About The Photograph – Passing Time

TECHNICAL COMPOSITIONAL The above photograph was made one evening in a bar in the Mount Pleasant section of Washington DC. I rested the camera on the table where I was sitting and, using an exposure of f-4 at 25 seconds, created the photograph. Because of the contrasty lighting in the bar I had to make exposure decisions based on where I wanted to show detail. I evaluated the exposure for the areas of interest with the spot meter inside my camera and set my exposure as mentioned above in the previous paragraph. I was using a wide angle lens (approximate 28mm) so even though my aperture was fairly large, I was assured a relatively deep depth of field because of the 28mm focal length and the distance I was focused on. Since my exposure decision was biased toward the darker areas of the scene all light sources, including the TV appear as bright areas with no detail. I like that the patrons appear to be watching a blank, large screen TV. Notice that anything that was NOT moving during the exposure (chairs, the bar, etc.) appears as solid objects. On the other hand, anything that was moving (some of the patrons heads and the bartender on the left side of the frame in particular) appear as blurs or almost non-existent. This is because they were not in one location long enough to be fully recorded.

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