Wooden train car

The afternoon I shot this image was almost a bust. The time was running out, the gasoline was running out, and we just couldn’t find a good place to photograph anything interesting. Instead of risking getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, we decided to head back to town. And right in time to catch the images of this old rail car in the last light of the day. I decided to go with HDR, as the sky and the car were very bright, and the side of the building and small car on my left were in the shadow- definitely more contrast than my camera can handle. I wrote about the HDR process in this post, using another photo from that session as example.

HDR processing not only preserved detail in both highlight and shadow. It also ended up adding a lot of saturation in the colors in the post-processing. That, in turn, enhanced the contrast between the blue sky, and the bright, warm lit wooden car.

The post turned out to be easy on this image. I used as a base the Photomatix settings RC Conception provided some time ago in his post with stairs in the industrial building. Just add finishing touches in Lightroom, Tone curve to put back some contrast, and up on the blog.