vlog

Episode 02: No Excuses

Bill ManningDecember 18, 2018

I make an impromptu trip to Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, only to screw up my exposure.

I’m not a fan of cold weather. So my wife and I decided to take a quick 5-hour drive to Jekyll Island for the weekend. While it was still a little chilly in the morning, it warmed up to be a very nice day!

I had every intention in getting up super early to set up the 4×5 camera before sunrise. However, the night before, I had one-too-many rum and coke and I woke up later than I wanted. While I still made it down to the beach before sunrise, it was incredibly rushed. As a result, it was a chain reaction that led me to metering my slide film incorrectly and resulted in overexposing my image by more than 3-stops. My slide was essentially transparent.

However, not all was lost. I took two backup shots with color negative. I metered my Portra 160 off the shadows and metered for EI (Exposure Index) 100. The result was a very well exposed image. However, again, back being rushed, my composition was… well… crap. So I lost half a frame due to cropping however it does still yielded a really big panorama.

Originally, I had every intention to do this vlog to discuss the changes the beach faced after Hurricane Irma ripped forever altered the face of Driftwood Beach. I originally visited Jekyll Island January 2017 and captured several of my favorite images. However, upon returning in November 2018 I was left a little sad to see some of the trees I photographed will only be enjoyed in the memory of my photographs.

Rather than coming up with excuses for my mistakes in exposing my 4×5 Velvia 100, I just need to own it, learn from the mistakes, and make sure I won’t do it again. I am thankful I did take a backup shot on color negative at which I metered off the shadows. I will do my very best not to make the same mistake with my color slide and tell myself, “Meter for the highlights!”