Old Abandoned Truck

When the weather started to get nicer, I started biking and there were a couple of spots I wanted to scout. While checking out a path, I saw this old abandoned truck and I thought it looked really cool.

I checked on suncal.org to see if the evening or morning would be better. The evening would be more convenient but the sun would be right behind the subject. I knew it could be challenging with blown out skies.

I tried 2 evening shots and once in the morning but the morning was terrible. Maybe because I was too late but the contrast was so high and I was much happier with the evening results. So here's the setup:

I had to stand pretty far back because I used my 50mm. I tried using the 27mm but I was getting more skies and more unwanted environment. Finding a good composition was tricky because the background wasn't too flattering in some spots.

These were shot with my Fujifilm X-T3 + Rokinon 50mm 1.2. This is out of camera raw with Lightroom presets (Adobe Color):

So this is cropped 16:9. I initially didn't like this image but with the crop, it really helped. It's funny because it's not really following the rules of thirds but I still like it. This proves that the rule of thirds is just a guideline.

Because I shot directly in the sun, I had to bump the contrast, clarity, and dehaze. I did some dodge and burn on the surrounding hay. I applied some gradient filters to help with the foreground and the sky. I bumped the saturation of blue and aqua to help bring out the subject. And of course, to emphasize the warm tones, I applied some split toning.

50mm 1/125sec F/4 ISO 160

I prefer the first picture out of the 2 but because I was initially not happy with the results, I went back the next day and got this composition. 

I applied a very similar edit as my first shot.

50mm 1/250sec F/4 ISO 160

I shot these at F/4 because I wanted a bit of separation from the foreground and background. The morning shots didn't have that magic glow. Again, maybe I was too late but I'm way too lazy to get early enough when it's so much easier in the evening.