Point of Greatest Potential

Some years ago I heard Dewitt Jones, a former National Geographic photographer say something that proved to become a life altering moment for me as a photographer. He simply said, "...be willing to place yourself at that point of greatest potential..." What he meant was, as a photographer in order to capture those iconic moments, you must be willing to do what you must do to place yourself in the best possible position to capture the most meaningful moments of light. We do not always know when those iconic moments will occur. We can only make a guess and see what happens, like what happened during this seasons wheat harvest.

Not a cloud broke the pale blue hue of the June sky. For a photographer, not so good. The sky needs clouds to add texture and interest. I kept hoping some would develop come sundown to create one of those legendary Kentucky sunsets, but as luck would have it what greated me was a bright, pale, flat pallet.

I had connected once again with my farmer friends James and Mark to photograph the wheat harvest. The idea was to shoot late in the day and into the early evening hoping to frame against the sunset the giant mechanical wonder they used to harvest the wheat. It was a large field and as the monster combine growled across the field clouds of dust and chaff filled the space behind it. As the sun settled behind the tree line I tried to make something happened, but there just wasn't any texture to the sky, just a bright glow that made it difficult to capture anything that looked interesting. Did manage to catch a few interesting shots with their running lights on, but what I wanted most just did not happen.

I have learned over the years that sometimes you need to turn around and look the other direction, just to see what is behind you. Doing so will often reveal an entirely new perspective. As luck would have it, from instinct I did turn around for a moment and noticed that a magnificent full moon was about to drift clear of the horizon. It was the first day of summer, and as I discovered later, this was to be the last full moon in our lifetime to occur on this day. No sunset worth capturing, so I adapted and began shooting in the other direction and concentrated on framing their operation against this amazing natural moment. It proved more difficult than I expected.

First of all I knew if I exposed for the combine and their lights, the moon would become a bright spot in the sky showing no texture at all, but if I exposed for the moon, the combine and fields would turn into a dark mass indistinguishable from the background. What I had to do was take two shots. The first was to capture the working equipment as it passed in front of the moon while it hovered low in the sky. The second was to expose for the moon. This second moon exposure was then cut and superimposed over the blown out moon from the first shot. Adding a bit of guasian blur to just the moon helped to blend it more evenly into the dark blue of the evening sky. Simple enough one might think, but it turned out to be an iconic photograph that could only occur on this first day of summer where the harvest coincided with the full moon.

Being there at that moment meant I was able to capture something that will not happen again in my lifetime.