One Down, Seventeen To Go

So the first seven week session is completed. I came out on top with room to spare. Literally. I achieved higher than a 4.0, but they can only give a 4.0, so I am listed as a 4.0. I inquired about "roll over GPA points" but my instructor laughed. I don't see why.

On top of that, the instructor requested six black and white prints from the class for his personal collection. Four of them were mine. So, basically, everything that I printed for final five I no longer have. Sorry family. I will reprint them with the same meticulous attention to detail that I originally printed them. After all, they are part of my portfolio as well.

So let us discuss final five for a moment. Final Five consists of four black and white prints and two 4 x 5 color transparencies. (Five "boards", six images, as the 4 x 5 images are mounted on one board.)

Image 1

This image I used as part of my "Shape, Line, and Texture" assignment. It was an image that my instructor liked from the contact sheet. It could easily be used for "shape" though I think of it more as "texture." It is an abstracted image of a stucco wall detail from a resort in Palm Springs. In the abstraction it appears as a square, a quarter circle, and triangles made from the early morning shadows in bright sunlight. The "texture" comes from the textural lighting on the stucco, which makes each grain in the wall stand out. The depth of field on this was as large as I could make it to accentuate the sharpness of the wall. (Have you ever run your hand over stucco? Sharp.) This image received an A+.

Image 2

This image I originally shot for "Architectural Detail." I really liked the tonal range and detail in the initial image, but there was one distracting element in the middle of the image that I did not see when taking the shot. It could have been avoided, so, after I turned in the original and passed the assignment, I went back to that same place and reshot the scene of decaying and weathered arches holding up the veranda cover of the Old Mission of Santa Barbara. The composition the second time was better not only because the distraction was gone, but because I included part of the adjacent wall and a window of the mission itself. So, instead of leading lines that lead you off of one side of the page, there are now leading lines on the opposite side that draw you back in to the image, and around and around you go. This image received an A.

Now here is where I began to push the limits, both my own and that of reason.

Image 3

This image was not turned in for any assignment. It was shot on a miscellaneous roll that had no real purpose other than my OCD. (I have a two reel developing tank, and I cannot develop only one roll. So, I was developing a reshoot of "Architectural Detail" and I shot this roll as well.) It is hard to explain. It is a shot of a white, stucco wall barricading the stairwell of a parking structure. It is nearly impossible to describe other than that it, too, is an abstracted architectural detail. More to the point, it is a white wall. For those of you who have ever taken a picture of a snowy scene or white sand and it comes out way over-exposed, that is because your camera meter cannot read a white scene correctly. Which means that I had to put my education to use to make this image. I had to think about the white wall, think about the stop differences, think about how the meter was reading it and think about how I wanted to read it. And I did. And it showed. This image received an A+.

Image 4

This image I shot at the same time as the first image, during my cousins wedding in Palm Springs and with the intention of using it for "Shape, Line, and Texture." It was interesting, but on the contact sheet it didn't look as interesting as the previously mentioned image, so I didn't print it. When I went back to the darkroom to print Final Five, I looked at that contact sheet again and I saw that image and tried to remember what it was. It looked like stairs. Typical marble stairs from an interesting angle. The problem was I didn't remember any marble stairs at the resort. There was, however, a marble fountain made in the shape of stairs with perfectly balanced water trickling down each of the sides. This was intriguing of its own merit, even if it didn't work for Final Five, so I printed it. Again, this image is hard to explain, because once the image was enlarged you could feel the water rolling off of the stone. The tiny vibrations in the pools were jagged and crisp, providing an intricate crystallized view of the marble beneath. In the words of my instructor "It is really fun to find the water in the image." This image received an A.

Image 5

This image is the same as Image 2, but it was done with the 4 x 5 camera and on color transparency film. I knew that I wanted to get this image and I waited two weeks for the sun to be right in the morning. On the day that I woke up to find the sun streaming through my windows instead of the characteristic diffuse morning haze, I threw on some clothes and was out the door. I got the shot, and the shot got an A+.

Image 6

Yes. Now we get to the meat. This one, however, has a back story.

