“This is the BIGGEST skidder in the world.”
John Deere Industrial acquired a Finnish company that made this huge logging equipment. (skidders drag felled trees out of the forests.) Deere wanted to feature it on the cover of their dealer magazine.
But they wanted a working scenario. Shooting nice photography of a skidder in the woods is pretty much impossible. You can’t control the lighting, foreground or background. Illustration was called for.
I remembered a National Geographic dinosaur illustration that showed a predator lurking in the shade of a grove of trees. That was my inspiration for applying rim lighting and dappled light to this modern behemoth. Adding a few spooked birds for scale and drama brought it to life.
