Click to view
larger image

On the Road to Barnstorm

by Ken Hubbard

5:00am October 8, 2004 : Leave for Eddie Adams Barnstorm Workshop

I set out an hour and a half before sunrise for my first Eddie Adams Workshop. This year was going to be a very emotional experience for everyone attending as Eddie past away three weeks before the start. My assignment was to shoot the fall foliage of the great North East forest of New York with the Bronica 6 X 4.5cm Rangefinder Camera. I decided on a storyline of images outlining the road to Barnstorm, shooting locations along the way.

As I crossed the George Washington Bridge the sky began to lighten just passed the scenic overlook along the Palisades. The sun had just started to peak over the horizon and there was a beautiful fog settling in over the Hudson River. With the Connecticut shoreline in view, I decided to shoot the 45mm lens intending to capture the panoramic view that I’ve seen so many times on this familiar road. I metered off a neutral part of the sky, I also used a tripod and shutter release, which helped prevent camera shake under slow shutter speeds. I bracketed my exposure one stop over and under, so I was confident I had a correctly exposed image. I used the aperture setting to bracket because I wanted to keep my shutter speed as fast as possible and I had no concerns about depth of field since I was using a wide-angle lens. The result turned out to be a moody urban landscape.

As I made my way up Route 17 to Jeffersonville, New York I drove on many roads lined with vibrant colors jetting out around each bend, a photograph virtually each step of the way. Turning off Rt. 17, and only 15 miles to the workshop, I found a small pond and a few remaining patches of fog hovering around the trees. I composed the image without sky because it became a distraction to the vibrant colors of the leaves. I metered the scene reading off the sunlit pavement I was standing on. In this case an 18% gray card would have come in handy, but the pavement was pretty close. I once again bracketed the shot for a good exposure.

6:00am October 9, 2004

Yet another early morning with lots of coffee and a mission to capture the deep blue sky of pre dawn. I set out twenty minutes before sunrise facing the west and observed the sky. Hidden beyond the clouds is the incredible blue color I was waiting to capture with my Rangefinder. I used Fuji Astia 100 chrome film during this trip because it has an ultra fine grain with an even amount of color saturation excellent for capturing fall foliage without over saturating the mix.I set my camera’s aperture to f/16 for maximum depth of field, and the shutter speed to bulb. When shooting with ISO 100 and an aperture of F/16 in extreme low light expect shutter speeds of at least 6 – 10 seconds. Once again I bracketed my shots, but in this case I shot 5 images in increments of 2 seconds. When this scene is looked upon with the unaided eye, it appears about two or three times darker than what is captured by film. One of the great features of the RF645 is its size and weight, which is no heavier or bigger than a Nikon F100 35mm camera. This was important to me as I was shooting in very low lighting conditions most of the time and its ease of use meant that I could concentrate on the important aspect of this assignment- finally capturing the beauty of Fall in New York.

| back to top |