Barns

A few weeks ago, while visiting a friend outside the city, looking for owls, we were in barn territory.  I like barns. Most of these were “drive-by shootings,” since this wasn’t the primary reason for us being out and about. This area is definitely worthy of a return visit just to shoot landscapes and interesting barns.  Old barns, new barns, kept barns, ramshackle barns…a lot of history visible as well as interesting landscape features.

Of course, over the weekend, we had sun, clouds, snow, all lending their own fingerprints to the images.

When shooting out of car windows, keep in mind that colour tints in the windows may affect your image’s white balance; if you can shoot with the windows down, you can not only forgo that part of post-processing, but can bypass any glass reflections or dirt as well.  On highways, aim for at least 1/1250 sec shutter speed when pointing out the side; you can get away with a slower shutter speed when shooting forward. If you have a burst mode, use it, as trees, poles, bumps in the road can make a good shot very challenging.

Keep an eye out over fields as well as fence posts and hydro poles along roads — we passed too many hawks and owls!

Sometimes, appearances can be deceiving.  Take a look at these two images.  After seeing the second, it’s rather amazing that that big barn is still standing.