Books..First words that come to mind when you think about books are stillness, patience, static, quiet. The other day I challenged myself with an idea of turning books into dynamic objects and showing them at a different angle...
After staring at a pile of books for a couple of days I decided to start and go with a flow. First I practiced different layouts for the shooting and then I worked with exposure. Little by little my efforts crystallized into something interesting.
The first challenge that I faced was synchronizing my camera with the light system. In my case it was not an option, so I had to figure out the way around it. Solution was found pretty quickly: I turned on my normal lights to make sure that the books were in focus. Then I switched off the lights and turned on the pilot light on my flashes (mainly for safety reasons). I put my camera in bulb mode, with an intention of firing the flashes in complete darkness and by these means arriving at correct exposure. Once the pilot lights were off I released the shutter and triggered the flashes with my remote a few times. Then I made a new composition of books and moved to the next frame. Focusing. Darkness. Few flashes in the dark. Sound of the closing shutter. Next frame. And so on...
The challenge (and the beauty) of film is that you don't see the result until the very last moment. Picking up the film from a lab was like a opening Christmas present. I worked in the dark (quite literally too) since I have never shot that way, so seeing that all of my frames were exposed correctly was extremely rewarding.
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