It’s tough to be strict about the 43 minute rule. Deciding to shoot an entire final project for a recent photography class at a tiny park in Georgetown made me realize that there is value in spending a lot of time in a nondescript place, letting it reveal itself over time. Still, the whole “wherever you are, there you shoot” thing can be pretty restricting. I’m all out of whack now that I’m trying to shoot color film, so I thought I’d make another go at the 43 rule over the weekend. What’d I get? Horse shit.
The good news is, teach explained that if we’ve been studying black and white for any length of time, our photography was likely to get considerably worse when we started shooting color. So I got that going for me.
Jul 05, 2006, 01:54AM PDT | 0 comments
On my first attempt, I took off from downtown Seattle and ended up on Route 169 heading Southwest. The punch line of the trip? For the entirety of the 43rd minute I was stuck at a red light in an intersection zoned for commercial use. That’s right…gas stations, strip malls, fast food joints, and parking lots. I was stuck. So it goes.
I took a bunch of shots anyway, figuring there should be a minimum of 43 attempts, but got nothing of interest. Actually, I got several that I kind of liked, reflections of clouds against parking lot lines and so forth. I’m definitely doing this experiment again, but nothing I took on site was worth posting. Here’s one of the back of a couch abandoned in a grove of trees across from the strip mall. Hot!
On the drive back into town, I liked the cloud cover and got a shot of a plane landing that sort of worked. I wouldn’t have seen those clouds had I not taken the trip, so…I win.
I’ll be in San Francisco this weekend and will try a 43 minute exercise while I’m there. Good times.
Dec 09, 2005, 05:22PM PST | 4 cheers | 1 comment
