Once you get over the dust – it’s great
Life – the open fields and a combine harvester
I wondered if the dust from the chaff thrown up behind a combine harvester would make attractive abstract pictures. Yeh – well I get these ideas.
I approached Tim, a former student, now chairman of the Norfolk National Farmers Union, to find out if I could take some shots of the people gathering the harvest on his family farm.
I can just about remember one or two old fashioned farmers gathering the harvest using horse power. More clearly I can remember people of my age, swathed in protective scarfs sitting on a Massey-Harris open combine harvester and living in a world of muck and dust as the harvest was cut and gathered.
Thankfully all this has changed – as I sat beside Patrick in the enclosed cab of a modern combine harvester listening to the BBC commentary on a football match as the field of wheat was being cut. Patrick, by the way was the driver – not that he needed to touch the steering wheel very often, that all seemed to be governed by two screens he could watch.
No, I didn’t sit there all the time. I ventured outside to get the shots I wanted and to fly the drone.
Drone flying was a bit of a problem though partly because of the dust, which tended to get in the works and partly because it was somewhat breezy and the drone didn’t like the gusts of wind. Drone flying was also curtailed because one field that looked very promising was next door to one of the local His Majesty’s Prisons – I could lose my licence for flying there and should the drone accidentally crash – knocking on the door saying “Please could I have my drone back!” might not have gone down too well.
I am sure that the best harvest pictures may be obtained shooting through the dust at sunset. Maybe next year we’ll discover a field running from east to west, where the harvester is travelling at dusk with the lights on and the sun setting behind it, but for now you’ll have to put up with what we managed to achieve.
My thanks to Tim, Patrick and all the tractor drivers who put up with me
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