Awhile ago, I was on a commercial shoot at MOWA, an art museum in a small Wisconsin town. While waiting for the talent, I took some quick snaps of the building, which turned out well. Being interested in architectural photography, I decided to go back in the evening for a twilight shot, which I did with my dslr. The shot was challenging, as the angle I wanted to shoot from required being partly down a hill, which means shooting up, which leads to extreme converging vertical lines. But it turned out ok. Wanting to do better, I went back the other night with my 8x10, whereupon I learned a number of important things:
1) Take the lens cap off when making an exposure.
2) Wind sucks with big cameras. Just keeping the BlackJacket from covering the ground glass was a real challenge! I have a lot of respect for people who use 8x10 out in the field.
3) People lie, especially about when they'll turn off lights.
4) People don't care about what you're doing, even if you explain it to them. They won't walk a few feet to the right, for example, to stay out of your picture. Staff of art museums don't care about helping local artists make art, even when there have been no visitors to the museum in over 3 hours.
5) If you're doing a long exposure, say 2 or 4 minutes, make sure to keep a lens cap handy in case people walk into the shot. No one may have walked by for hours, but when the light is right....
6) Don't listen to experts that tell you to leave your tripod head at home. Yes, a camera fixed to the tripod directly will be more stable than one attached to a head, especially with big cameras, but you might not be able to get the camera in the best location and aimed correctly without a head. If I hadn't had sandbags along, I'd have been out of luck. As it was, I had to shoot from a lower position than I would've liked.
7)It would be wonderful to have a really tall tripod.
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Originally Posted by Peter De Smidt
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