+++ The Weekly Landscape Thread - #4, 2025.02.28

That's an interesting shot of a peaceful country scene. Sort of looks like the front of the "hut" is a folly. Is it perhaps a gate of some sorts along a path?
If it were a digital photo, one might also think that the rest of the hut has been cloned out for fun :-)

As usual from you, nice contrast & tonailty!

in 1984 took I took a trip back the where I grew up. This was from my grandparents ranch I used to roam as until I went away to college. It is October so the grasses are in their fall colors. The trees had just started to change. The technical details, a 4x5 field camera on TriX developed in HC110 Solution B. This particular tract was rotated between hay and pasture for the cattle when I was a kid. The hut was used to store feed and hay which we used in the winter. We also kept things we used in working cattle in out buildings like this we had at multiple location on the ranch. By 1984, most of the herd had been sold off as ranchers were transforming their land to grow row crops as the cattle prices had crashed related to changes made to the soil bank program by the US Government. This tract of land at the time of this image was used for hay only. I have always been drawn to this image - it brings back such fond memories of simpler days with me on my horse galloping across the country side. We were either working cattle or going fox hunting with my grandfather and our neighbors.

Great back story. Nice to have memories like that.
There's farming land around where I live too. I think I'll make more of an effort to photograph it and get a few good shots for posterity.

I took another, much more detailed, look at the hut and just realised I'm looking straight-on, head-on at the front , so the rest of the hut is hidden behind it. Somehow I imagined it to be a 45° side view of the hut with the rest somehow cloned out. Not sure why?

I thought exactly the same to start with until I looked very closely.

Yes, I guess that is the crop I had in mind, maybe a little less off the bottom ?
In the new version the shadows are now a bit darker. I liked the lighter processing better

Really good.
Lines everywhere taking the eye to the houses. The houses are actually quite boring but a touch of golden light has dusted them with magic and made them worth all the visual lines. DOF exactly right for the scene. Add the suggestion of a V in the clouds that also gets us to the houses.
What more can be asked of a landscape?

Thanks.
Yes, I can understand why you might make that crop.

A superb composition. All the weight on the left is offset by sun on the tree on the right.
Beautiful control of exposure that takes in the darker and brighter areas without over emphasizing anything. We can see the detail through the water. The texture of the water surface get the balance right as well.
Plus, the just right title.
Well done.

Thanks for including the developing info.
This is definitely a matter of personal taste, but for me, I'd have preferred a less grain/contrasty processing for this scene. I'd associate the treatment with more urban subject but there are no hard and fast rules about it.

Is that a Blood Eagle reference? If so, I'm wincing. If not, I'm still wincing because now I can see it in the photo.

The farm is still in the family. It was passed through my uncle and mother to my sister, cousin and myself. My cousin still lives in Western, Ky and manages it. This particular tract is too rough for row crops. It is now in a conservation easement program. We planted native grasses and maintain it for wild life. Yes the image was head on the shed, simply because that was the best location for me to place my camera to get the small valley which supplied the only flat ground in which to build it. We could get about 50 bails of hay in the and that many bags of feed in that hut. That was fine because in good weather we could resupply. The hut today is long gone.

Lovely. The clouds look good enough to eat with a spoon. The light that is shining between them is illuminating beautiful parts of the far flung landscape. Classic landscape photographs.

Beautiful snowy treescape that conveys the mood and the temperature. I imagine some animal sheltering in that opening.

Beautifully composed 'scape with the hint of spring. The mix of subtle sinuous lines and colors, the combination of water, land, trees and plant life in just the right light point out the beauty in simple scenes that don't have the usual grand-landscape elements.

This is a fine image, perfectly composed along the traditional rule of thirds, with clear elements and lines demarcating the reading of the image. I am imagining it in color and thinking I'd like it as well or better, though that could be a false assumption based on my interpretation of the colors - they could be quite bland instead of the rich ones I'm imagining. My reasoning for my fantasy is to make the little structure more discoverable. Its perfect geometry, and the squared up approach you've taken to it are what compels me to want to see it in color. Someone said it looked like a folly, and I see that, but it reminds me of folk painting, thus my wish for colors.

Thank you. The lighting was shifting my the moment as it often does there, and I was happy when it hit the little group of houses!

Thanks! Yes, the landscapes in Newfoundland are very similar to those in the west Scottish coastal highlands and islands. There is a reason for that: it is the same mountain range. I love both places. The light is even similar. And there are similarities in the local dialects. I was told, both places, that I would have trouble understanding the locals. It wasn't too difficult, but then the southern US Appalachian area I'm from was populated by the same people as Newfoundland - people from western Scotland.

This was October. A cold front storm moved through the night before as witnessed by the cirrus clouds moving in to replace the cumulus clouds. The humidity level hadn't dropped yet so the sky was pretty light - which required an orange filter. The light grasses are from the stalks that had supported the seed heads as they turned a tan (color of straw). The trees in the distance were a combination of hardwoods that really were only starting to change colors and were a dull green and pines. The primary color was dull green and what I could generate with the orange filter - not uncommon for early October in Western KY. Without the orange filter the skies are light with not much definition between the clouds. In the spring - where the new colors can be vibrant - color might have made sense.

But hey, I am probably biased since I pretty much only used color film when my wife made me do it and never with my view camera. 😉