Lubricators - Turner Valley Gas Plant

[Manfred M]

These are the lubricators on natural gas compressor at the Turner Valley Gas Plant. Alberta, Canada. The plant operated a total of 10 compressors. The gas plant opened in 1914 and was shut down in 1985. It is a National Historic Site in Canada and was the first plant that produced natural gas in Canada.

[DanK]

I really like photos like this that create interesting images out of old machinery and buildings.

I think this photo poses a basic question of intent. If the purpose is to document the old equipment, I think it's quite good as is, although I would lift the shadows (because the most interesting material is in the dark bottom half). Also, I would have shot at a narrower aperture or stacked, because the springs (?) and other foreground materials are blurred.

On the other hand, if the intent is to create the visually most interesting image, I'd crop severely, removing much of the top, which is relatively uninteresting but draws the eye because its both brigher and higher contrast than the bottom two thirs. I'd also crop the relatively unteresting plumbing on the left and some of the base, which is too blurred to be interesting. I'd also take steps to enhance the tubes, such as lifting shadows and adding local contrast.

Here's a very rough example of what I imagined. I didn't do most of the editing I would do for real, in particular, dodging and burning. I just cropped, lifted the shadows, raised midtone contrast a tiny bit, and added local contrast with unsharp mask. It's obviously crude and incomplete, but it illustrates the approach.