"The Extractor"

For a short period, I spent much of my time shooting these old and weathered pump jacks near my home. I guess you could call it a photography exercise. During this time, I transitioned away from the use of grad filters to manual blending of multiple exposures (in this case, just two exposures were needed). I did this to solve the problem of the grad shadow darkening the top portion of the derricks. It was a bumpy road at first, making the blend invisible. In turn, however, it gave the images a natural look as opposed to an HDR look. This was a valuable time for me, refining the technical side of my photography. I plan to get out again and revisit this oil field, this time looking for better composition ideas. I found this unprocessed file and recently worked it up. Initially, I would spend as much as a couple of hours working up an image. This "lost" composition took about 20 minutes the other day to blend and process. The Larger view really opens up this landscape. Thanks for stopping by!!

Thanks for your time and your opinions!! Please consider the Larger preview.

Excellent comp and a truly beautiful sky! I have to say that I credit you with largely opening my eyes to the benefits of bracketing and manually blending exposures. In fact, I find that I do it more times than not nowadays. I haven't used the grads in a long, long time; and I am loving the results I am getting in my post-processing. This is a fine example of the benefits of this technique. One of these pump-jacks should find its way into our book, Amigo! Cheers! Chris

Thanks Chris. I worked this up to make some comparisons to the older versions that I struggled with in the beginning. The main thing I notice now is the quality of color. I find my images have richer color without an over-saturated look; I just have to keep my eye on undesirable color shifts at these twilight hours. It's easy for them to get overly green-blue in the shadows or in the distant mountains. Meanwhile, I like the magenta-black on the darker parts of this pump jack, I feel it accurately conveys the dusky lighting. I agree, a couple of these in the book and perhaps a few others from the agriculture or industry folders. I guess we can also pre-visualize some of our upcoming shoots to round out the subject matter. I would like to get a few more from the Tehachapi wind farms as well as the Jawbone Canyon area.

such a difference between the thumb and full view. Gorgeous!

you're right it doesn't look like HDR.but its really diffiult to take photos like this without using more than one exposure. great composition very good colors and tones. ireally like this.. regards

Thank you Michael and Eren. Eren, I think of HDR as a plugin, which would be a software such as Photomatix, although Photoshop also has Merge to HDR. Any of those can give you similar results with the right settings. I truly think, however, that manual blending is the way to go. It really is just an "In Computer Neutral Grad Filter" that follows the contours of the foreground subjects that rise above the horizon.

Stanning image.

Thanks Eugenio, I appreciate the kind response!