The day before Final Five was due, I was printing feverishly, the same as all of my classmates, to get the four perfect images that I wanted to present in class. Lucky for us, our instructor's office hours coincided with our printing time and he was at the same lab as us, so I showed him my transparencies to get his opinion. He saw Image 5 and was stunned. He pretty much told me right there that it was an A+. He then looked at all of my other transparencies and told me that he didn't see anything else that I had that was as good as Image 5.

"You can't hold me as the curve to my own work!" I exclaimed, a little terrified that he was going to fail one of my transparencies.

"I have to." He replied with a devious smile. "I want to see something as good as that." He pointed to Image 5.

"Okay." I studied his features to try and determine what exactly he was looking for and how I was going to get it in the next twenty four hours. "Any ideas?"

He thought about it for a moment and then nodded, explaining that there was a beautiful church outside of Santa Barbara that he had never been to and wasn't quite sure where it was, but that it would be an excellent addition to my collection. He suggested that I scout it out soon and decide when the best time to return would be.

"Fine, but if I am exhausted with huge black circles under my eyes tomorrow, it is your fault."

"If that happens," he replied, "then I will know that you are finally working as hard as you should be."

This sentiment, though I think meant to be a jibe, stayed with me. I was in the darkroom for six hours solid to print my final five. I then proceeded to the mounting room and mounted my three black and white prints that were new, and mounted the required Final Five tag to the back of all four black and whites. Then I went to Samy's (local camera Eden) and bought more 4 x 5 film. I then went home, researched the mysterious church with very little information, and found what I was looking for. It was sunset by now, so I raced to the church in the hopes of getting some warm sunset lighting and being done with the print. To my horror, the lighting was the opposite of what I needed. Meaning that it was not sunset light that would make the perfect image, but sunrise. I meandered home and tried to go to sleep early, but to no avail. All night I sat looking at the ceiling and thinking Do you want to be a professional photographer?

That was our instructor's answer to everything. When someone would ask, "Do we really need to buy the expensive lupe, or is the cheap one okay?" He would respond "Do you want to be a professional photographer?"

"Do you think I should reshoot this assignment or go on to the next one?"
"Do you want to be a professional photographer?"
"I am so tired I think I am going to call it quits for the day."
"Do you want to be a professional photographer?"
"Would you spend the money to push this transparency, or do you think the color is okay?"
"Do you want to be a professional photographer?"

And so on and so forth.

Remarkable how much affect it had on me. Once 4:30 rolled around, I knew that I had to go. Because I do want to be a professional photographer. So I was at the church at 5:00a.m. with my camera set up waiting for the sunrise to poke through the fog. Which it didn't. The sun couldn't penetrate this morning's fog because it was fiercely thick and maliciously thorough.

Okay, professional photographer, I thought to myself, what are you going to do now?

Make the image. Make the best possible image that you can in the circumstances. So I reevaluated my image. It was no longer going to be warm, orange light on the white surface of the church complimenting the blue tile roof and dome. Orange was not coming this morning. So what did I have? Blue. I had blue light on a white wall which made a blue wall with a blue roof and a blue hazy sky. Okay, then. Monochromatic it is. So I took a meter reading. Even with my lens all the way open, the meter reading was 8 seconds. 8 SECONDS!! This introduced a new problem. A problem that I have not dealt with. A problem that I have only begun to understand. A problem called reciprocity failure. Whenever you take a shot at a shutter speed of longer than one second or shorter than 1/1000th of a second, you lose the linear relationship of light intensity and time. Logical, physical criteria no longer apply. And I didn't have a chart with me, so I had to guess. I shot the Polaroid at 20 seconds and it looked perfect. So I shot the first two transparencies at 20 seconds. What I didn't realize is that as I worked, the light, though not changing color, was more bright. So the next meter reading that I took said 1 second. So I determined that my reciprocity experiments were probably for naught, so I set everything up, took the meter reading, and immediately changed the settings to shoot the scene. I did this another four times, and each time the reading was different. I then dropped the film off at Samy's, and went home to sleep for two hours. Then I got up, showered, went back to Samy's to get the images, drove to class and chose the best one, mounted it to the already cut board, and turned it in.

When my instructor saw it, his eyes lit up. "You actually shot it!"

I was a little surprised that he thought I wouldn't.

The image was another A.