The blue of the hay rolls caught my eye as I rolled on by this abandoned house. Rolled on back though - the fields and barn edging into the frame appear still used and there is a new house as well. Just love the big tree and all the lightning rods. Probably not worth the expense to tear down the house and I’m glad for that since it made for such a good subject.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Focusing on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Conceptual: Focus on the message and story conveyed by the image.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
Central Wisconsin isn’t prime farming country, but enough people do it and have done it that we have a lot of agricultural land still in use today. I like this for the transition it represents - that the house is no longer useful, but the land is. Do you agree?
Without trespassing or climbing into ditches and risking barbed wire fences, compositions for abandoned houses are tough. Mainly I wanted to eliminate the barn on the right, but leave the hay and the field for some context. I tramped around the roadside until I came up with this - it’s a compromise - does it work?
Technical Details
Handheld
Lr for a lot of tonal management and work to bring presence to the hay and the house without overwhelming with color or too much contrast.
Since I often photograph abandoned structures on the Colorado Eastern Plains, I feel your angst on having not the best conditions and access to the image. The light and the sky are difficult to over come so I can’t really second guess your choices there. The barn in the mangle of trees are a distraction. I tried to see if blurring would make a difference, but that was a no go, so I decided the best thing would be a crop on both sides, IMHO. Thoughts? Nothing you can do with that big tree, lol.
Thanks @gDan52 & @Dean_Salman - it is indeed hard to get decent compositions without trespassing, but I’ll work and post a vertical shot since I took a few. There are tall weeds sticking up though, so it might not work. Worth trying though. Glad you stopped by to leave your thoughts.
Kris, this has a wonderful feeling of decay and current use as well. I really like the contrast of the newly done hay bales with the old and decaying house. Staying off private land makes for a tough job with composition, but you pulled this off nicely. I do like @gDan52’s vertical crop too.
Would love to see your vertical take on this too, Kris.
I love old barn and old house scenes, and I’m glad you were able to get this much, while honoring property lines. I don’t see many of these scenes where I live in suburbia!
I really like the weathered siding…that old worn out paint. I never thought much about it, but I think most old houses were painted white back in them olden days!
Thanks for sharing rural history!
Thanks @David_Bostock & @Mark_Muller - where I lived in NH, abandonment was almost non-existent and so I was quite surprised at how much of it there is here. Combination of more space, fewer people (per square mile) and how much more family farming there was. I have a few more photos from the same day to put up, but in the meantime I put the one vertical shot I took in the OP. I felt it didn’t give the house anywhere to look, so to speak, but it does remove the barn more effectively. I used Photoshop to get rid of some of the tree. It’s an imperfect job, but an improvement. Still think the ditch weeds serve as a barrier to the scene.
