Remains of a life - the big picture. by vignouse

Remains of a life - the big picture.

Thank you all for your interest and kind comments on yesterday's image of the ransacked interior of a deceased old man's home. I thought you might like to see the 'big picture' so this is the farm pictured from the outside. The building on the left is a cow-byre and barn; the building on the right is the farm house and the ransacked room from yesterday's post is in the middle of this building between the collapsed roof and the left-hand chimney stack.

I liked the way the sky seemed to be drawing a veil of sadness over these buildings so I processed to emphasize that.
Wow, I can feel lots of stories from that farm.
November 13th, 2014  
This is a lovely, nicely processed image, made all the more powerful by knowing the story behind it. Fav
November 13th, 2014  
Absolutely stunning long view.
November 13th, 2014  
Fav for me...fabulous painterly look with wonderful textures, composition
November 13th, 2014  
Beautiful in b&w!
November 13th, 2014  
Beautiful image FAV!
November 13th, 2014  
I love this. The sadness is reflected in the empty wondows. Fabulous b/w.
November 13th, 2014  
This is absolutely wonderful Richard! Love the use of black-and-white and your processing. I still wonder what happens when they can't find an heir. Does the city or town not take over the property? What happens if someone is her at stumbling among the ruins there. Who do they sue? That property must be worth something.
November 13th, 2014  
Wonderful. Spent a bit of time in the Midi-Pyrénées and saw a lot of places that share a similar sad beauty
November 13th, 2014  
It's interesting to see the outside of the sad rooms from yesterday. Great processing, gives that derelict feel well.
November 13th, 2014  
Interesting processing, love the texture, looks like these buildings will be gone pretty soon.
November 13th, 2014  
Great B&W!
November 13th, 2014  
@trinda Oh the roofs will fall in pretty soon and the internal wooden floors but the walls will still be standing 100 years from now I'd bet... they've already lasted about 250 years!
November 13th, 2014  
Lovely processing Richard
November 14th, 2014  
Very moody. I would love to explore that when I was a kid, although we have nothing nearly that old where I grew up.
November 14th, 2014  
Richard, this is amazing. I always wonder why buildings are abandoned. I bet this one has a story to tell. I love the image especially the textures
November 14th, 2014  
I like your processing on this. I am always intrigued by abandoned buildings like this. I like how they slowly give in to the world around them, but having seen yesterdays shots I also feel slightly sad.
November 14th, 2014  
A wonderful composition, I love your work you have a great eye, sometimes my tastes run towards a tad less processing. Great detail
November 14th, 2014  
@tosee Tom, thanks as always for your thoughtful comments... I love your statement, "sometimes my tastes run towards a tad less processing". You could be a diplomat, and you're absolutely right, I do have a tendency to over process. That was my principal learning point from my NF-SOOC month in September, but I seem to have slipped back into bad habits! I shall bear that in mind in the run- up to the end of the year.
November 14th, 2014  
@tosee Further thoughts Tom: somewhat ironically I had second thoughts before posting this and threw away my first edit - you really wouldn't have liked that one. This is actually pretty much a standard preset from Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro 2 which I then quadtoned in PS CC. The only other work was to remove 5 electricity poles and a lot of wire in the sky. I shall play with this some more.
November 14th, 2014  
The property falling down is sad, sadder still is the old man who died with out family. The picture conveys a sadness.
November 14th, 2014  
@vignouse What I tend to see in a lot of presets is what one would call
little white specs on the edges of vines, trees, etc. do to maybe a little over sharpening which over defines the edges. I do often try converting from raw in light room and use
at times Topaz presets. In the end I usually, at least 95%, toss because of the lack of natural tones, colors, and those white things. I find I am not a very good processer when it comes to keeping it natural. I want to learn and become better at processing (could have never removed the]
poles and wires), at least learn a bit about layers. At the present time my
concentration is making adjustment within camera especially for highlights and shadows. ( I can go from +7 to -7) Then maybe a little processing. I love it when I capture what I want by proper use of light and in camera adjustments. Thinking about getting some HDR software, but we will see! Just for the record " I have a deep appreciation for your skills as a photographer.
November 14th, 2014  
What a great capture of decay Richard. I love all the textures too that seem to be taking over the buildings.
Thanks for your visit and kind words today -- thought I can't support your taste in tea!
November 14th, 2014  
Great textures in the b/w. Fav
November 14th, 2014  
What I liked about this scene wasn't a sad aspect, but rather how organic his spread is. It looks like it will crubmle into the earth in a pile of rocks and woods, as is natural. Then I read about the electric poles and wires that so screw up almost EVERY picture. So I guess it isn't actually as organic as it looks, but I like that aspect of the picture anyway.
November 14th, 2014  
It looks as if Mother Nature is well on her way to reclaiming the farm. In all honesty, I would not have guessed that yesterday's pictures were taken on the inside of this place. This looks far more dilapidated to me. Your PS skills must be top-notch as its not easily evident where the power poles once stood. A view on black really gives this image poignancy.
November 14th, 2014  
Good processing and nice textures.
November 14th, 2014  
I love this image and the way your processing has emphasised the story of the buildings. I could easily live with this on my wall. Fav. Katharine
November 14th, 2014  
Superb as always, love the processing
November 14th, 2014  
You say you have a 'tendency to over process" - well, that works for me, with this one. Wonderful photo.
November 14th, 2014  
@jocasta Thank you Joy - I had this exchange with Tom in the wee small hours... looking again in the cold light of day, I'm happy with it. I envisaged it this way when I took the shot and it matches what I had in my head when I pressed the button!
November 14th, 2014  
@tosee Hi again Tom and thank you for your thoughtful comments... and kind words. I did try reprocessing this image and it is possible to get enhanced structure without edge-glows and artefacts - at least in this image. I first of all increased the contrast in the mid-tones and then used Unsharp Mask at a fairly fierce setting. I then modified the blending mode for the unsharp mask to Luminosity which has the effect of sharpening only the lightness information in the image and not the chroma information and as it is usually the modified chroma values that result in edge glows and processing artefacts, they are avoided. Thank you for the prompt which led me to investigate this.

As an aside Tom, I found our exchange of views stimulating and I wonder whether you might be interested in exchanging views from time-to-time by e-mail? If this would interest you, let me know in a comment and I'll include my e-mail address in my reply... it's entirely up to you, Tom.
November 15th, 2014  
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