This is an old barn that is nestled in a valley that my Parent’s new house overlooks in the very small town of Virginville, PA. The people who sold the house to my Parents were telling me they think there used to be a wordworking shop setup in the barn.

Nikon D7000 with a Nikon 28-70mm F2.8 AFS lens, aperture priority mode, exposure bracketing for three brackets at 2 stops variance @ F13, ISO 100. HDR and tone map post-processing completed with Nik HDR Efex Pro.

I found this cool old barn along a bend in the road while exploring New Bethel Church Road in Kempton a while back. The mountains in the background are the Appalachian Mountains.

Nikon D7000 with a Tamron 28-300mm F3.6-6.3 LD lens, aperture priority mode, single exposure shot through car windshield @ F11, ISO 200.

I blended several textures from Darkwood67, Distressed Textures and Kim Klassen in order to get the soft, painterly look I was going for.

I passed this horse farm a thousand times before and never noticed all the great lines offered by the white fence line. The farm is located on Route 183 in West Leesport, PA and is currently offered for sale and includes a small pond with a fountain and a very nicely kept farm house.

Nikon D7000 with a Nikon 28-70mm F2.8 AFS lens, manual focus, aperture priority mode, exposure bracketing for three brackets @ F11, ISO 100. HDR and tone map post-processing completed with NIK HDR Efex Pro.

I blended several textures from Darkwood67 and Shadow House Creations and Kim Klassen in order to get the soft, painterly look I was looking for.

I have wanted to shoot this old barn on route 487 in Stillwater Township, Columbia County, PA for a few years now. I was waiting for some interesting sky or cloud formations. Today was the day.

Nikon D300 with a Nikon 28-70mm F2.8 AFS lens, manual focus, aperture priority mode, exposure bracketing for five brackets @ F11, ISO 200. I tried a slightly different approach to the HDR and tone map post processing for this one thanks to a huge collection of tips from Klaus Herrmann and his HDR Cookbook web site and his willingness to share his knowledge on Google Plus. For these bracketed shots, I decided to save them first as 16 bit TIFFs before bringing them into NIK HDR Efex Pro. The theory is that there is more of an opportunity to control the color and eliminate some of the blocking up of the shadow detail as well as take care of any chromatic aberrations if they exist if you open the RAWs in Adobe Camera Raw first and then save them as TIFFs once in Photoshop rather than letting HDR Efex Pro do the RAW conversion during the creation of the single HDR image and tone mapping. I think it made a difference on the shots I have tried it on so far.

This Amish Farmer in Strasburg, PA uses the traditional horse drawn plowing method to till his field, but with a twist. His two Sons ride on the front to provide extra weight for the plow blade and as the horses move the plow every foot and a half or so, they quickly plant a new tobacco plant seedling. The Son on the left separates the seedlings in the tray and hands it to the other Son who drops it in the trench created by the plow blade and covers up the dirt around the seedling. In the Fall you can see the harvested tobacco plants drying in the white corn crib barn across the street. Often times the area farmers will grow a mix of crops including corn, wheat, tobacco, etc.

I applied a series of textures from photos I had shot of stone, dirt and various surfaces with unique texture and blended them in to give this a slight painterly but more of a chalk etching feel in spots.

I was out shooting with a friend of mine last Saturday and she had never seen the Star Barn before and I knew on a day like we had on Sunday, the reflection of the barn in the pond would be really nice. We had to wait out the wind a few times but once it stopped we were left with a nice reflection in the water. It seems every time I have visited the Star Barn in the past, it was either a stormy or extremely windy day so this was a nice break.

The Star Barn is located in Middletown, PA just off route 283. It was built in 1872 and there have been recent fund raising drives and organizational activities centered around moving the entire Star Barn complex to a new home in Grantville, PA where it will act as a museum and agricultural outreach of sorts. For more information on the Star Barn and its rich heritage, visit www.thestarbarn.com

The Neff Round Barn is one of the most iconic barns in Pennsylvania. It was built in October of 1910 and stands on a farm along side route 45 in Potter Township just outside Centre Hall, PA in Centre County. The barn was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The foundation is of farm quarried limestone and encompasses an area of over 6,000 square feet with an 88 foot diameter. The barn was designed by Calvin R. Neff who owned the farm the barn was built on. The construction of the barn was done by a local carpenter, Aaron Thomas. The structure is sound inside and out and still being used to store hay and farm vehicles, but is no longer being utilized in a full farm operation.

3 bracketed RAW frames @ 1 stop increments. HDR and tone map post processing via NIK HDR Efex Pro version 1.1. I’ve wanted to shoot this barn ever since I saw it on the late master photographer, Fred Yarnell’s web site. Most other photos I have seen of this barn taken in modern times always crop so tightly on the barn itself. I wanted to give a wider composition to give the barn more context for the viewer.

The setting sun brings with it the golden rays of warm light that bathe this Gensinger Road farm outside of Kutztown, Pennsylvania.

I shot this as nine bracketed RAW frames at 1 stop increments and then combined them into an HDR and tone mapped it with HDR Efex Pro from NIK Software. I’m still not all that crazy about the composition on this one. I think I could have done more with the fence.

I’ve passed this farm a million times and lately I noticed how the late afternoon golden hour light hits the back side of the barns and corn crib. Light takes on the quality of the things it bounces off of and I think the corn field makes the golden light even more golden if you catch it at just the right time when the setting sun is at a certain angle. The farm is located on route 222 south between Blandon and Temple, PA just before you turn to get on the “road to nowhere”. It is in the right side of the road.

I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames at 1 stop increments and then combined them into an HDR and tone mapped it with HDR Efex Pro from NIK Software.

This is my all time favorite Mail Pouch Tobacco Barn. I shot this once before about this time last year but I had some new ideas that I wanted to try out on it this time around. This particular barn is a real challenge to shoot in the afternoon because the sun sets behind the barn so the front where the lettering is, is almost always in shadows. There’s no way you could pull this type of shot off at this time of the day without using HDR as a tool. The barn is located on Swamp Creek Road in Perkiomenville, PA which is within Montgomery County.

I shot this as nine bracketed RAW frames at 1 stop increments and then combined them into an HDR and tone mapped it with HDR Efex Pro from NIK Software. I spent about an hour shooting this barn with both the D300 and the D7000 and ended up liking the very first shots I took over any of the later ones. In my opinion, neither camera had better quality than the other one, I just happened to have the Nikon 28-70mm mounted on the D300 and that focal range worked better than the 10-20mm on the D7000.