Old Farm Tractor

Oct 10, 2010

This Old Tractor

I accompanied my wife Ashara on a 4-hour journey to her driving lesson at Happs, Inc. in Ethel, WA. Now this is a different type of driving lesson; it involves a horse and a driver. The goal is to teach the horse and driver to work in tandem on the ground, which ultimately leads to horse, driver and a cart!

While Ashara and her horse Wilma were taking their lesson I sat in our truck with our two dogs Rosie and Baby reading the Oct issue of Rangefinder magazine.

Whenever I’m feeling low ebb in creativity pouring through Rangefinder helps me to get my creative juices flowing again. Featured articles about Harald Mante, Dominic Mondy, Jennifer Hudson and Rob Lindsay got me to thinking about my own style of photography, which I’m always refining.

At this point I looked out of the window and noticed a wonderfully rusted tractor, which in the words of the manager at Happs, “it still works.” I grabbed my camera and set out to create some fine art images. The more photos I took, the more I saw this old farm tractor as something more than the obvious.

The design, engineering and craftsmanship that went into this tractor was for a singular purpose: to pull other farm tools behind it.

I mused for a few moments:

“How many hours does the engine have on it?”

“How many bums have sat in this seat?”

“How many miles have these wheels rolled?”

The tractor remained silent, not giving away any of its secrets.

Still, I was certain the answers were right there waiting for me to tell the story.

I boosted the ISO to 1600 to give the images a nice grainy feel that I hope brings out the age of the tractor. I mostly shot with a shallow depth of field f/2.8 – f/4 to focus on those parts that inspired me the most.

A tractor is a composite of its component parts, each working with the other to create the total machine. While the tractor itself [the macro level] is interesting, the parts [the micro level] really intrigued me.

All photos were taken with a Canon 5D, Canon EF 24-70L lens, and edited using Apple Aperture and Nik Software Color Efex Pro.

Take a look at these photos and tell me what they invoke in you. What speaks to you: the macro or the micro, and why?

Click here to see more photos.