Film taught me how to trust my gut and instincts in any given exposure situation. The patience to hold off on seeing the results until long after you have taken the exposure and, unless you're being financed by an outside source, the patience and discipline in your shot choice so that you don't become swamped with mediocre rolls of film. When I review my film work, I usually have a bit of flexibility in my predetermined expectations and the actual results; maybe that backlight was a little stronger than I thought or the shadows in a certain shot a bit deeper than my initial estimate.
This mentality is all well and good for 99% of my personal work and is actually a great exercise in training both your eye and brain, but what about when a new idea or concept calls upon the complete opposite set of objectives or working process? What if I have an idea but need to quickly and "cheaply" (as in, already spent money) test the results?
Due to the restraints and responsibilities of my current daytime job, I have about 2 hours per day available to photographic pursuits. And that time is split amongst taking, planning, developing, scanning, editing, researching, learning, networking, marketing & sharing my work. So that's not just two hours a day of shooting, that's two hours a day for everything. Hell, I wrote the initial copy of this blogpost at 4am because I had the words in mind and knew I wouldn't have another chance to put pen to paper until at least the weekend.
So when I am completely wrapped up in the possibilities and variables of a new technique and I'm presented with a quickly approaching opportunity to try it out, I unpack the D700.
The characters and the church setting could (and did) provide a perfect backdrop for the painterly ghosting effects I was envisioning. The only problem was my only opportunity to do so was two days away, which left for no time to test in film, develop and scan said rolls and come up with a committed solution. After a few rounds of tests (and a bunch of beer/wine) I had a system in place to deliver the effects I was going for. I could remotely fire my camera for a two second exposure while simultaneously rear curtain triggering a gridded off camera flash. The flashlight would flood various areas of the scene while I bark out weird instructions to willing subjects, sometimes even freezing parts of the subject halfway through their movements for a multiple exposure effect.
The participatory nature of the setup was a perfect complement to the, in my opinion, participatory mantra of punk; the subject and practitioner were equally involved with creating something different.