Tractors

[TaylorM]

I was walking around the neighborhood and found a parking lot of abandoned machinery. I think there was a planned business center that fell through and the (already very old) machinery was left to rot. There were a lot of flat tires and some of the equipment had young trees growing in them. This is not my normal type of photography, but I thought the abstract shapes and interesting textures were fun to shoot. These three photographs were a few of my favorites. This was more of a practice session so feedback is appreciated!

Wheel:


Hoses:


Lights:

[Ziggy]

Great detail with excellent color. Think the HDR people would love this location.

[klpurkett]

I especially like the first image... you can tell that tire has done its fair share of work.

[Shadowman]

Nice concept and compositions.

[IzzieK]

My vote goes to the third image...it is very interesting...

[Geoff F]

If you want honest feedback, Taylor, these don't really excite me.

#1 is a bit of rust coming through old paint and an old tired looking tyre. If the rust was a bit more rusty and textured it might have worked better.

#2 Hydraulic pipes; so what? And the foreground, bottom right corner, is totally out of focus. Fading background works fine but for me an image needs to start off being in focus.

The last one does hold out some promise of an interesting scene with those headlights looking like eyes on stalks. The solid wheels also look good. Maybe I'm thinking that I would have liked to see a fractionally wider scene, providing it didn't add too much distraction.

Your exposure is good on all these shots.

[TaylorM]

Hello Everyone,

I really appreciate the feedback I have received from everyone here! I am hoping that by shooting random subjects every now and then, I can develop a more creative eye for capturing what I really love, mountain landscapes. Just like artists develop studies in preparation for a final work of art, in this outing I focused on trying to create compositionally strong photographs using lines, colors, and texture.

Jim, I totally agree, the HDR people would love this location! I also felt the colors and textures were very unique.

Geoff, thank you for your specific and detailed feedback. I am especially glad to know you felt the exposure is good. Good exposure has been my main focus recently. I do have one question for you though. On the second shot you say you don’t like that the bottom right is out of focus. I deliberately shot this scene with a narrower depth of field to bring out the main subject, the hydraulic hoses. If you were to compose this shot, what would you have done differently to make the subject the main focus?

[Geoff F]

If the hoses were to be my main subject I would have rotated the camera so all of the hose plus the end connections were visible but as little as possible of anything else.

Somewhere around 45 degrees rotation would make the ram appear more horizontal but still give plenty of height to fill a 3 x 2 ratio image which would allow for greater depth of focus while avoiding too much foreground distraction.