1927 ‘Invincible’ Excavator

Solarizing

In the spring of 2006, I went out to a friend’s gravel pit in Michigan searching for Morel mushrooms to shoot. I didn’t find any, but did come across this 1927 INVINCIBLE excavator way in the back.  The sun was setting and I decided to take some flash filled pics with the sun setting behind.

I really liked the boom, back corner, foreground, & sky

The back and side have better color, but the sky and other elements are more washed out.

I was intrigued with the subject and returned the next day. Decided to experiment and I ‘bracketed’ some shots of the excavator using the ‘solarize’ mode on my Sony camera.  The solarization gave more of a surreal and abstract feeling to the spring day.

I also used a polarizing filter which added a pronounced gradient to the sky.

One capture had most of the elements I was trying to capture: the boom looked good; I liked the sky and the foreground, and the back corner of the excavator had nice color, however, there was a big dark area right in the middle.

In another shot, the back was better lit, and there was nice color on the side of the excavator, but the sky was more washed out and the foreground was less dynamic. So I made a layer out of the parts that I did like and added them to the best of the images.

I then blended the layers until they looked natural together. Combining the best of both exposures created an image with greater ‘dynamic range’.

Combined Image