One of the things I've been wanting to try out is shooting a farm tractor at night. I have a number of ideas for shots that would work well for my calendars, none of which I've been able to try yet, but did come across an opportunity to test the lighting equipment with Lyle Johnson's nicely restored 706 down in Rushford, Minnesota.
A cloudy night meant the shot I had in mind wasn't possible, but Lyle had some Xmas lights in front of his place so I thought I could at least use the equipment I brought along to create a semi-cheesey Xmas shot. I unloaded three 1,000-watt Tungsten lights, a Honda generator, and about 60 feet of extension cords and set those up to light the machine. I did that at dusk, and then killed an hour in Lyle's shed drinking diet Mountain Dew and swapping stories (the most interesting of which was hearing about the Rushford flood, which came right to Lyle's back door and has left much of the town trashed and without flood insurance).
When we went back outside, the sun had been down for 30 minutes or so and the temperature had plummeted to well below zero, mostly because the wind was gusting at 20+ mph. The wind was knocking over stands, and one of the lights was blown out before we even had a chance to fire it up. Lyle brought out some iron bars to weight the stands, which solved the problem, and two lights provided plenty of light (to my surprise).
The shot that resulted is fun, but I'll do the next shot with lights that have barn doors so I can cut down on the light spilling around my subject (the machine). Also, this background is not ideal, as the tree is distracting and the snow was all beat to hell. With more controllable light and cleaner backgrounds, I can use this equipment to create some pretty interesting images.
Oh, and I also managed to nail a tractor pan-blur. I've been shooting them for fun when I do calendar shots, and they are really tricky because tractors move so slowly. You have to use a long shutter speed and pan the camera perfectly to keep the subject sharp. I hit the one below right on the money!
