I went to Galiano this past weekend. I didn’t get any work done, except for the type of work that doesn’t feel ‘work’—which is this project! It was a beautiful sunny weekend and I was able to set up my tripod in a green space and try out some portraits.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but none of the featured photos on this blog were taken during this free inquiry exploration. I’ve mentioned before how film photography is an inherently imprecise art because of the greater number of variables that are under human control. Not only is it imprecise, it is also inherently non-instant. I’ll describe my process this weekend in this post, but we’ll all have to wait a couple more weeks to find out how it actually turned out.
This is the feature of my camera that I experimented with this weekend. That knob delays the opening of the shutter. Notice how when the shutter button was depressed while the knob was engaged, the aperture ring came into place and then, after the delay, the shutter snapped open and closed behind the aperture ring visible through the lens.
I took some photos of my weekend warriors. Then I used this feature to time my shots, allowing me to jump into my own film photos. Now we could just, like, take a selfie, but that’s boring compared to this! I will experiment with a head shot as well before this roll is done using this same feature.
The featured photo on this post is exactly what I took with my film camera, only taken with my phone. I used my tripod with the phone attachment (see first picture). I took the shot with my film camera and since it is not instant, I thought I’d replace the Nikon with my iPhone using the tripod attachment and take the same shot. The attachment came with a cool Bluetooth remote so I took this photo while walking away by just clicking the button. Are you looking forward to comparing the results? How do you think the composition will differ between the feature photo taken on my iPhone and the ones taken with my Nikon EM using the self-timer?
Hey Kevin! I am super excited to see the final product of the photos which you have been taking. I recently went to Galiano and i thought it was such a beautiful place. Thank you for including a video on how to set a timer as well, as I find it much easier to understand when I am being shown rather than just reading about it. I am looking forward to the comparison for sure! Thank you for the post and I hope you have a good day!
I’m glad that you’re having fun with this project and that working on it doesn’t feel like “work!” I’m glad you included the video about how you used the shutter delay to “jump into the photo,” it’s nice to see what you’re actually doing with the camers. And I like that you posted the equivalent picture of what you took on your phone, that will be really neat to compare wth the film photograph once they are developed. I wonder if you could answer your own question – how do you think the composition will differ between the two versions?