpg


With the color removed, the river takes center stage. There is a level playing field. Nothing is more important merely because of remarkable color. Not that this maneuver can be expected to improve a picture with poor underlying form, as it will not. Let's see what we have.

We now can pay more attention to the reflections in the water and the curved path of the river and the tree in the foreground, broken, dead and signifying passage of time and maybe our own lives. This sort of thinking is not so easily allowable with the beautiful colors which seduce us from the harsher ideas embedded in this one photograph.
 
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Ron Morse

New member
Well Ron, I think this is another nice view of a wonderful location. We don't really get fall colors too much around Houston so I always enjoy looking at what other people are experiencing this time of year. Personally I think I enjoy the second version the most only because I can see more of the detail from the darker shadow areas. It has a nice painterly feel to it as well and that is always pleasing to me. The only thing that I would change if I could would be to get rid of that branch in the left foreground. It is quite distracting to me.
James Newman


Thanks James. I agree about the branch. I thought about removeing it, then for some reason didn't. I should have.
 

Ron Morse

New member
Asher that is nice work. I especially like what you did to the leaves behind the dead, fallen tree. I had already given the picture a slight s curve. I'm learning that you can be more creative with some landscapes. I need to experiment more.

The B/W does make the river and the dead/fallen tree the main subject. Again very nice.
 

Ron Morse

New member
A river drivers bateau coming down the stream into the mill pond.

I'm not sure if the bateau adds or subtracts from the photo.

 

Ron Morse

New member
Horses, a wagon and childre

More from my latest excursion to Leonards Mills.

Now that I think about it, I probable put this in the wrong place.

Two bus loads of children were there the day I was. They were getting a tour and doing activities.







 

Ron Morse

New member
I thought I'd start a new thread since the old one doesn't get very many comments. If you think this is where it should go thats fine with me.
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
I thought I'd start a new thread since the old one doesn't get very many comments. If you think this is where it should go thats fine with me.
Hi Ron,

It is in our experience better to keep the pictures of the same shoot clustered together in one big thread than in many smaller thread. The latter is easier to browse since it loads faster, but in the long term you will get more hits and thus reactions on a longer thread with more contributors who get reminders when a new post is added.

Are you OK with this?

Cheers,
 
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