If there is one time of day I try to avoid doing any photography, it would be pretty much any time between about 9:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon, especially in late spring through early fall when the sky is clear. In those conditions, one of two things will invariably happen — the bright light will either cause the image to look very flat and two-dimensional or create so much contrast between the highlights and shadows that getting a proper exposure is very difficult, if not impossible.
However, there are times, occasionally, when photographing midday under a bright cloudless sky is the only option. This usually occurs in those situations in which I’m at a location that I may or may not be able to come back to under better circumstances, so I have to get the best shot I can. This image is a case in point.
Several (or, maybe, many) years ago, my wife and I had taken a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. After a day or two on the Tennessee side of the park, we decided to drive across the mountains into North Carolina where we found the Oconaluftee Visitor Center and the Mountain Farm Museum. The Mountain Farm Museum is a collection of farm buildings that moved to the location from areas throughout the park. In addition to the log farmhouse, barn, apple house, and springhouse, there is also a working blacksmith shop. It really is an interesting spot to visit.
We had arrived just after noon, so the sun was almost directly overhead. The lighting contrast was extremely harsh, and I knew it would be difficult to create a satisfactory photograph under those conditions. But, the visitor center would close before the lighting got better. If I wanted to get any pictures, now was the only chance I would have to do that, so I grabbed my gear out of the car and off we went to see what we could see.
Somehow or another, my wife and I eventually got split up. As I was walking around trying to find her, I noticed this scene. There wasn’t much to it, really. Just a split rail fence that followed a small footpath heading through a pasture toward the mountains. But, I liked it, so I set up the camera and took the shot. When I got home at the end of the week and reviewed the images, this one was exactly as I expected: flat, two-dimensional, and boring.
I worked with it for a while, but I just couldn’t find anything that would make it a decent image. As I was about to declare it unsuccessful, I stumbled across a Photoshop filter that caught my eye — Oil Paint. With absolutely nothing to lose, I clicked on it to see what it did. Playing with the sliders, I eventually achieved a look and feel that I quite liked. In fact, I liked it so much, I printed the image on canvas, and it is now hanging on a wall in my house.