Tuesday, December 11, 2007
DWP
Driving while photographing... but not looking. While driving home from eastern Kentucky this evening I was thinking about how I didn't have anything to post on the blog tonight. There was a great sunset happening but I really didn't feel like stopping to take pictures, so I decided to see what would happen if I took a lot of pictures without looking. I shot a lot of pictures... 198 to be exact. Here are a few that I picked out. They required a lot of cropping and color correcting, etc. But it's pretty cool to see what I could come up with in this way.
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17 comments:
Was your window up or down?
Down... in the last shot, the camera is outside facing back.
Wow! I'd love to see what you would have posted if you had stopped! To have nothing you sure found something!!!
Great work, Rick, and a great idea, wonderfully realized. It's a pleasure to see an artist of your skill and talent at work.
Rick: Great job. I couldn't have done this if I had tried to get these shots.
I love to DWP, and have gotten a few good shots over the years, but nothing like these. Beautiful!
Amazing. It is one of those situations where if you hadn't told the story I would have assumed for the most part that you stopped, set up each shot. Beautiful work. Now that I know what happened I am just as much impressed by the spontaneity of the work as with the beauty of the shots. I assume you used a remote to take the shots?
No remote... they were taken with my tiny little Fuji F30 pocket camera. I would roll down the passenger window and hold my arm out over that way and press the shutter release a bunch of times and then roll down the drivers window and shoot a bunch in the rear-view, etc... and repeat this process for about an hour. Like I said, there were 198 shots in all... mostly garbage... but I managed to find some salvageable photos to post. My favorite is the truck in the rear view.
I try to DWP a lot, too (but never quite so successfully). I'm just usually running too late for work or something else I need to do to stop. I should really plan better :-)
You're a brave man. Whenever I motor along I-64 it's a white knuckle drive, especially that curvey section going around Huntington! :-)
Good picture, all the same.
The hillbilly here just reread his comment and now sees that it could be construed as a criticism. It wasn't. It was a bit of awe that you were able to take such great photos while driving I-64.
Cool experiment and wonderful results!
The cliche goes, it's not the camera it's the eye, but since you weren't looking and still got some good pictures, there must be something else involved. Experience? Instinct?
That's a good question DB. First of all, it's a little Fuji pocket camera that I bought at Sam's for 300 dollars... but my experience told me that the sunset would probably look better if I set it minus-one stop exposure. But as Monk would say "here's the thing".... also because of experience I can glance over and quickly say "I think there's a picture over there"... so I point the camera in that direction and without looking, push the shutter release several times. That may or may not result in a usable photo... but if I do it often enough, probability kicks in and I'll get something. I got these 10 photos out of 198 exposures. I actually chose about 25 that I liked, but I further whittled it down to the 10 best that my experience told me could be whipped into a decent shot in Photoshop with some creative cropping and color correction. So, I think the answer is that it's experience AND perseverance. How many people would actually keep that up for an hour?
Nice answer, Rick, and a good pointer on photographing sunsets. And..., you're quoting Tony Shaloub -- Wow! My wife is totally impressed.
I wish I had been in the car behind you so I could post pictures of the guy hanging out his window taking pictures.
Looks like a nice journey, Rick. I tried this DWP approach a couple of weeks ago while driving through France. I think I made two mistakes: 1. Worrying about what was on the LCD screen (bad for ones driving) and 2. Not taking enough shots.
I'll try your approach next time, though I think the police would take a dim view anyway if they caught me .
The high-tension power lines in the backwards shot are a great element!
Also the mirror shot really has a lot of power in it.
I always enjoy my trips to your blog.
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