I quickly decided that my first near-death experience whilst doing an assignment just wasn’t worth it....so it was back to my old tried habits.
I had been fairly disappointed in many of the results from my first assignment. I’d stuck with the brief which i really enjoyed because i had to really think about the photographs as i took them. No longer was it 80% composition and i’d use the inbuilt camera gizmos to compensate for the rest; but now i was juggling manual expose , manual focussing and that i had to position myself exactly in the right spot to fill the 50mm frame as i wished.....it made me realise what it used to be like and how quickly new toys had replaced my once hard learnt skills......all of this meant though that as a glasses wearer i couldn’t manually focus as my eyes were thowing me off.....i had instead to estimate the distance and then adjust the distance meter accordingly - another useful exercise – albeit that many of the shots were just out of focus. Like the fisherman’s one that got away; they were obviously the best ones!
So, the second shoot in my first assignment and i decided i’d try the contact lenses for the first time in 18 months to cover off the first glitch.....blimey; it was like i was tripping. And that is what i almost did as i tried walk down the stairs. My new attempt didn’t last 5 minutes before i was back in front of the mirror once more and my glasses returned....! To the assignment. A elderly Turkish guy who runs a small, narrow shop selling sweets, cigarettes, socks, biscuits, household goods, hair gel and everything in between.....with no need for persuasion he let me move about the burrow he occupied. Not having the ability to communicate in many ways was an advantage photographically i feel. We communicated by sign language if required; but after a few minutes where he felt he had to pose for me; he seemed to quickly relax into himself and let me carry on – if he couldn’t speak to me, then he’d ignore me which was just fine. The problem with shooting in such a confined space was the 50mm restriction – that meant me squeezing into corners, and trying to get far away from him just to be able to give some sense of environment. The darker recesses provided shutter speed difficulties; but i ignored them as much as i could..... the strangest thing though is just dealing with doing nothing at all. Sitting doing nothing calmly doesn’t come naturally to me....
I had been fairly disappointed in many of the results from my first assignment. I’d stuck with the brief which i really enjoyed because i had to really think about the photographs as i took them. No longer was it 80% composition and i’d use the inbuilt camera gizmos to compensate for the rest; but now i was juggling manual expose , manual focussing and that i had to position myself exactly in the right spot to fill the 50mm frame as i wished.....it made me realise what it used to be like and how quickly new toys had replaced my once hard learnt skills......all of this meant though that as a glasses wearer i couldn’t manually focus as my eyes were thowing me off.....i had instead to estimate the distance and then adjust the distance meter accordingly - another useful exercise – albeit that many of the shots were just out of focus. Like the fisherman’s one that got away; they were obviously the best ones!
So, the second shoot in my first assignment and i decided i’d try the contact lenses for the first time in 18 months to cover off the first glitch.....blimey; it was like i was tripping. And that is what i almost did as i tried walk down the stairs. My new attempt didn’t last 5 minutes before i was back in front of the mirror once more and my glasses returned....! To the assignment. A elderly Turkish guy who runs a small, narrow shop selling sweets, cigarettes, socks, biscuits, household goods, hair gel and everything in between.....with no need for persuasion he let me move about the burrow he occupied. Not having the ability to communicate in many ways was an advantage photographically i feel. We communicated by sign language if required; but after a few minutes where he felt he had to pose for me; he seemed to quickly relax into himself and let me carry on – if he couldn’t speak to me, then he’d ignore me which was just fine. The problem with shooting in such a confined space was the 50mm restriction – that meant me squeezing into corners, and trying to get far away from him just to be able to give some sense of environment. The darker recesses provided shutter speed difficulties; but i ignored them as much as i could..... the strangest thing though is just dealing with doing nothing at all. Sitting doing nothing calmly doesn’t come naturally to me....
.jpg)
1 comment:
Blimey yes, manual everything plus the fact that I'm as blind as a bat as well. But despite it all it's a joy to be really thinking about the technical stuff and how it relates to the subject matter. Nice work Jono. I'll be blogging my second assignment, plus catching up with my brush with the law whilst filming the Jewish commemoration events here on Sunday as soon as I get more than 10 minutes to do so.
Post a Comment