Assignment 2

Managed to get out as planned to do some work towards Assignment 2. Wanted to build on some exploratory shots I had taken in early summer; the location I felt worked quite well but the shot themselves needed a little extra element-wise. I had decided to do some dusk shots to capture background city lighting and use long exposure o soften the overall effect.- Had been a bit wary of doing one particular shot, as it involved standing on an area of open ground at dusk to get  a shot with a tower block in the background, with the foreground lit by a mixture of fading ambient light and the yellow / orange lights from the nearby motorway junction. It is a bit of an odd area, completely bordered down one side by the M60, with Stretford and Urmston on the other side. The 'graffiti tag' occurrence is an just about any immovable object - usually a trigger to make me not 'totally trust' the area, and keep an eye over my shoulder.   Took bright torches and mad sure my whereabouts and estimated time of return were known as a precaution.

 I have an idea to try and keep some continuation from the 'Twilight' series I did in the advanced module to carry over into this module, hence the shots at dusk. The Twilight series was shot on digital SLR, but I want to push myself and use film as much as possible for this module. Reason for this are primarily because I like the look and 'feel' of film, and I want to technically stretch myself, working with medium and large-format cameras, utilising the maximum image quality, and the 'look' of the image gained by larger formats. I some of the shots I have in mind will make use of the movements available on large format cameras. Disadvantage to film shot is of course that I will have t wait to finish the film and send it off to be developed before I know how the shoot went.

Lesson learned:

• Arrive early for a dusk shot; focussing and framing in very low light is extremely difficult through an optical viewfinder (no 'liveview' on an RZ67 let alone my Sinar 5x4!).
• Get a head-torch - fiddling around with one hand on the camera an holding a torch in the other is very difficult.
• Will need to do some experimentation to see what the reciprocity failure is like with Ektar 100. I has an idea to take a digital camera to get a rough idea of what the exposure should be, but need to also take into account the RF factor.
• The weather is key to the look of the ambient light. Open skies will give a blue / purple backdrop (and more ambient light), overcast skies will reflect the orange city lights. Look forward to seeing what effect moonlight has in the mix.

Moving forward:

Head-torch is on order; nights are drawing-in so must get out of work at a reasonable time in the evening(which is rare these days) otherwise will only be able to go out to shoot at weekends for the next few moths, much slowing down progress with the module. Starting to get a clearer idea where this is all heading and a more definite idea of the shape and form of the major project is forming, though I need to concentrate also on Assignment 2 and the projects within that. Some of the work I have been doing is background and build-up for the major project, but must focus on Assignment 2 also, and use that to feed into the later assignments.