Photo #4 – Rolling Down The Highway

Rolling Down the Highway - 1/10 - f/11 - ISO 50 - 17mm

So a couple of months ago Chris comes up with this idea of taking a road trip and stopping once an hour to make an image. Kerry thinks its a great idea and on the designated date off they roll. Sometimes the shots came easy, sometimes they scratched their heads wondering what they were going to shoot. At the top of  hour 4 the team was somewhere outside Blythe, Ca and it was time to make an image. What would really speak to the theme of the project in the middle of absolutely nowhere? Nothing says open highway like a big rig barreling down the freeway, it just seemed like it needed something more than just grabbing a passing truck.

To convey a sense of motion a good motion blur was needed. With not a cloud in the sky and the Sun fully up, you simply can’t close down the aperture enough to enable a long shutter speed, this was going to require a little more effort.

Once the shutter speed of 1/10th of a second was chosen we now needed to figure out how to get there. Take the ISO down to 50, there is a couple of stops there, close the aperture down to f/11 to limit light and even at 1/10th of a second the scene was still way too bright. Into the camera bag and Chris pulls out a 3 stop neutral density filter. Set the camera up on a tripod for the long shot, have Kerry run into the middle of the freeway to get a pre-focus, and then wait for the next truck to come rolling by.

Additional Information About Blythe, Ca (as if)

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blythe,_California