This Old House

[jjeling]

Went to take some pictures of my car at yesterday. As I was driving down the road, the leaves are off all the trees exposing an abandoned house. After, coming to a screeching halt, I pulled a u-turn and made my way onto the property. Thank god I own a Jeep because I would have never made it back there. It was a cool house that had not been touched in at least 10 years.

[jjeling]

Inside

[jjeling]

oustide

[kat]

Can I ask what lens you used? I'm just wondering how you got that softness to the photos!!!

[jjeling]

Well....First off I used my Sony with a sony 18-70 lens. It is not the lens that produced the softness, but the PP. Images like this work well in B&W, but I didnt want the usual conversion. With so much character, the images converted straight to B&W did not give off the feeling I wanted. Since the house is just down the road and it is not going anywhere anytime soon, this is not going to be the only visit there. It is a good place for some HDR shots as well. Could easily spend an entire day there.

[kiley9806]

lol - by the looks of that toilet, its been untouched for longer than 10 years!!

[Mad Aussie]

lol - by the looks of that toilet, its been untouched for longer than 10 years!!

No .. JJ just never cleans up

Nice expose' of the old house there JJ. I like the soft touch you've given it too.

[tirediron]

Lovely series! Well done.

[tomorrowstreasures]

JJ - I too really like this series! Well done! May I ask what PP technique you used for the glow? was it picasa's glow? I use that one often because i love the effect, but since i am getting more into ps, i was wondering how to do it there if you used it there or even psp.

[jjeling]

There are several ways to do it. Ive been using photoshop for the past 5 years so I cant really say anythign for other software programs. On ATNcentral.com there are a a couple hundred free plugins for photoshop. The one I use is Dave's Orton Effect. After I ran the plugin I just converted to black and white. On the last one, I adjusted the opacity of the last layer so I could still get a little of the green to show through. This is just a shortcut to the actual process.
You can also use the gaussian blur or any other blur for that matter, then select the method you wish to overlay the new layer on, adjust opacity and get the same, or different effect if you desire.
This works for somethings and doesnt for others. It gives images an HDR-ish look but is not really HDR. It boosts the color and contrast of images, but also adds softness to them, all of which can be adjusted individually.