At our third session, we critiqued everyone’s homework as a class. I was pleased that everyone liked my 30-second exposure with the playing cards. Somewhat ironically, that was the shot I spent the least time on and took the fewest exposures trying to create. Some of the other students also liked the shot of the subway leaving the station (from outside the train). The instructor commented that my picture freezing the peak of the fountain without showing the base was interesting.
Looking back on the 8 shots I picked, I was only really happy with about half of them. My focus is definitely off in my rolling shot. This was due to narrow depth of field (since I was almost wide open trying to take the picture in the dark) and my own error of auto focusing on the wrong spot. My focus was also off in the stove top picture, this time because I actually used manual focus and didn’t take enough time to get exactly what I wanted. I liked the golf ball shot, but I should have used an even faster shutter speed to really freeze things. From the direction the ball is going you can easily tell it wasn’t hit perfectly, which is sub-optimal for the shot as a whole.
I was impressed in how the moving subway photo came out because it was a 1″ hand-held exposure braced against a column. The Image Stabilization in my kit lens must have come through for that one.
The two shots I tried to get and didn’t were of the Metronome in Union Square (the giant clock slash piece of art on One Union Square South) and the Olafur Eliasson waterfalls in the East River. Getting a motion shot of the Metronome was like trying to date a girl that’s just not right for you – despite going back again and again you just can’t make it work. The digital numbers that make up the clock were too bright to shoot at night and didn’t stand out enough during the day. It was much harder than I thought to show any motion since exposures overlapping the changes of a number just ended up showing the multiple digits transposed over each other. The waterfalls were less challenging but I went to see them at the wrong time of the day. I couldn’t get a properly exposed shot that portrayed the water the way I wanted it.
Overall, taking all these slow motion and stop-action shots was a fun experience. Rolling shots are definitely my favorite – I found myself commenting that I liked everyone’s panning photo, even if they weren’t very good. I’m sure I’ll try a lot of these on my own.