First order of business when I get home: buy more CF cards.
This is the first all-day, full bore assignment that has been all digital. I have been acquiring skills and knowledge so that I knew I would come back with the goods. But there have been some interesting bumps.
In bright sunlight it’s pretty much impossible to see the LCD screen. If I take off my glasses and squint and put my nose to the camera, I can maybe make out the histogram and make sure I’m not blowing out highlights. Which is a big concern in bright sunlight. I’m underexposing about two thirds of a stop to keep them intact. In RAW format there is, however, plenty of latitude to spare. I am able to capture a range of brightness that would be impossible in transparency.
It is deeper than instinct in me to turn my back to the sun and change film with the camera shaded. I caught myself doing the same with a CF card and had to laugh.
As I’ve noted before, I shoot a lot more frames in digital than I would on film. A lot more. When I was an assistant I would sometimes work for photographers whose primary technique was a heavy finger on the motor drive. We’d go through mountains of film. In my own practice I had always been more parsimonious (read discerning), rarely exceeding 10 or 12 rolls in a heavy day of shooting. Well, that’s all in the past now, isn’t it. I captured close to 12 gigabytes of data in one day. That’s 35 rolls of film. Three rounds of dumping my cards (in two places) and formatting them for more.
It requires I stop all action for 20 minutes or more. More of my day is about attending to the equipment. I need to change from my photographer brain into my computer brain, then back. Some photographers bring along an assistant, whose job nowadays is to manage the digital data stream during the shoot. I elected to travel solo (I feel I can capture more moments with one less body in tow), and I wanted to immerse myself in what would be required. I need to get it, and learn how to make it more efficient.
An unexpected benefit is being able to show the client, and my subjects, what I’ve been up to and share the excitement. Yes, I used to do this with Polaroids, but that was a slow process that was needed only for setups that required lighting, and usually meant that an art director just had more opportunity to interfere with my work. But this after-the-fact display on the laptop keeps me, and my collaborators, excited. And I see where I want to revisit situations that I didn’t get exactly right. It is a feedback loop that didn’t exist before, and I’m learning how to incorporate it into my creative process.
This job, by the way, is my dream assignment. I am shooting the viewbook for Whitman College. It is almost pure photo-journalism in a commercial context. I have a raging extrovert with me who knows everyone on campus, and I pick up the extrovert part by osmosis (it’s not my native state), accosting strangers to pose for portraits. I bother students in mid-bite in the dining hall. I invade the men's lacrosse huddle. I find I haven't had anything to eat in awhile, and we’re about to take a break, and then I see something interesting I want to fold myself into, and the hunger is forgotten. After ten hours of this I collapse, happy and fulfilled.
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