The Making of #326
Saturday, April 19th, 2008So you want to know what this 365 project is really like? I’ll tell you.
You attend a meeting on Friday at a building down Hawthorne Road. You remember the time you drove down random-numbered roads with J-Fin and mikeautry1 and wound up on that same road months ago. You remember that mikeautry1 took a pretty cool photo on some train tracks around there. You decide to do something similar the next day.
So you set your alarm for 9:30am to get some good light before you have to go to work. You brush your teeth, you brush your hair, you brew some coffee to take with you. By 9:50am, you’re out the door. You’ve actually remembered your tripod and your remote this time because, hey, you’ve been doing this for ten months now - the days of driving hours to a place for a 365 and then realizing you don’t have the right gear are (hopefully) long behind you. In fact, you even remembered to bring a jacket to help create some “mood.”
You set off down Hawthorne Road, trusting your keen sense of direction that you inherited from your mother. And if nothing else, you’ve got a roadmap in your backseat.
You drive. You drive for a long while. You remember the place you want is on the right. You pass beautiful fields of cows and horses and solitary trees, but you don’t stop because you want to get this good light for your self-portrait.
You drive some more.
You come to the town of Hawthorne. You don’t remember coming this far last time. But you’re you, and you don’t turn around. You go through Hawthorne, and you keep going, always looking out for train tracks on the right.
You enter another county. You’re far from home now, and the sun is starting to get that mid-day look that makes the emo self-portrait impossible. You admit defeat, and you turn right the next time you see a “road” - meaning a dirt-and-gravel offshoot that becomes impassable just a few feet ahead.
But wait! In the distance! Down that impassable pothole-filled road! Is it? Could it be?
YES! Train tracks!
So you lug your gear and your tripod and your jacket to this godforsaken track in the middle of Putnam County. You take a test shot:
Yep, this is a cool place. You do the thing people do with train tracks:
Eh, that’s not quite right. No drama there.
So you turn around. After all, the track runs in both directions. You switch lenses from the 31mm to the 200mm, just because you’re stubborn and want to use your new lens. You pre-focus on some trash and frame your shot. Hmm, you’re going to need to put on that jacket now, even though it’s approaching 80°F. You run to the point where you focused and press the remote.
Nothing happens.
You try again, and again. Finally, it fires! Except that you weren’t ready.
So you try again. But the sunlight just isn’t cooperating with your infrared remote. So you use the self-timer. You have 12 seconds to get into position. While you’re changing the camera setting, might as well change the composition too, right? So you end up with this:
Yeah.
So you try again. And again, and again. Every time, you have to go hit the shutter, run back, and wait for the shutter to fire twelve seconds later. You are sweating under this wool coat. The 800 mosquito bites you got a couple of days ago while doing another shoot are itching like mad. You’re trying to make a pensive face, even though by now the sun’s so bright that you can’t help but squint.
Finally, you think you’ve got something! So you pack up your gear and leave.
Forty minutes later, you’re back home. You upload the photos to your computer. You look at THE SHOT, the one you know you’re going to use.
And you realize you look cross-eyed.
Seriously.
So you find another photo that isn’t half-bad except that you look like you ate something rotten right before you snapped the shutter:
So you do a little Lightroom magic, and crop off your head. Voilà!
