I love this time of year in New Hampshire. We are moving out of the long winter months and into spring. With spring comes maple sugaring season. Technology is changing how collecting sap is performed. Hoses connecting multiple trees and draining into a larger basin has taken the place of traditional buckets hanging off trees.
My goal this spring was to get a picture of the buckets. While on a site walk at a surveying seminar, I saw the buckets scattered around the property. During our lunch break, I decided to take some pictures. I had to be cautious with the noon time sun. I like the old fashion plain silver buckets and found one near a brook. The brook added a nice touch to the background. The red bucket with blue top added an extra splash of color.
I then found a tractor and loved the character it added to the photo. I shot a sap bucket with the tractor in the background using two techniques. The first was to blur the tractor and concentrate the focus on the bucket, then focus more on the tractor. I like the blurred tractor best, which do you prefer?
A Nikon D90 with Quantaray 70-200 mm lens was used on all 4 photos. For the silver bucket, a focal length of 112 mm taken at a 1/500 second exposure was used with an F stop of 4.2. The ISO was set to 400.
For the red bucket, a focal length of 300 mm taken at 1/640 second exposure was used with an F stop of 5.6. The ISO was set to 400.
For the blurred tractor, a focal length of 122 mm taken at 1/3200 second exposure was used with an F stop of 4.5. The ISO was set to 800.
For the focused tractor, a focal length of 122 mm taken at 1/50 second exposure was used with an F stop of 25. The ISO was set to 280.
All four shots were taken between noon and 1:00 pm.
Tags: Farm, Maple Surgaring, Sap Bucket, Tractor
Filed Under: Landscape Nature
Traci Bisson
April 6th, 2011
I like them all, but I think my favorite is the bucket with the blurred tractor. The unblurred tractor competes too much with the bucket. I also like your idea of cropping the photo so not as much of the tractor shows, and the bucket is more central in the photo.
Roxanne Canepa
April 6th, 2011
FOR SURE the blurred john deere…:) Focusing on thebucket~I love it!
I like this game! 
Edwardo Harsha
April 6th, 2011
I think this blog is really great. I’m glad that I found a place to get such good information. Keep up the good work!
Amy
April 6th, 2011
I like two equally… the bucket and blurred tractor as well as the bucket with the brook
Nice work! What are your rates… I may need a photographer for a new client!