G A P

These photographs are more a product of their making than anything deeply or curiously conceptual. So that's what I'm going to write about.

With the sliding digital back on the 4x5, there are a lot of steps involved in getting a shot, and in making corrections, and a lot more opportunities to screw up.

Our biggest issue was focus. My teammates were having difficulty, but I just assumed it was because they were trying complex camera movements. I didn't have time for that, and expected a zeroed camera to offer no difficulty.

It did.

To take a picture, you have to open the aperture, open the preview, focus (difficult through the back's provided magnifier), close the preview, set your aperture, cock your shutter, slide the back into position, hit a small button on the Phase One, then fire the camera within 4 seconds. Seriously.

My bright pictures are from those exposures when I forgot to reset my aperture. My dark pictures are from my intentionally closing down in a desperate bid to get more depth of field.

Brian & Curtis's common-sense solutions to all that: hot-light modeling lamp (generic scoop will do) for help with the ground-glass, and reading Capture One's focus preview fields, and adjusting by slivers from there.

Jolene is too photogenic to be a mannequin, and for whatever reason those pictures are razor sharp; is why they're here. Lex & Christie are really good at working for a camera, and if you get the chance to shoot them for anything (as I know many of you did over the course of the day) you should take it. They were, at the end of a full day of shooting, very patient, comfortable, fun, and giving (to the camera). I'm really glad I got to shoot them.

The lights were specular on the key, and a soft box on the background, with a board between them, and black boards on the fill side, and a fraction of a white flat to kick a little something in and keep it from going completely black. They look wildly different depending on what kind of monitor you're looking at them on.