Leather horse bridles in the foreground and seasonal storage for horse drawn sleighs in the background inside the main barn at HopeWell Furnace National Historic Site near Elverson, PA.

This was an experiment to see how much detail I could pull out of something that was completely in the shadows using HDR. I shot this as nine bracketed frames at 1/3rd stop variance and then combined them into an HDR and tone mapped the HDR using Photomatix Pro. The white spots on the wood are poop from the population of barn swallows that live in the barn. I really like the way the light from the window is subtlety hitting the sleigh in the background. HDR for the win.

From my Monday, 9-7-2009 trip to Hopewell National Historic Site.

For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site

32 foot diameter water wheel on grounds of the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site located in Elverson, PA. Iron production at Hopewell Furnace required a blast of air to bring the heat of the furnace above 2800 degrees (Fahrenheit). The water wheel supplied the power for this air blast by pumping a pair of pistons inside two blowing tubs. Compressed air moved from the blowing tubs into a receiving box between the tubs, and then through a long pipe to enter the furnace through the tuyere, a cone-shaped nozzle attached to the end of the pipe. The water wheel at Hopewell Furnace has a long sorted history which you can read about on this page.

From my Monday, 9-7-2009 trip to Hopewell National Historic Site.

For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site

This was shot as nine bracketed RAW frames then combined into an HDR and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro with some extra work done in Topaz Adjust to bring out the wood texture.

From my Monday, 9-7-2009 trip to Hopewell National Historic Site.

For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site

This was shot as five bracketed RAW frames then combined into an HDR and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro.

When the furnaces at Hopewell Furnace were in operation, hundreds of charcoal hearths would turn 5,000 to 6,000 cords of wood per year into charcoal for use in the furnace. The charcoal was dumped into an area just above this charcoal house and left to cool. Once the charcoal had cooled, it was shoveled down through windows at the top of the charcoal house and left here for storage until needed. Once needed, teams of men would load wagons and wheelbarrows and haul the charcoal across the way to the bridge house where it was dumped down a hole in the floor that led to the furnace area below.

From my Monday, 9-7-2009 trip to Hopewell National Historic Site.

For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site

This was shot as nine bracketed RAW frames then combined into an HDR and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro. Then I created a duplicate layer and used the B & W filter in OnOne Software’s Photo Tools to convert the layer to B & W and finally used the brush out tool in Photo Tools to brush away the B & W on the waghon wheel to reveal the weathered colors in the layer underneath.

Hay stack at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. During the time that the land was an operating furnace operation, the barn could hold up to thirty six draft horses and up to a year’s worth of feed. Draft horses were used to pull the many wagons the operation used to haul charcoal, limestone and other raw materials for the furnace.

For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site

I shot this as a nine RAW bracketed exposures and then combined into an HDR and tone mapped using Photomatix Pro. It’s almost completely dark in this area of the barn so HDR with some long exposure frames are needed to bring out any detail in the wood and hay.

I made my second trip to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site today (Monday 9-7-2009). This trip, I tried to do some different compositions that would reflect life as a worker at the furnace back when they were in operation. Hopewell Furnace tells a fascinating story. Built by patriot Mark Bird, the furnace operated from 1771 to 1883. While its most profitable items were stoves, the furnace cast many other objects such as kettles, machinery and grates. The casts for many of those items were created in this cast room where workers called “moulders” fashioned the dark, gritty sand into shapes that molten iron would then be poured into to create the object being manufactured.

For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site

Because of the exposure challenges in this particular room (no internal lights, very bright light coming through the windows) I chose to shoot this as nine bracketed RAW frames at .7 stop increments and then combined them into an HDR with Photomatix Pro and finally, tone mapped that image to create the final image.

A beautiful white horse grazes in the meadow alongside the road leading up through the farm at Hopewell Furnace. They two horses at the farm on the furnace grounds. Every other time I’ve tried to photograph this one, he was too far away but on this day he was highly cooperative. From my Monday, 9-7-2009 trip.

For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site

32 foot diameter water wheel on grounds of the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site located in Elverson, PA. Iron production at Hopewell Furnace required a blast of air to bring the heat of the furnace above 2800 degrees (Fahrenheit). The water wheel supplied the power for this air blast by pumping a pair of pistons inside two blowing tubs. Compressed air moved from the blowing tubs into a receiving box between the tubs, and then through a long pipe to enter the furnace through the tuyere, a cone-shaped nozzle attached to the end of the pipe. The water wheel at Hopewell Furnace has a long sorted history which you can read about on this page.

Shooting this wheel posed some challenges since there was very bright sun entering the wheel house from both the bottom left and the top right while the wheel itself was very dark and in the shadows. The wheel was also in constant motion which ruled out traditional multi-frame bracketed HDR photography. I also had limited angles to shoot this from because of the fence in the foreground. I ended up shooting it as a single RAW image, used Photomatix Pro to convert it to pseudo-hdr to bring out the detail in the shadows on the wheel and even out some of the blown out highlights from the sun entering the wheel house then applied the Topaz Adjust plugin to bring out some more of the wood grain details on the supporting wood.

A wagon filled with coal under the overhang of a barn on the 848 acre grounds of the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site located in Elverson, PA. Coal was used at one point in the furnace’s history to heat and melt the iron during the forging process. The wagons were drawn by horses kept on the furnace grounds. The Hopewell Furnace site features original buildings, barns, houses and furnaces from when this area was a working ironworks operation from 1771-1883. This was one of four historic Berks County locations I shot on Sunday 5-24-2009.

For more information on visiting the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site visit their web site.