Me Luv You, Long Exposure (B&W)

Faster than a speeding cloud!

In my last post (which was just epic), I mused on the values of night photography as a teaching tool for learning proper exposure. But I soon tired of shooting at night- too much alone time. I yearned to be back with the day people, so I began to wonder how I could take some of the concepts of nocturnal shooting and apply them to daytime situations. I liked experimental photography. I wanted to be different. But how?

Around this time, I happen to see the work of Denis Olivier, a French photographer. It’s really quite stunning and it impacted me greatly. He was doing a lot of interesting things, most notably (for me, anyway) long exposures during the day. So it could be done! I promptly wrote to him and asked how this was done. He was very tight-lipped, gave me very little information and was, overall, of very little help to me. He’s French, after all. This irked me considerably. Why would someone purposely guard their techniques? Are they afraid of competition? A diminishment of their own work, perhaps? Whatever the reason, I do not share in this attitude, and I am happy to tell people how I get some of the pictures I get.

I then wrote to the aforementioned Richard Rothman to ask about development times. I got a surprisingly terse reply from him as well. I decided that I was destined to do this all alone. And it was probably better this way, as the trial and error really shaped my understanding of the process. And so, after many, many failures, I finally got this picture:

Perseverance? Priceless.

For these shots, you obviously need some serious filterage. I’ll spare you the long trial-and-error story and just tell you, the combination I came up with was a polarizer and an Infrared filter, the Hoya R72. Don’t ask me how I figured it out, I just did. I would first meter the darkest area of the scene in which I wanted detail, and overexpose by 12-14 stops. You read that right. So if you metered a dark spot and it said 1/250 seconds at f-4, you would take three exposures: 16 seconds (+12 stops); 32 seconds (+13 stops); and 64 seconds (+14 stops). You would then have to cut development back big time to bring the highlights down to a manageable level. I settled on Kodak Microdol-X diluted at 1:3 at 75 degrees Fahrenheit for 11 minutes and 36 seconds. There- I just saved you hundreds of hours of trial and error. You’re welcome.

I leave you with two favorites:

It's exactly what I think Pillowland would look like.

and:

Yes, you're looking at New Jersey. Sorry about that.

Don’t be a technique-miser! Spread the wealth! Good day.

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