For our first project, we all wrote words on a strip of paper and three were chosen at random. We then voted on which of those three liked best.
What was eventually chosen was the words Rebirth/Renewal.
After some consideration, I decided that what I wanted to do was to photograph a space over time; specifically, a space waking up. After some consideration of the possibilities, I decided that the best place to shoot this would be in the the Perlick Commons, a glass atrium, with a small cafe-counter, near where I live that is a popular breakfast destination for students. My plan was to show the renewal of both the space (as the sun rose) and the people (as they partook in breakfast).
When I finally went out, I set up at early in the morning, at approximately 7:00 A.M. and was there for 5 hours, (until 12:00 P.M.). My setup was relatively simple; I had two 35mm cameras (a Canon AE-1 and a Minolta X-700) on tripods with one facing towards the counter/door to the atrium and the other into the atrium where the bulk of the people sat. I then took one picture in each camera every ten minutes for a total of 25 images. Through I had to dodge a series of questions about what I was doing (usually pointing to the sign that said time-lapse art project in progress was enough) and defending my little enclave of equipment from the morning hustle and bustle, there were no real problems with the actual process of taking the pictures.
Unfortunately, nothing really worked like I had hoped. The main reason was that I encountered three large, distinct problems.
The first was that my AE-1 has a light leak problem. I had it fixed once, which stopped the issue from being a constant blight but eventually had to buy a new AE-1 due to the potential for ruined negatives. However, that camera was stolen a few months ago and my other 35mm were broken/out of batteries, so it was either run the risk, or no second camera. Some pictures did come out but none were really printable.
The second problem was that I changed the F-stop between shots. I did this thinking that I wanted to make sure that my first images were not under-exposed and the last not over-, essentially entirely for consistency. Unexpectedly, that is exactly the opposite of what I got. Essentially, the short of it is that what I was counting on to show the passage of time was the movement of shadows along the walls and floors as the sun rose, but with the change of the aperture, the shadows were perfectly clear in some, and completely gone in others.
The third problem was really stupid. I forgot to change the ISO on my cameras from 400 (I had been shooting Delta 400 for the past two months) to 160 for my Kodak Portra 160 NC, which meant that a good deal of my film was over exposed.
All in all, I was found the project very interesting conceptually and I did have a good time shooting it but after developing the film, I was very unhappy with what came out, even the images that developed well. Also, the entire process took so long and I didn't really have the time or energy to devote another five hours one morning to reshooting the project so I decided that since it only produced mediocre images anyway. I would shelve this idea away for another time and try to go in a different direction.
