Old machinery rusting away in a field has always held a strong attraction for me. EOS Rebel XSi, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f/1.4, 1/750 ISO 200

On the first morning of our Stein Family Gathering at a ’30’s haying festival in rural Alberta I woke early and started wandering around the fields. There was a lot of machinery from the era that was in use but there was also a long row of rusting hulks that had long ago finished their part in delivering food to our tables. I really liked the grainy texture of the metal in the links of the chain and depth of field that an aperture of 1.4 gave me made that area of texture stand out in the frame. I also liked the way that the angles of the machinery in the top right and bottom right converge in lines that draw your eye towards the chain and then the axle moving to the left pulls your eye out of the frame. I processed the original RAW colour image in NIK Silver Efex Pro. It helped to emphasize the grain structure in chain links and to deepen the shadows in the bottom right and the bottom right and top right. Silver Efex Pro produces B&W images like nothing I have ever seen.

-Russell Berg