By sheer chance, I'd spotted a notice tied to the public footpath sign on Joan Royd Lane. "Tractor Rally" Nice one. At a reasonable time of day, the tractors would be making their way up Little Doubting Lane on Sunday 3rd October.
The obvious shot, which would be impossible to take, would be at the top of the lane with a line of tractors heading towards me. The lack of a 50ft ladder put paid to that idea. Positioning myself at the junction of JR Lane and LD Lane, would allow me to snap the tractors as they turned right onto the track.
Sunday morning and a couple of walks later. Time for the off.
Paid a visit to the egg farm, one dozen x-large eggs for the following week or so, then made my way to where I would hopefully come away with a few decent images.
After dismissing the idea of snapping them from the top of the lane, I made my way down the track. Carefully avoiding the dog poo that people couldn't be bothered to pick up, I arrived accident free at the junction.
Plenty of time for a natter with the marshals and working out exactly where to stand.
Snapped the tractors head on for a while, the sun being strong did cause problems with reflections though. The tractors were quite close together, so I decided to move to the right-hand side of the lane and change the angle I shot from.
Stayed there for a bit until I became aware of the size of the monster tractors. Time to switch to floor mode and emphasise how big these vehicles really are.
Really pleased with the outcome. I use the same technique when snapping runners, shooting low allows the runner to dominate the frame.
Why three different shots of each tractor? I just decided to experiment with a b&w image as well as a normal edit, plus a desaturated shot. Simples.
The weather played a massive part in the "success" of these photographs. The sun behind me and a wonderful mixture of skies. A cloudy grey day wouldn't have been half as good.
Click on the image below to see all the photographs from today.
Kommentare