For those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed the improved photos since January. My lovely husband surprised me with a DSLR camera, something that I’ve always wanted since my film SLR stopped working years ago. The new camera spurred me to take a photography class through UT Austin’s informal classes, as well as read some photo blogs and books. I latched on to the idea of trying high dynamic range (HDR) photography after seeing HDR photos in a variety of places. I know that professional photographers have mixed feelings about HDR, but for us amateurs it can really help bring out detail in photos that we would not otherwise capture. When we traveled to my husband’s family farm in Iowa over this summer, I knew I’d have the perfect subjects for HDR photos. The farm is over 100 years old, the farm house was built in 1927 and my father-in-law has a variety of old Ford tractors and old farm implements on display. See timstractors.com for more information on how he restores the tractors.

For the photos below, I used my big tripod, 5 stops for the HDR (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2), and Photomatix essentials to process the photo series. I tried to not go crazy with special effects.

The farm house, built in 1927.

One of the many Ford tractors brought back to its former glory by my father-in-law.

An old thresher, a farm implement that separates grain from the stalk and the husk.

An old Ford truck parked on the farm.

I picked up a collage frame and had a few photos printed to give to my father-in-law. I hope he likes it!

HDR photos of the farm ready to be gifted.

This work by Laura Feeney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.