This wheel of the thresher shown in Separating the Wheat from the Chaff called out to me because of the tonal contrast between its inner workings and outer structure. I shot for HDR using my 105mm macro lens on a tripod, making seven exposures at shutter speeds from 1/320 of a second to 4/5 of a second. Each exposure was at f/32 and ISO 200.

There was strong and rather harsh frontal lighting on the wheel, so one of the points of shooting for HDR was to subdue this harshness to avoid an overly washed-out look.

I processed the image in Nik HDR Efex Pro, starting with the custom preset that I explained in HDR is Technique, not Style, and also using some hand-HDR layering in Photoshop.

With an image that is essentially monochromatic even though there are some colors—as is the case here—I tend to “go with the flow” and explicitly present the final image in black & white. To do my monochromatic conversion, I used a number of Nik Silver Efex 2 presets along with an explicitly monochromatic HDR version created using Photoshop’s Merge to HDR Pro.

Related image: HDR Wringer.