Camera & Craft

Try This at Home

Chapter One: Prerequisite—Photo 101

Instant Apocalypse Technique

Gear: Camera, Tripod, Cable Release, Variable ND Filter (optional, but recommended)

Settings: A very slow shutter speed

Props: Crumpled newspapers

Location: A busy street, filled with moving people

Have you ever had somebody walk through your frame, ruining your perfect photo? With this technique you can remove the people from your view, without Photoshop! This works on cars, squirrels or anything else in motion. For this experiment, we like to think of movies like 28 Days Later and I Am Legend, which feature scenes of eerily empty city streets during what should be the busiest times of day. By slowing your shutter speed down as far as it can go, you have a magic tool for removing anything in motion.

Steps

  1. Location: Your location needs to be a place where many people are moving around. From a storytelling standpoint, it’s much cooler to do this at a time of day when an empty street would seem eerie. If it’s easier for you, then feel free to substitute the people with cars, squirrels, or any other subjects that are in constant motion.
  2. Light: For this experiment, less is more, so you want a nice, dark overcast day. By working with a darker environment, you’ll be able to use a slow shutter speed—the slower, the better. Most cameras can get down to 30 seconds—a perfect speed for this shot.
  3. Camera Settings: Put your camera on Manual or Shutter Priority mode. Set your camera to ISO 100 (or the lowest possible setting) and your aperture to the smallest possible F-stop—usually between ƒ/22 and ƒ/32. By doing this, you force the camera to get the least amount of light possible from aperture and ISO, so you can make up for it with a slow shutter. You’ll need a shutter speed of least 10 seconds.
  4. ND Filters: An ND (Neutral Density) filter is a dark gray filter you place on your camera’s lens to reduce the amount of light that is passed to the sensor. You can buy an ND filter either in specific stops (which are calibrated in the same way as your shutter speeds, F-stops, etc.) or as a variable ND (which uses two revolving Polarizer filters to increase or decrease the amount of neutral density). With either type, all it does is reduce your exposure. If you’re getting stuck at 1/30th of a second, then you might need some serious ND to reduce your exposure. The side-effect of ND filters is that they make your lens much harder to see through.
  5. Frame it Up: Frame up a cinematic masterpiece of a busy city street, full of people walking. Choose a wide view for your scene: The more people in it, the better.
  6. Put it Together: Use a tripod (and a cable release) to avoid any camera shake. Take a series of images and review them to see how your shutter speed is working. Your goal is to make people “disappear.”
  7. Anything that moves as you’re exposing the shot should either blur or disappear from the image.
    • Anything that pauses or doesn’t move at all will register in the shot.
    • Check your shutter speed: If people don’t disappear, you probably need to slow down your exposure even more. Make sure that the ISO is as slow as possible and that the F-stop is as deep as possible (i.e., the largest number, such as f/16). If you have a selection of lenses, see if one of them has a deeper stop. You can also stack ND filters to reduce the exposure even further, if you need to.
    • Once you get a successful image devoid of people, toss some crumpled newspaper into the foreground and take another shot. You’ll have emptied the city and created an image worthy of the big screen (Figure 1.10, right)!
  8. Take a Before Shot: Just so you can prove to your friends that you didn’t just wait for an empty street, remove all ND filtration, dial your F-Stop back to something reasonable (like ƒ/5.6) and snap a version in which you can see all the people (Figure 1.10, left).

     

    Candace Dobro: What was it like to review all the exercises in Camera & Craft?

    Erika Velasquez: It helped me clarify and reinforce good habits in my practice and made me more mindful of the minor, yet important, details it takes to be able to create the images I visualize.

    CD: What are some specific ways it’s helped improve your photography?

    EV: After seeing the results of trial and error with the “Instant Apocalypse Technique,” I’m now more able to shoot with intention—instead of just getting lucky. With the “Silhouette Portrait Experiment” [later in this chapter], I learned to be freer and more flexible getting what I wanted from the model. It was a small milestone for me to feel more comfortable shooting people!