Trap Shooting

Photographers who’ve worked enough with large, tripod-mounted cameras generally develop strategies to deal with the fact that lots of things don’t stand still. You can’t follow action with an 8x10 inch view camera the way you can with a hand-held camera. The slow shutter speeds generally required also won’t freeze a moving subject. But something I really like to do with big cameras is set up for a picture where some of the subject matter will hold rock-still while other parts, like moving water or grasses waving in the breeze, will blur during the exposure. Not only can the effect be pretty, but I think it conveys a sense of time passing. This approach, trapping subject action from a fixed camera position, has become so natural for me that I find I use it even when I’m working with little cameras.

The first picture was made at the pullout for a mountain overlook in West Virginia, not far from the motel featured in Saturday’s posting. I’d set up a 7x17 inch camera for the big view and was waiting for the light to do something. The sun was above the horizon but not over the mountains or heavy clouds in the eastern view. However the light was really interesting looking west so I set up a digital camera on another tripod to see what I might do with the road and passing vehicles. I could hear this heavily loaded tanker grinding up the switchbacks to the south for several minutes before he crested the rise and filled in the picture for me.

The next one was made on a bridge across the James River on the west side of Richmond, Virginia. About two minutes later those storm clouds opened up and my Austrian friend Harald Leban and I were drenched to the skin by the time we made it back to my truck. We looked like drowned rats when we got to the gallery at Corporate and Museum Frame to help with the installation of our group exhibit, "The Enigmatic Landscape."




The next one was made from the parking lot of my motel, on a crisp October evening in Bradford, Pennsylvania. I was thinking about shooting just the road and auto parts store when I saw the car out of the corner of my eye. So I framed what I wanted, locked in the AF/AE/overrides and waited to trap the car as it passed.




Oh, OK, I can tell there will be complaints if I don't show it, so here’s the motel, even though nothing is moving in this picture.