I’m rather proud of this photo; from start to finish everything went almost exactly the way I wanted and the things that didn’t were well within the scope of “artistic liberty.” In this post I’ll walk through where this shot came from, what I was looking to create, and what I did in post-shoot.

       There is an annual tulip festival in a town just outside of Portland, Oregon. This particular farm was in full bloom by the time we got there; each row was a different color than the last and each as vibrant as its neighbor. Among the sprawling tulip fields there sat a handful of tractors. What I found especially great about them was the nearby signs encouraging folks to take pictures with them or sit on them (with a fair amount of CYA legal-ise, mind you).

       What I really wanted was a shot of this John Deer, with it’s once shiny green coat and iconic yellow wheels. This machine is undoubtedly older than me by at least a decade, but I found a certain kinship with it. It looked as though it had a long life of hard work and few days off - likely a similar life to the farmer for whom it was originally purchased.

       I was shooting with a Canon t6i with an 18-200mm all purpose lens from Tamron (really an exceptional piece of gear), so my framing was spot on. The depth of field could use a little work, but the in-focus field of tulips in front of this mighty machine certainly doesn’t detract from the artistic value of the shot. I center-framed the the tractor and then took two or three shots. The one that I took into the editing booth was the one that had the least number of people in it as the festival was quite lively.

       Editing this one was quite easy as the Tamron lens and Canon body produced a lush and vibrant starting image. The only thing that I had trouble with was a small sign advising visitors about parking on a road just beyond the tractor. Typically erasing this sign would take a while and include some masking and high zooms. However, with Lightroom’s new “generative erase” tool I was able to simply select the sign and it was removed. It made that one edit a breeze and there is little to no visual queue that the sign was ever there. Mind you and me the Content-Aware remove tool would also do this job, it just takes a bit more finesse.

       And that’s how this beautiful image was made! This is the first one in a long time where I felt like I’ve actually engaged in some kind of artistic endeavor. Something about bright colors and clear subjects tend to make my life a lot easier. Like birds and animals I feel like I was able to easily pick this John Deer out of the tulips and take it home on my SD card. I hope you all enjoyed the read, and I will talk to you more soon.

Best, -Ben