Large Format Shoot

 I love large format, so when Daniel and Judy mentioned I should try the motion blur images with the large format, I was up for the challenge. I shot on the same film as last time, 160 ISO Kodak Professional, and bought a pack of 10 photos. Because motion blur is so extremely experimental, I have no idea whether the images have turned out nice or not. It’ll be the most frightening moment to get the photos back!

I shot the photos on the 26^th of January 2013 starting at about 10am. I shot the photos in Horsell Common. I tried out a bit of everything, different shutter speeds and apertures, quick and slow movement, different locations, lighting etc.

The first shot was taking in quite a messy part of the woodland, the birch and pine trees were scattered all around and it was quite dark. The main colours were dark brown and a copper brown. There were blue skies. I used the lightmeter and got a reading of 2 seconds and an aperture of 64. Since the field camera doesn’t have a shutter speed longer than 1 second I had to use bulb mode, my handy assistant helped out with the process. While holding down the shutter for 2 seconds, I’d move the front part of the camera (with the lens) up and down at a certain speed. For this particular images, I moved the camera in long quick movements. 

I chose the second location because it was very dark and dense. As you can see from the photo to the left, the image is very dark, and the main colour would be a very dark brown, as well as a bit of dark green on the bottom of the frame. I used a shutter speed of 8 seconds, so there will be a whole lot of movement in this photo.

Again, in quite a dense area, however for this photo I faced against the sun. This way, the main colour will be white, with dark straight lines (the trees) standing out. The three photos so far have had very different colours and settings, meaning that (hopefully) the images will be very different from one another.

The two images left and right are taken in exactly the same location, but have two different meter readings. This is because I loved the way the still photo looked through the camera and thus wanted to take a photo without the movement. The bottom light meter reading shows a shutter speed of 2 seconds and an aperture of 22, again very different from the other photos. This shot will mainly have medium browns and a bit of dark green. But what will make this photo stand out is the sunlight hitting the trucks and branches of the tree. It will create interesting shapes in the photo. 

Again, the two images to the left and right are taken in the same location but have different meter readings. One is a movement shot and the other is a straight shot. The main colour is this photo will be green, as there is a lot of shrubbery towards the bottom of the photo. The sun is still hitting the trees very nicely, which will hopefully create interesting shapes. The long exposure is 4 seconds at 32 and the still is ¼ seconds at 11.
I have never had the camera point this way, so the focus was incredibly interesting (blurry at the top, then in focus, blurry at the bottom).

One of the most popular photos that I showed in the tutorial was of the sky, no one could identify what it was. Therefore, I wanted to take another shot similar to that. Facing the large format camera up was quite difficult, and trying to view the image was even harder! The main colours in this photo will be blue and green, as the tops of the pine trees had this beautiful light green which was just hit by the sun, and the sky was a nice even blue.

Hopefully all the images have turned out nicely...