Truckinatn and Experimatn

I don't seem to come across many opportunities to photograph trucks, but when I do, I try to take a photo. A photo friend has a group on Flickr called HTT, which is short for Happy Truck Thursday, but I haven't had anything to contribute for some time. The following truck, seen at Wheelers, gave me the opportunity. It's not a great photo by any means, but it is a truck, and most of the photos in the group are just that – trucks, and not often spectacular photos.

What timing that after photographing that truck, I had another opportunity the very next day. I looked out the bedroom window and saw a huge truck and cargo assemblage stopped on the road. What it was doing there is puzzling. I can't figure where it was going, and I think it may have actually taken a wrong turn and gone through town rather than around it. I hurried the get my camera, but the truck was soon on the move, so I missed the front end. Drat! 

I cropped mightily from the top and bottom of the original shot, down to, more or less, just the truck. I also soon saw it as a photo suited to b&w, so I converted it.

I then decided to try to remove some distractions: the cars, bush, and fence. I have neither super vision nor wonderful dexterity for such fine, detailed work, but I made the effort. It was going well, so after some time, I gave up and scrapped the effort. However, it played on my mind, and I tried again several days later. 

Here ↓ is my effort. If one doesn't examine the photo in close detail, I think it's a pass. Let me say, however, that when folk say, "Just Photoshop something away," it is not as easy as all that. It took me a many layers and fiddling about to get even this result. I could have gone a step further and removed the wire, and I may still do that before I post it on Flickr, later this week.

Since I was at it, I decided to go back to the Wheelers truck and also process it into monochrome. Hmm . . . very ordinary.

Then, I did one more thing. I decided to experiment with blending the two versions of the Wheelers truck into one image, using a graduated filter. Just messin about, for fun really.

My friend, Bob, often effectively mixes bw with colour in certain photos, especially if they might contain a vintage object such as this. I have also used this technique in the past but usually when blending past and present images as in the following images and not on a single image.