Click to view
larger image

The Flat Iron Building

by Andre Costantini

It was early in the morning of September 11, 2002, before sunrise and I was walking the streets of Manhattan searching for images for “Life Goes On” a one year later book project, which was part of the Eddie Adams workshop. I walked around for two hours before sunrise, reflecting and photographing. I started at 26 th Street and 7 th Avenue and walked west to 11 th Street and then doubled back to where Broadway crosses 5 th Avenue and where the Flat Iron building lives.

This image was photographed with Fuji RDPIII slide film. The exposure was somewhere between 4 and 6 seconds, though I can’t recall exactly how many. I can recall making multiple exposures to trigger a Lumedyne strobe several times to add additional light and exposure to the building other then the available street lights. I bracketed at various time intervals making three exposures, I achieved one good exposure.

The exposure was a combination of available light, which in this case wasn’t much except reflected street lamps, and flash created from a 400 w/s Lumedyne pack positioned next to the camera. Because exposure is an additive process, if the proper exposure is 4 seconds at f8, four, one-second exposures or one-four second exposure yield the exact same exposure. So by keeping your camera locked down to a tripod you can fire your flash multiple times to multiply the power of your flash.

Tip: For long exposures, the Bronica Rangefinder has a calibrated one second exposure and a bulb setting when in manual mode but up to a calibrated 8 second exposure when in aperture priority.

| back to top |