Thank you for sharing this assignment. I had a great time doing it and I came away with some pictures I enjoyed and it inspired me to write a post on my website.
Nice work. I especially like the first image with the paint on the wall. All the images build on the strengths of the graphics, which is something I often gravitate to when doing this assignment. Kudos and thanks for sharing.
Great idea! At the beginning of my career as a professional photographer, in the 90s, I worked for a music newspaper. I was just starting out and not paid well. I shot in Black & White and developed and printed myself. I had to photograph live bands and do band portraits.
I took care that I didn’t make more than 12 photos per assignment. That way I could do three assignments on a roll of 36 and make a little money. I knew that they would only use one photo anyway so, live, I took care that I found a good place to stand and then waited for something good to happen. It usually worked out fine.
I learned quick decision making, confidence and pre-visualizing situations. After that, for years, I did most of my assignments on slide film. Also a very good learning school, specially in exposing correctly.
I definitely had more confidence in my abilities back then. Ha ha, now with digital I’m back to making way too many photos….
Thanks for sharing. I also remember having to be conservative with my film use. As you said, it helps you to be more thoughtful about image creation. Yes, you can shoot a lot more with digital, but the problem is the time-consuming process of culling hundreds, if not thousands, of images. I am finding myself making fewer and fewer exposures, even with digital, for that exact reason.
Yes, that’s definitely true. It takes so much of our time. I always promise myself that I will be more selective but when I’m deep in to a project I just go for it and worry about the selecting process later.
It’s weird how the work flow changed. I used to just select slides on a lightbox and send them off. And then I had to do the scanning and retouching and later the editing and retouching all for comparatively not much more money.
I did a similar project this year: 36 digital frames, like film. It’s like you said a great exercise! Only in B&W and JPG’s straight out of the camera. I found an old 2GB SD card, which I filled with a dummy .dat file. With this adjustment, there was only enough free space for 36 frames, then it’s game over! I wrote two posts of this project on Substack with included a free ebook that I made with the 36 frames: https://leongssns.substack.com/p/36-digital-frames-like-film-part-7a4?r=20m1qq&triedRedirect=true
I love the idea of a 24/36-exposure (no chimping!) exercise. In my everyday photo work, I impose a no-chimping rule on myself. It's not (just) because I first came to photography in the film-photography era (first DIY darkroom in 1970), but mostly because I want to be mindful of each frame, to shoot with PURPOSE.
Another technical aspect that encourages "presence" in each shot, as you said, is shooting with a medium-format camera in RAW. The resulting images are so large that you can fill up a SD card relatively quickly. So, you've got to make each image count.
I may just have to blank an SD card, set my ISO to 400 (to mimic Tri-X's 400 ASA), and cut myself off at 36 images!
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I agree that the choice to apply some restriction helps spark my creativity. It's important to put myself into a place of discomfort, especially when I have been in a rut.
Thank you for sharing this assignment. I had a great time doing it and I came away with some pictures I enjoyed and it inspired me to write a post on my website.
https://www.ericmontae.com/journal/36-frames-no-chimping
Nice work. I especially like the first image with the paint on the wall. All the images build on the strengths of the graphics, which is something I often gravitate to when doing this assignment. Kudos and thanks for sharing.
Great idea! At the beginning of my career as a professional photographer, in the 90s, I worked for a music newspaper. I was just starting out and not paid well. I shot in Black & White and developed and printed myself. I had to photograph live bands and do band portraits.
I took care that I didn’t make more than 12 photos per assignment. That way I could do three assignments on a roll of 36 and make a little money. I knew that they would only use one photo anyway so, live, I took care that I found a good place to stand and then waited for something good to happen. It usually worked out fine.
I learned quick decision making, confidence and pre-visualizing situations. After that, for years, I did most of my assignments on slide film. Also a very good learning school, specially in exposing correctly.
I definitely had more confidence in my abilities back then. Ha ha, now with digital I’m back to making way too many photos….
Thanks for sharing. I also remember having to be conservative with my film use. As you said, it helps you to be more thoughtful about image creation. Yes, you can shoot a lot more with digital, but the problem is the time-consuming process of culling hundreds, if not thousands, of images. I am finding myself making fewer and fewer exposures, even with digital, for that exact reason.
Yes, that’s definitely true. It takes so much of our time. I always promise myself that I will be more selective but when I’m deep in to a project I just go for it and worry about the selecting process later.
It’s weird how the work flow changed. I used to just select slides on a lightbox and send them off. And then I had to do the scanning and retouching and later the editing and retouching all for comparatively not much more money.
I did a similar project this year: 36 digital frames, like film. It’s like you said a great exercise! Only in B&W and JPG’s straight out of the camera. I found an old 2GB SD card, which I filled with a dummy .dat file. With this adjustment, there was only enough free space for 36 frames, then it’s game over! I wrote two posts of this project on Substack with included a free ebook that I made with the 36 frames: https://leongssns.substack.com/p/36-digital-frames-like-film-part-7a4?r=20m1qq&triedRedirect=true
Cool. I like the idea of using a small memory card and the JPEGs only.
With this little adjustment you can’t cheating… 😉After 36 frames the camera tells me ‘Game over’.
I love the idea of a 24/36-exposure (no chimping!) exercise. In my everyday photo work, I impose a no-chimping rule on myself. It's not (just) because I first came to photography in the film-photography era (first DIY darkroom in 1970), but mostly because I want to be mindful of each frame, to shoot with PURPOSE.
Another technical aspect that encourages "presence" in each shot, as you said, is shooting with a medium-format camera in RAW. The resulting images are so large that you can fill up a SD card relatively quickly. So, you've got to make each image count.
I may just have to blank an SD card, set my ISO to 400 (to mimic Tri-X's 400 ASA), and cut myself off at 36 images!
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I agree that the choice to apply some restriction helps spark my creativity. It's important to put myself into a place of discomfort, especially when I have been in a rut.