The Machine Age

Like Watching Paint Dry

It all started with Bakersfield and pumpjacks… a fascination or obsession with the way machines move through and interact with their natural environment, the way oilfield pumpjacks seem eternally stuck moving in place, the mixture of grace and bumbling jerkiness, the way trains in the desert so often seem almost a natural part of the desert world (at least compared to cars and trucks).

  • Pumpjack

    Pumpjack, a video by Hamish Reid.

    Pumpjacks! (Or pump jacks, depending…). Round Mountain Road, Tupman Road, Highway 33, 7th Standard Road. California, October / November 2009.

    One of my all-time favourite videos. The original Machine Age video, and still by far the most popular of my videos (more than 350,000 views on YouTube). Done with a cheap old 1440i Sony DV prosumer tape unit (and a bit of trespassing — run-and-gun’s difficult when you’re using a huge heavy tripod and you’re parked on the non-existent shoulders of roads that have heavy trucks thundering down them) back in the Paleolithic era in the greater Bakersfield (California) area, it’s definitely one of my fave videos… and it’s definitely also showing its age (2009!). People sometimes complain that the soundtrack I cobbled together isn’t synced or that it’s monotonous, but hey, that’s kind of the point, right?

    I’d love to redo both this and Drive-By: Oilfield again with better gear now, but they’re much more savvy about oilfield security nowadays, and I’d never be allowed.

    Go to video page…: Pumpjack

  • Pacific Champ

    Pacific Champ, video by Hamish Reid, soundtrack by Handsome Poets (Duffy / Ward, Oakland CA).

    MV Pacific Champ departs The Port of Oakland’s Schnitzer Steel to a soundtrack by Oakland’s Handsome Poets (© Duffy / Ward, by permission).

    Go to video page…: Pacific Champ

  • Drive-By: Oilfield

    Drive-By: Oilfield, video by Hamish Reid, soundtrack by Stephen M Duffy.

    California, September / October 2011: Round Mountain Road, China Grade Loop, State Route 33, 7th Standard Road, Lost Hills Road.

    An oilfield video done in the greater Bakersfield region, especially around State Highway 33 (probably my favourite California highway — I drive it a lot instead of taking Interstate 5 through The Valley). A couple of years after doing my Pumpjack video, I wanted to show people how surreal and weird the sprawling oilfields off either side of Highway 33 and nearby places down towards McKittrick and Taft are. So I did my Drive-By thing and hung a cheap Nikon DSLR (720p!) off the side window of my Subaru, and drove very slowly along the oilfield highways and roads when there was a suitable break in the traffic (which might take ten minutes to happen). No, I didn’t slow any part of this video down — it’s all been done at 30fps on that cheap DSLR’s video (and it really shows). As with Pumpjack, I’d love to redo this with modern 4K (or better) gear, better stabilization and exposure control, and knowing what I do about video work now (I knew nothing about how to do this sort of thing back then), but security is tighter nowadays, and the traffic seems a lot heavier. Plus I’m lazy. Maybe one day…

    Soundtrack by Oakland’s Stephen M. Duffy.

    Go to video page…: Drive-By: Oilfield

  • Drive-By: Port

    Drive-By: Port, video by Hamish Reid, soundtrack by Stephen M. Duffy.

    The Port of Oakland, California, 2010-2012, as seen from a (very) slow-moving car with a DSLR hanging off the side windows…

    I used to haunt the Port of Oakland. The container cranes and trains and trucks and the containers themselves stacked up everywhere just cried out to be videoed, so — as with Drive-By: Oilfield — I did the Drive-By Thing and drove very slowly through the Port whenever I could squeeze between the trucks. I got enough (shaky 720p) footage part-time over a year or so to be able to combine it with a nicely compelling soundtrack from Oakland musician Stephen M. Duffy and this is the result. As with the oilfield videos, I’d love to redo this with better gear, but Port security is much better nowadays and it just isn’t going to happen…

    Go to video page…: Drive-By: Port

  • Up And Down: North Berkeley BART Station

    Up And Down: North Berkeley BART Station, a video by Hamish Reid.

    2017: the daily experience of passing through North Berkeley BART station, captured on an iPhone.

    I took San Francisco Bay Area’s BART to work every day for a couple of decades (I still use it semi-regularly). The geometries, the colors, the movements, the crowding, the noise… it could be annoying and overwhelming, or intriguing and mesmerizing, and sometimes even relaxing (I’m like that), but it was always mechanical. So I used my iPhone over several months to furtively capture shaky little clips of the experience of going through a single station — North Berkeley — and recorded a bunch of found sounds in the station for the soundtrack as well. And yes, it was difficult finding times when the place wasn’t crowded — some of this was done at 6am.

    Go to video page…: Up And Down: North Berkeley BART Station

  • One Train: V

    One Train: V, a video by Hamish Reid.

    Just a silent video of a long train moving through the Mojave Desert’s Afton Canyon late one afternoon, right? Just another Desert Trains and The Machine Age video, but I like the subdued light with this one.

    Go to video page…: One Train: V

  • Unnatural Landscapes 3: Oilfield

    Unnatural Landscapes 3: Oilfield — a video by Hamish Reid.

    Number three in the Unnatural Landscapes series, and probably my favourite: an unusually fixed (but hypnotic) view of the Kern River oilfields from the bluffs overlooking the Kern River in Bakersfield from footage taken in 2024. I’ve struggled to get a video version of this sight (and site) for decades (I have some good still photography shots of it, though); I think I finally got it close to what I want with this one. A large part of why I think the clip works is the soundtrack by my friend Garry Manley (again!) in Sydney, which seems to echo in sound the shimmering visuals — this video wouldn’t work nearly as well without that soundtrack.

    Go to video page…: Unnatural Landscapes 3: Oilfield