It wasn’t premeditated. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to drive around with a camera in my hand. I was just stuck in traffic one day, heading for a shoot with my camera bag right next to me on the passenger seat. While waiting at a red light I took out my camera out of pure boredom – intending to snap a pic of the garbage truck in front of me – when traffic began moving again. Instead of doing the right (and safe) thing, I started firing away left and right.

When I got home I was surprised at some of the shots I had taken: there was an immediacy and a randomness to the process that had yielded quite unexpected results. For one, the mere act of driving meant I hadn’t seen everything in the frame while shooting. There’s the fact that the vehicle itself was… well… moving, with all the technical angles it implies regarding shutter speed and motion blur. And the point of view was new: how often do you get to shoot in the middle of a busy street? I was hooked.

There are several “intellectual” layers to this too: voyeurism, confinement, the hit and run nature of disappearing as soon as a picture is taken. And there’s the frame of the windshield and windows often giving a fishbowl aspect to the scenes. That’s a disconnection that I find appealing in a strange, twisted way. This is point and shoot taken to extremes.

I’ve done it a few times now and I think I have a series bubbling in the back of my mind. Not sure what form it’ll take.

I just need to watch out for tickets…

Full gallery here

A year ago today I was sitting in front of my television, watching history being made. A lot has changed since then and looking back,  it’s hard not to feel a tinge of sadness. Change is hard apparently.

To commemorate this day, I’m reposting through my plasma screen | a moment in history. It now all seems so very far away…

Backstory (from last year):

Mise en abime.
I wanted to be in Washington. Badly. But an expired passport and the need to oversee the end of a contract kept me at home. So I decided to use my tv as a window, a privileged vantage point. I used the 70-300mm lens I would’ve used if I’d been on location. I set ground rules for myself – no PVR, everything had to be shot live as if I was there. I used the HD feed from ABC News and got to work, reframing as I would on the street, using the tv screen as my outside world and grabbing portions of it with my lens. I made it a point to stay zoomed in to the picture, moving around as much as possible, essentially shooting inside the tv in hopes to bypass the cameraman’s original frame. The only exception to these rules is the first picture in the set: a self-portrait taken before the ceremonies began.

This is obviousky an odd point of view. It’s a camera within a camera. An eye within an eye. And while it is a poor substitute to actually being there, it’s given me the strange sense of somehow being a part of history.

I’ve said it before: Zack Arias’s blog is a must-read for me. I love his pictures and I love how much he shares with the community. This week he posted a series he shot with the band Living Things where he used the Multiple Exposure mode on his D3 which also happens to be available on my D300 :-)…

It’s the kind of thing that can easily be dismissed as gadgety – which is pretty much how I had classified it after having played with it for about 3 whole minutes when I first got this camera. But his use of it made me rethink that position. It can become a pretty exciting tool and the reandom aspect of it is actually something that gets me excited. Here’s one of his pics:

Living Things - by Zack Arias

Technicalities
You’ll find this mode under the Shooting menu. It’s pretty sparse on options:
- You can select the number of shots that will be used (from 2 to 10).
- You can set Auto-Gain on or off.

This last setting turns out to be quite important actually. By default, Auto-Gain is set to On, meaning the camera averages every shot for a final blend that won’t blow out too much. Which means you get no control over the composition. Not good in my book. Setting it to Off definitely opens up the real power of  this feature by allowing you to blend as you go simply by controlling your exposure. Shoot your main subject at full exposure, then shoot something you want less prominent a couple of stops lower and things start to get interesting. It’s all about imagining the final result in your mind as you shoot.

Following are a couple of pics I took – Isn’t it darn nice to discover new stuff in something you already own?

[slidepress gallery='drive1']

L’idée est assez simple: je suis dans mon auto, mon appareil est sur le siège du passager. Si je vois quelque chose d’interessant je vise et prend quelques photos en rafale. Des fois je suis en train de rouler, des fois je suis arrêté. Ce n’est pas des plus sécuritaire mais j’aime beaucoup l’aspect immédiat et aléatoire du processus.

[slidepress gallery='drive1']

This is obviousky an odd point of view. It’s a camera within a camera. An eye within an eye. And while it is a poor substitute to actually being there, it’s given me the strange sense of somehow being a part of history.

[slidepress gallery='obama']Mise en abime.

Je veux être à Washington. Férocement. Mais un passeport expiré et la nécéssité de coordonner la fin d’un projet me voient cloué à la maison. Je décide donc d’utiliser ma télé comme fenêtre ouverte, comme point de vue privilégié. J’utilise ma lentille 70-300mm, celle-là même que j’aurais choisie si j’avais été sur place. Je m’impose des règles fermes: pas de EVP – tout doit être capté en direct comme si j’y étais. Branché sur la diffusion HD de ABC News je commence mon travail, recadrant ce que je vois comme si j’étais sur la rue, choisissant ce qui m’intéresse avec ma lentille. Je me force à rester en zoom à l’intérieur de l’image télé, à bouger le plus possible afin d’éclipser le cadrage du cameraman. La première image de la série est la seule exception à ces règles: un autoportrait pris avant le début des cérémonies officielles.

C’est un étrange point de vue et j’en suis conscient. C’est une caméra dans une caméra; un oeil inséré dans celui d’un autre. C’est une piètre consolation à vivre le moment sur place. Et pourtant, j’en retire le réel sentiment d’avoir pris part à une page d’histoire.

[slidepress gallery='obama']