“Rustik Charma” from Chad Heggen

Worth County photographer Chad Heggen’s work is rooted in rural landscapes and the machines that shape them. Through high-dynamic-range (HDR) photography, Chad documents barns, fields, skies and weathered textures with heightened clarity — revealing details that often fade into the background of everyday life. HDR allows me to amplify light, contrast, and color in a way that reflects how these spaces feel rather than how they simply appear.

Alongside photography, Chad creates vibrant abstract interpretations of tractors — icons of labor, resilience, and continuity. By breaking these machines down into exaggerated forms and saturated colors, he moves them from tools to symbols. The tractor becomes both subject and metaphor: a bridge between tradition and imagination, function and expression.

Together, these bodies of work celebrate rural culture while re-envisioning it through a contemporary lens. Heggen is interested in honoring the grit, pride, and quiet beauty of agricultural life, while pushing its. visual language beyond nostalgia. My art exists where realism meets abstraction — where hard work, color, and memory collide.