Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Once she stopped rushing through life, she was amazed how much more life she had time for.” ― Unknown
Several years ago I was traveling in Mexico with a well-known travel writer and after watching me work for a while he said, “I’ve never seen anybody shoot as many pictures as you.” I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that the advent of digital photography initially turned me into a “shoot and scoot” photographer and then into a “spray and pray” shooter. But no more, because …
There are Always “Side Effects”
One of the side effects that I noticed about my recent interest in shooting film is that it has slowed down my photography. Using a more measured approach to image making has, for some reason, transferred to when I’m shooting with a digital camera. Nowadays, I seem to take the time to not only smell the roses but to photograph them as well.
When shooting with a film-based SLR or rangefinder camera I have to manually focus the lens and physically advance the film. My new (made in 1986) Contax 167MT has a built-in motor drive along with its optional P-5 battery pack that holds four AA batteries. I don’t have to advance the film with it but I have to manually focus the lenses and sometimes take time to use the built-in meter to determine exposure. Then and only then can/will I make an exposure.
How I Made this Photograph: I was cruising in a little boat in the Barra Vieja Lagoon near Acapulco, Mexico when I made this image, I had just finished lunch at Beto Godoy Restaurant, about which one reviewer said “Bad service and bad food. Took a boat trip into the lagoon. Okay, nothing special.” Having done the same exact things, I can only tell you that was not my experience and the food was delicious.
I made this image with a Canon EOS 5D Mark I and an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM lens at 200mm. The exposure was 1/320 sec at f/5.0 and ISO 200 with a minus two-thirds stop exposure compensation. Because of the contrasty lighting, when processing the JPEG image I applied both the Tonal Contrast and Pro Contrast filters from Color Efex to produce the image you see here.
It seems to me that there are a few advantages to shooting slower:
- You’ll catch surprises lurking in the background, such as people walking into your shot. This can be especially true for car show photography, where just the tiniest bit of patience will produce photographs that have much more interesting interactions and backgrounds.
- Better composition: I believe even taking a few milliseconds before clicking the shutter will produce better looking images, without having to resort to Photoshop cropping and cloning. As the late Leon Kennamer once told me “get it on the negative.” This approach to your photography can result in fewer but better images.
- Better Expressions when shooting portraits. As the cliché goes…”wait for it” then click the shutter.
Postscript: I’ve been getting lots of questions about my recent involvement with film photography even though not all of my experiences have been what you might call encouraging. It has been a learning curve, or as Mary recently told me, maybe it’s a re-learning experience that ,I think, will continue to improve my photography whether I’m shooting film or digital.
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