Assignment 3: Photo-Taking Process

My Photography Studio

Welcome to my setup. I rented the Nikon FM10 film camera from the university, and unfortunately I timed my photoshoot poorly so that I could not rent a tripod. I improvised, though, as I put that long pinhole camera to use once again. I taped it to one of my balcony chairs and with it I was able to get some quality exposures.

My outdoor still-life scene consisted of a few of my roommate's various knick-knacks, one of my plants, coffee mug, binder, and my 18% grey card to top it all off.

On a chair just out of frame, to the left, I set up a lamp so that the scene had enough light to keep the shutter speeds relatively low.

A Latitude of Exposures

I found it extremely satisfying to hold a roll of film up to the light after developing it, and see all the negatives lined up. Especially this one, since it ranges from 5 stops under the correct exposure to 5 stops over (11 shots total).

Contact Sheets

There's something so visually appealing to me about seeing all of the exposures from a roll of film arranged neatly, all in their positive forms. The grease pencil was very helpful in selecting shots for my final prints so that I could easily reference them.In the top contact sheet, the first photo and a half were taken to to get the film to its exposure labelled "1". Then you'll see the correct exposure for my still-life shot along with the range of exposures for that scene (same aperture for all). These photos were for the exposure latitude portion of the assignment.The following shots utilize different depths of field, but I chose a scene with too much contrast, and I was too close to my subject to display a proper range of depth of field throughout the exposures. I tried to fix the contrast by dodging and burning the prints (which you'll see in the next post). Because of these factors, David suggested that I take some more shots of a better subject, and I am glad that I did so.In the bottom contact sheet, you will see the photos I used for my final prints of the depth-of-field portion of the assignment. With less contrasting tones in this scene, I did not have to do any dodging. I did, however, end up burning the right side in the final prints so that I could differentiate that section of each photo with its border. I also decreased the distance between my main subject and other elements of the photo so that I could better showcase changes in depth of field.