Don Poulton
July 2025 - Schoolhouse
About the Image(s)
During the Tennessee Barns and Backroads tour this past spring with Hazel Meredith, we visited this old schoolhouse in eastern Tennessee. I took the usual three image bracketed sequence and brought them into Nik HDR Efex 8 where I applied a "grunge" preset to bring out the character of the run down building. This took the sky over the top, making it look very unnatural, so in Photoshop, I layered the HDR image with the -2 original bracket and masked out the HDR sky. The result looked flat so I reduced the density of the mask to about 50%. Back in Lightroom I added a very subtle vignette and a very slight increase in color temperature. Enjoy!
3 comments posted
Probably a good choice to go grunge and enhance the old building. Perhaps you should have pushed this a little further and reduced it everywhere else. Possibly adjust the contrast on the building as well. The sky looks really nice, great job. Posted: 07/16/2025 16:37:32
The tones are consistent throughout so nice job on the blend and then replacement of the sky. I am picking up on what seems to be a slight light band (aka halo) running along the top of the main portion of the roof. It might be a slight fall of on the mask when you had to reduce the density to get the blend working. Posted: 07/24/2025 17:06:19
I too like the semi grunge effect. I think it adds character to the old weathered wood. The remaining colors and the sky don't look overly processed either. Nice job. Posted: 07/27/2025 17:40:29