Red Tractor

[Rob C]

Thought this one from Michael might illustrate the interesting change of feeling that having an out of focus foreground can create within a picture, perhaps going some way to illustrate that not all landscape photography has to subscribe to the sharp all over syndrome, something we discussed in another thread.

Yes, I accept that it isn´t a shot of a prairie nor even of another canyon nor of a desert, but whatever it is, it is still within (to me) the world of landscape. That the plants might be moving in the wind and were meant to be sharp is unimportant; that it might actually be sharp all over and that I have a monitor problem is also as unimportant, again, to me. What does matter above all, is that the gentleness, the apparent softness and fragility of the plants contrasts so beautifully with the rugged hardness and colour of the steel behind them, whether by accident or design. Love it.

Rob C

[michael]

Rob,

A bit of back story on Red Tractor.

I was in farmland shooting farm workers with the 200-400mm. Pulled over near an abandoned farm for a 400mm shot of some workers against the lush rows of crops and when I turned to walk back to the car saw this.

The use of a longish focal length lead to some compression and I had the D700's auto-iso set to a minimum shutter speed of 1/250 sec for hand-holding. I cranked the aperture to f/8 for DOF and the camera set ISO 1400 automatically.

A bit of cropping for symmetry was all that was needed, and then some desaturation of the greens in Lightroom and a saturation increase on the reds. I also cranked the contrast a bit to make the shadow areas go completely black. The tire was blue, and distracting, so I desaturated it as well.

The tractor is just enough out of focus so as to allow the ultra-sharp puffs to seem even sharper and make it recede a bit.

I'm very pleased with the image. I spent the afternoon with an idea in my head of shooting farmworkers and ended up with several shots of old farm equipmemnt and plants.

Ya never know.

Michael

[Rob C]

The tractor is just enough out of focus so as to allow the ultra-sharp puffs to seem even sharper and make it recede a bit.


Michael
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So there you go! I thought it was the plants that were soft due to wind or whatever, and it´s the opposite way around. Just goes to show how difficult it is to make any sort of sensible judgement from JPEGs and monitors!

Great shot, regardless. As I have often commented, you have an eye for the unusual which seems to ring my chimes more than the straightforward sort of landscape image. Perhaps that´s the whole point: staightforward is often just formulaic, regardless of whom might have taken the shot.

Rob C

[Steven Draper]

I enjoy the picture too, and I look forward to reading the D700 review as I'm looking at a fairly immanent purchase!

Regards the focus, I have created a number of successful images - by which I mean either sold as prints, or selected from a range of images by other people during "tests" which have a very limited "in focus" area.

If in a "landscape" photograph it is our intent to "freeze" a moment in time, I like to think that during that moment our eye can actually only focus on a very small part of the scene. Sometimes I think it is appropriate to recreate that experience within a photograph, although I'm very aware that not everybody agrees!


Steven

[Theodore]

This photo has something to it that's struck me before where industry (here the tractor) and nature are juxtaposed.  There's more to it - it's that the tractor is well used and showing it's age, it's decay.  There's something to looking at the tractor and seeing that it's slowly returning to nature.  I've had the same evocation with an old fence on the edge of the field.  A bit of peace in the order of things perhaps.

I too am very much looking forward to Michael's D700 review.

[Rob C]

Some years ago, whilst driving back to Spain through France, we spent some time in the Périgord and one of the places I took the camera was the cabanes du Breuil, at St André-d´Allas. It´s a sort of preserved hamlet of very old cottages fashioned from stone, with heavy slate roofing. That´s the very simple way of putting it!

In one of the building was an old Fordson tractor, doing not a lot more than just watching the day warming up and the tourist walking by. I was using some Ilford HP5 Plus at the time because it was pre-digital (pour moi) and I knew no better. Now, I deeply regret that it wasn´t shot on either Velvia or digital because the options of looking at the thing again with new eyes is so much more satisfying.

I have wondered what the copyright position is with the pics: France is one of the countries which requires location releases and I hate the thought of innocent publication (as here) leading me into litigation. Such a complicated life...

But yes, there is something intriguing about the old man-made declining into nothing and the fresh, new natural springing up in its place. Gives us hope, in a way.

Rob C