Lesson 005 · Making
The first frame is a question.
Most photographs of a place are made from the spot where the photographer happened to stop. The obvious picture is right there, and it gets made, and then everyone leaves. This lesson asks you to stay. Thirty frames of one place, no two alike, until the scene stops giving you what you expected and starts giving you what is actually there.
- Time Half day
- Where One outdoor place you can walk around
- Kit Any camera, comfortable shoes
- Output 30 frames, 3 keepers, 1 map
01 / The idea
The scene is not where you are standing.
A place has more pictures in it than any one position can see. The first frame you make is usually the one you already had in your head before you arrived; it is a picture of your expectation, not of the place. The work starts when that frame is out of the way.
Four things you can change
Where you stand changes what overlaps what. How high you hold the camera changes the horizon and the ground. How close you are changes what dominates. How long you wait changes the light and who walks through. Every one of these is a decision, and the default for each is whatever your body did when it stopped walking.
Why thirty
The number is not sacred. It is large enough that you run out of obvious pictures around frame eight and have to start looking. The frames between ten and twenty-five are where this lesson lives. They are usually worse than the first few, and then, if you keep going, one of them is better than anything you would have made by leaving.
Patience as a technique
Staying is a skill. The scene changes while you are in it: a cloud, a passer-by, a door opening. A photographer who leaves after the obvious frame never sees the version of the place that arrives at minute forty. This is the long exposure of the lesson's title, only the shutter is you.
Make the picture you came for, then turn around. The place is behind you too, and it has not been photographed yet.
02 / The assignment
Thirty frames of one place, none repeated.
Choose one outdoor place you can move around freely: a corner, a small park, an alley, the end of a pier. Not a grand view; those hand you the picture and this lesson needs you to find it. Give yourself at least two hours there. If you finish thirty frames in twenty minutes, you were not looking.
Every frame must differ from every other in at least one of the four variables: position, height, distance, or time. Two frames from the same spot at the same height are one frame. Keep a rough count as you go and do not review on the camera until you are done.
Any camera, including a phone. A fixed focal length if you have one, so distance has to be solved with your feet. Shoes you can kneel in. Water. A notebook for the map in step five.
Steps
- Make the obvious frame first
Get it out of your system. This is frame one. Look at it, and then agree with yourself that you will not make it again.
- Walk the edges
Go to each boundary of the place and photograph back toward the middle. Then photograph outward. Six frames, six positions, before you touch height or distance.
- Change your height
Kneel. Sit on the ground. Hold the camera above your head. Find something to stand on. Each of these is a different scene; make at least five frames that are not at eye level.
- Go closer than feels sensible
Pick one detail and fill the frame with it. Then another. Then step back until the place is a small thing in a large frame. Distance is the variable people neglect most.
- Wait, and draw the map
For the last stretch, stop moving. Pick a position and make frames only when something changes: light, a person, a shadow reaching a wall. While you wait, sketch a map of the place with a mark for every frame you made. The blank areas are where you did not look.
03 / The critique
Where did the place start talking back?
Look at all thirty in order, on a screen, with the map beside them. Then pick three keepers. The first frame is not allowed to be one of them unless you can argue for it out loud.
- At what frame number did you stop making the picture you expected?For most people it is between eight and twelve. That number is how long your expectations last. It gets shorter with practice.
- Which of the four variables did you change least?Check the map and the frames. Height is the usual answer. Whatever it is, that is the variable to lead with next time.
- Are your three keepers from the same part of the sequence, or spread across it?Clustered early means you stopped looking. Clustered late means the waiting paid off. Spread means you were working the whole time.
- Did anything happen while you waited that you could not have planned?If yes, is it in a keeper? If no, you may not have waited long enough, or you moved when you should have stayed.
- Is there a frame that is bad but points at a better one you did not make?These are the most useful frames in the set. Write down what the better one would have been. Go back for it if you can.
- Would someone who knows the place recognise it from your three keepers?Either answer is fine. Knowing which one you made is the point.
| Skill | Getting there | Got it |
|---|---|---|
| Position | You move a few steps left or right of where you stopped. | You circle the whole place and photograph it from its far edges before deciding. |
| Height | You bend your knees for one or two frames. | You treat ground level and above the head as ordinary positions, not stunts. |
| Distance | You zoom instead of walking. | You use your feet, and you have frames that are very close and very far of the same subject. |
| Time | You leave when the frames stop coming. | You stay through the lull and have a keeper from after it. |
04 / Going further
Go back to the same place.
Return to the place at a different hour and make thirty more, starting from your map's blank areas. The second visit is always stranger and better than the first, because the obvious pictures are already made and you can walk straight past them.
When you are ready, try the exercise in a place you find boring. The lesson is easier somewhere beautiful and more useful somewhere plain.
The next lesson, The Quiet Portrait, asks you to work a scene where the subject can look back at you.