Allaire Village Enameling Furnace -- the way it was

[Dennis Bishop]

Two things drew me to Allaire Village in eastern New Jersey. The first was some of Denise's images. Then, I learned that it was a restored early 19th century site for the production of iron. Metallurgical engineering is the thing that interfered with my photography and digital imaging for a lot of years, so I just had to see it for myself.

This image, taken in early June, is being posted mainly as a precursor to the next one, which will show up tomorrow. It'll be an autumn version conjured up in Photoshop.

9 exposure HDR
late afternoon
ISO 1000 (because of the breeze, small aperture, and nine exposures), f/22, 19mm

Topaz Simplify BuzSim with reduced saturation
Snap Art Stylize for a bit of detail along some of the edges (better than the edges I could get with Simplify, and has become my go-to for edge detail)
Flypaper Textures texture to replace a blah sky
Photoshop warming filter, levels, curves, and a uniform gradient vignette around the entire image

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and application, Dennis.

Only comment is the tilting of all lines in the image. Would like to see some control line being horizontal or verticle. Otherwise, I like the image and effect.

[denise ippolito]

Dennis, Lovely, I really like the combination of filters that you used. The softness to the image is appealing. Nice job with the composition, shooting at this location is a challenge. Maybe a little tight. I'd love to see the Flypaper texture that you used.:S3:

[Dennis Bishop]

Dennis, Lovely, I really like the combination of filters that you used. The softness to the image is appealing. Nice job with the composition, shooting at this location is a challenge. Maybe a little tight. I'd love to see the Flypaper texture that you used.:S3:

The texture is Serafina Sky by Flypaper Textures. It's part of their Summer Painterly collection. If you go to this link, http://flypapertextures.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-summer-painterly-pack-3.html , it's the second from the left in the bottom row. What you see in the image is about a third of the texture, and it's been modified a bit -- very little by the Snap Art filter; more by levels, curves, and the warming filter, but it's not remarkably different. I moved the texture so most of the lower left was showing because the clouds, there, worked the best.

I've downloaded and used a number of free textures. However, I prefer Flypaper's even though they charge for them. They do combine some collections at a special price and, at least once, they offered a discount for a limited time.

I agree with your suggestion that the image may be a little tight. I'm sure I debated with myself when I cropped the original -- some from the bottom and a very small amount from the right. Before posting it, I definitely wondered about the right side. However, I decided not to add more space, there, because doing that would put the building just about dead center. Even though I usually try to include extra space when taking a picture, the final image is often a compromise between the subject being close to the center or to one or more edges.

My rule of thumb is to leave enough room in the direction the subject is moving or looking (toward the left in this case), compromise if need be in the opposite direction and at the bottom if actual or implied motion is horizontal, but always to favor keeping the subject out of the center unless there's a good reason to have it there. I'd be very interested in hearing what anyone else has to say on this subject. Not necessarily related to this image, but in general. I expect it's something we're all confronted with from time to time.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Dennis, very nicely filtered. I quite like the look and the comp. Well done!

[Julie Kenward]

Beautiful soft feel to this, Dennis. I also feel like the building is leaning and would love to see if you could angle that distortion out of the photo. This is really a beautiful image to look at and I'd hate to think someone would be looking at the angles instead of the image.