In every issue we intend to include a photographer's account of making an image. We will ask him or her why he/she made the choices he/she did—what alternatives were considered, and what constrained the range of choices. We'd like to include one or two other shots of the same scene, and learn why the featured image was preferred.

Shortly after crossing into Kentucky from West Virginia I saw an oil refinery. Large industrial structures are among my favorites subjects, so when I saw the X (the crisscross) of the materials-handling conveyors I was reminded of a photograph and a later oil painting by Charles Sheeler of a Ford plant near Detroit, taken in 1927. I carry a lot of those kinds of images around in my head—the product of looking closely at photography books for many years, I suppose. I parked on a narrow shoulder of the busy highway near the plant, and had limited room to place my tripod and set up my 4x5 camera. There was no question that the X was going to be a central element in the image I was about to make. At the time I was working in black-and-white, using Kodak T-Max100, a fairly slow film. I had just made a vertical shot when a security guard from the refinery drove up and asked me what I was doing; he probably thought I was an environmental activitist, but knew I was on a public highway and he had no authority to tell me to move on. He did tell me I was parked in a dangerous place. Shortly thereafter, two large oil trucks came out of the plant gate and buzzed me, coming much closer than necessary to my tripod, so I decided that I needed several more shots, this time a few horizontal ones. I determined to take my damn time at it, too. When a third truck passed even closer, I concluded that two shots were probably enough.

You can see by the shadows that the light was right overhead—for me the worst time of day for picture-taking. But I had to be at Fort Knox in a couple of hours, so could not just sit around.
                                                                                                          —FLG

No. 0 January 2006

The decision as to where to stand and what to point my camera at was easy—I wanted to be where I could get the most straight-on view of the crisscrossed conveyors. So the real question was how much of the rest of the facility did I want to include? I could move in a few yards or use a little longer lens (they don't make zoom lenses for view cameras) and narrow the view, or I could use a wide angle lens and take in more. I could not move back without getting hit by a car or truck. I decided to make one exposure (and a backup) with my normal lens, then exchange that lens for a little longer one that would move in tighter on the conveyors.
     The single power line was a distraction; several lines would have been fine—maybe even add something to the image—but a single one bothered me. So I moved a few feet, changed lenses and made the shot you see on the left.
     Is it better than the one above? That's a matter of taste. I like them both, but the power line still irritates me. Why not move in even tighter, as in the cropped image below? That's another possibility, but the black stack seemed a bit too prominent, perhaps because it is in the center of the image. I had to make large prints of both and stare at them a while before I was sure I'd made the right choice.