This is a beautiful (or was) old house around the corner from my farm. Another one of those - "I really want a picture of that" (like my tree in accidental letters). So I took this one. I got lucky in that a storm was coming in fast. For some reason, over the house, there is a really weird little cloud I can't get the blue out of. It just will NOT desaturate. Hmmmm. Anyway, I pushed up the shadows and highlights a little and cropped, but the orange grass looked just like that - it was a weird combination of its gold color combined with the odd light from the clouds. This is part of another project I am working on - Houses of Surry County, Virginia. I know, it sounds lame, but some of the houses were built in the 1600s. This one is over 200 years old. I used 800 because I like the noise. :)
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I was really rather fascinated by the comments as they came in. To be honest, I can't Dodge and Burn my way out of a paperbag if my life depended on it (how's that for a visual ;)). 90% of editing was done from RAW-PSD conversion. After conversion, I bumped shadows and highlights and used a little USM. I couldn't go too far with the contrast due to that cloud above the house - it got really winky when I started changing things. There was only a slight crop on the left. The ground isn't crooked - the grass is! I wanted this to look painted. I think some of the processing comments were a direct result of compression artifacts. The full size, uncompressed PSD doesn't have them (like the ones in the trees to the right). I learn a little everyday!
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I really like this! Don't think I would have liked it as much had you desaturated it. The color gives it a great feel. If I was going to "nitpick" anything at all it would be the composition; I would try cropping down from the top a bit, then in on the right nearly all the way to the great tree that branches off in all directions. But, that's just another opinion and not worth the paper it's written on! haha! Great photo dahkota!
this looks like it has a lot of potention, but my initial reaction is that it is a bit over-processed. the cloud burning does add drama, but it is a bit uneven. the building itself looks more like a painting than a photograph, as if something just sucked all the texture out of it. and this is a shame, because it does like like there could be a very captivating image there...
I'm not sure how the scene really was but the sky looks as it was made too much in postprocessing for my taste at least. Was it perhaps what you wanted to sent to the abandoned house challenge but couldn't because of the basic challenge rules there. Well I at least had that dilemma there and was thinking of sending a abandoned house picture in this challenge.
I think i'd have tried some selective sharpening on that house - it could usefully just pop out of the image a little more? I'm no fan of the extreme nature of your darkening of the sky - have you tried using a threshold mask to achieve this effect - it allows the joins to be so much less noticeable? marvellous composition though, and with that little extra punch to match the processing I think it might have been a contender: I think you could use more contrast and lightness in the grass, and there's that overall sense of blurriness also. Close, but doesn't quite do it for me.
I like it. although, when you are using dodging and burning, make sure you get close to the house. You seem to have this glow around the house where it wasn't burned in. 7
The house looks interesting but the sky just ruins it for me. I like the contrasting orange in the grass too although it looks like it could do with a slight rotation.
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