Last of the SoFoBoMo contact sheets
Okay, as promised, here are the last 3 contact sheets. I also have a little bit of commentary about themes and trends throughout the month at the end.
Day 29:
Day 30:
Day 31:
As you can see, all I was trying to do for that last day is come up with a picture of me for the back flap of the dust jacket. I didn’t get a chance to start until quite late in the evening, so I had to bust out my hot light, and as you can see, I suck at artificial lights. Also, it’s really bright and hot and hard to keep the eyes open.
The cool thing about doing these contact sheets is how it brought out the themes of what I was doing, and how they evolved as I went. I mean, I already knew these on a certain level, because I was taking the pictures and kept saying “no, not yet, that’s not it yet, nope, not yet” but it’s fun seeing how I approached the same topics differently (or the same) throughout the month.
For instance, take a look at the contact sheet for day 13 again. See those first two sets of pictures? The four aspen trunks, and the twisty vine thing? I wasn’t able to get a good shot of either of those. When I enlarged that image on screen to the size it would be for the book, the woods behind the aspens degenerated into digital mush because the Coolpix just did not have the megapixels to resolve the detail how I wanted it. No amount of fiddling with lighting conditions and Lightroom settings could get me an image I was happy with. As for the twisty vine, in order to do the macro shot I wanted, I needed to stretch up and hand hold the camera, but the target was a tree branch, and, well, to take the picture with the light I had meant I was working with 1/15th to 1/30th of a second for a shutter speed… no matter what I tried I couldn’t get a sharp shot.
I also would like to note that I took an astonishing amount of these photos in the swamp just outside the front door at work. I mean, not that I had much choice with my schedule, but still.
So those are all of the contact sheets; if you’ve been reading along, you’ve seen all of the photos I shot with one camera in the month of April. Next time, I’ll walk through the process of selecting which photos I chose for the book.