One-Minute Reads about Film Photography

Industrial equipment is an interesting art form!

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I was driving down a back country road over curving and lightly rolling hills, when I came around a curve to see this enormous, bright white pump jack. It was like a shining beacon in the middle of a field, and I was fortunate to have my trusty Mamiya 645Pro at hand.

What struck me was the contrast and just the grittiness of the machinery. I wanted to try to capture that in an artistic form and I decided on two things: 1) I had a roll of Delta 3200 and love the grain of that film shot at speed, and 2) I wanted that bright blue sky to be as dark as possible.

So I loaded up the film, and put a Circular Polarizer stacked with a Red 25 which comes to a five stop factor. The 3200 speed film was perfect for this, and was able to get an exposure of 125/sec at f5.6, in VERY bright sunlight.

I was particularly pleased with the Delta film tone in the shadows, keeping some nice, subtle separation between the sky and the black of the pump jack head.

• gregory gammon / www.vinylfye.com