Bigdiggertastic

[unclerichy]

I drive past these on my way to work every morning and have fancied taking a shot of them for a while now. They're at the Orgreave reclamation site, made mildly famous during the miners strike of 1980-something.

Previous attempts (hand held on a cloudy day en-route to work so not much time) were lackluster at best. This time I expended some effort and produced a set of bracketed exposures with the intention of either using the best of the bunch or producing an HDR. In the end I liked the HDR the best.

http://gallery.hunter13.com/albums/random/diggers_001.sized.jpg

Camera: Nikon D50 - Lens: 55-200mm F/4.5-5.6 - Length: 100mm - Shutter: 1/2000 - HDR: 2 stops - Aperture: F/4.8

Larger version here (http://gallery.hunter13.com/albums/random/diggers_001.jpg)

[dod]

Did you leave in the fence wire deliberately? I find it really distracting. I'd also have liked something to show the scale of just how big these things are.

[RobertP]

Agree about the scale. The ladder on the nearest one gives a clue that they are huge but it is not enough of a size cue.

Worth another go I'd say. The HDR has got a lot of detail you would have lost otherwise. There is something strange about it that HDR always does but it is quite well done :)

[unclerichy]

Thanks for the feedback :thumbs: . The wire is semi-deliberate as half an hour of image manipulation later and it was a choice of barbed wire or a barbed-wire shaped blue patch ;) I removed a few stray twigs successfully but the wire eluded me.

I agree about the scale though they're parked at the top of a large hill with nothing else around them. I could have got a portacabin in and maybe a car but with it would have come the gates, road and extra trees. Taking the photo from the right-hand side (if you treat this viewpoint as the left) may yield more opportunity but could be tricky without wandering on to the site.

I'll give the barbed wire another go though.