Going for the shot

The guy came up beside me, and his accent was a little thick.
A Canadian and he stammered a bit, which made it even more difficult to understand him amid all the chugs and pops of the old engines around us.
I had been trying to take a picture of an old engine that was attracting a lot of attention at the 45th Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Association Show at the Jay  County Fairgrounds.
The engine was rare enough that it was drawing a crowd, and it was hard to get a good photo under the circumstances.
“Go on up and get inside,” he said, though it took me at least two more repetitions for me to understand what he was talking about.
Now, to understand this situation, you have to have wandered through the engine show grounds, particularly the area near the association’s huge Fairbanks-Morse engine and the dozens of oil field engines that have been lovingly restored.
Most of the oil field engines are remarkably low in horsepower and date from about 1900, but their flywheels are dramatic and enormous, running about five feet in diameter.
That was the size of the engine I was trying to get a picture of. But there was one little catch: It was inside a trailer.
The owner — the guy from Ontario — told me it was making its first trip to Jay County because it’s so rare it can’t be properly insured for the ride down Interstate 69 from Port Huron. One thing goes wrong in traffic, and an engine that is literally priceless is lost.
That’s why it was transported in its own trailer and was only run in specific conditions.
Just what those conditions are remains a bit of a mystery. The owner told me the engine — built to run on coal gas — was running on propane. Others insisted it was running on hydrogen.
All I knew was that it was running, it was beautiful, and it was drawing a crowd that would make a good picture for Saturday’s edition of the daily.
But would I like to get inside the trailer with it?
“Go ahead,” the owner said. And it was clear he was bestowing a privilege on me, so I immediately accepted and stepped up and in.
There, I immediately wondered if I had lost my mind.
Imagine being in a large walk-in closet with a Bengal tiger or maybe a white rhino and you’ll have a handle on things.
An incredible amount of energy was churning away in a frenzy in a tight location, and I was the person on earth with the least control over the situation. The engine — an antique well over a hundred years old — was in control. I was not.
But I set to work.
Raising the camera to my eye, I set the focus, worried about depth of field and all that, prepared to trip the shutter, and the engine — with a bit of a mind of its own — hopped a bit, lifting the entire trailer — and me — off our footing.
Immediately, I had images of the camera swinging into the five-foot flywheel. Then I had images of my own clumsiness following suit.
It took more than a second to regain my footing.
The owner had been nice enough to point out a place on the base of the engine where, cast in iron, it said, “Feet Off.”
“Don’t put your feet there,” he said, helpfully.
Thanks, I thought, that much I had already figured out.
In the end, the picture was good. I escaped without injury. Our workman’s compensation premiums were not affected.
And I learned an important lesson: Never get into a small trailer with a big engine in motion.[[In-content Ad]]