Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie with repost

Last weekend I finally had the opportunity to visit the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Chase County, KS. My father was born and raised in Chase County, and I always enjoy visiting the Flint Hills. On 6/23, Bill Dark posted a photo of the schoolhouse, with the moon behind the schoolhouse. I took a different approach, since I had a full moon that rose shortly after sunset. Most of the light is from the full moon, but there may have been a passing car providing a little more light. I'm including 2 versions, a b/w version and a color version that is more typical of my style for limestone under the full moon. I'm interested which is preferred, as well as any other C&C. I wish I could have stayed a little later to allow the moon to rise fully above a foreground tree and thus eliminate the tree shadow. Thanks for looking.

here is the color version

I like them both, Rob, and am really hard put to choose one over the other. Your night work out there in big sky country is consistently impressive. The black and white conversion seems to have produced some spotchy areas in the clouds that look a little unnatural, but I think I kind of like the effect.

Rob,
Nice work. I hate to choose. I'm partial to black & white in everything but here I might lean toward the color version. It is excellent. I like the comp. Thanks for sharing.

Rob, good subject matter and very nice results. I'm partial to the color version because I like the nice warm glow of the limestone blocks of the school house. Good stuff!

This is VERY cool, Rob! I also prefer the color version with the warm limestone and the blue sky. Love those stars! I also like the inclusion of the stone wall in the LRC. What lens did you shoot this with? I've tried shooting this schoolhouse without much luck but figure I probably need a wider angle lens than my 28 mm.

Thanks everybody. I prefer to leave a little color in my night shots, but I was willing to try a bw.

Angela, I used a Sigma 17-70mm lens at 25mm for this. This is a slight crop, mostly to straighten the horizon.

Hey Rob, nice work. I might suggest using the perspective checkbox to crop this where the flagpole and building corners are not so distorted.

Sorry for not commenting earlier, but now that I'm back to my teaching job, I haven't had a lot of spare time lately.

Thanks for the suggestion, Bill. I'm including a version where I've tried what you suggested. Is the correction what you were suggesting? I thought things looked a little tilted, but wasn't for sure. I also desaturated the colors slightly, and am interested in knowing peoples opinions on that change.

I'm not sure Rob, but there looks like a shadow to the right of the flagpole that I didn't see on the original. When you click on the crop tool go ahead and drag your mouse to define the crop, and before you actually crop, go up to the top of the menu and check the perspective box. Then you can pull the corners wherever you like without affecting the rest of the corners.

What I did in this image was to pull the top left corner in until parallel with the pole, and the top right corner in until parallel with the right corner of the school. Just a little trick I learned somewhere out in the woods around Mt. Sherman...

Sure wish there was a way to put a bell up in that tower!

Thanks for your time, Bill. I appreciate the lesson on perspective cropping. I don't normally photograph scenes with buildings :). A bell would be great, but I suspect one hasn't rang there in a couple generations :(.

Rob, I have to agree with the others that the color version is great. I also like the corrected perspective, although the original didn't bother me that much, considering the low angle that you shot from.

I'm really impressed with how your 30d handles the long exposures in your night shots.