The Road Less Traveled
A short behind-the-scenes video is available here.
The Road less Traveled
Shot in Sanibel Island in 2017, The Road less Traveled was a lesson in perseverance.
It was only the second image in my Light Paintings series, which uses a digital camera as opposed to the 50 year old Hasselblad film camera I use for my Alleys & Ruins series, where I light paint in rather more dangerous neighborhoods.
I had been bringing lights on my night shoots since the early 90s but only ever with film.. When I finally tried with a digital camera, the differences were vast and I found myself lost. For example, I was used to the luxury of shooting 20-40 minute exposures with film, leisurely walking around doing my lighting... whereas with digital, I was limited to maybe 5 minutes.
I awoke at 3 am to shoot "Road", and then messed it up... So the next morning I was back - again in the middle of the night. Better results, but still not good enough.
It took a third early morning shoot to finally figure out how to make it work, and I finally got the results I hoped I would get.As a truly enexpected gift, on that third visit I saw another possible photo. Because of the conditions I was working under, I somehow managed to squeeze in that other image. But I wasn't expecting much, and believed it would be a throwaway image. Still I went through the elaborate and time consuming steps to shoot it, even when I was desperately trying to just get that one good image of "Road" and after 2 miserable, failed attempts, I knew this third push would likely be my last. Incredibly, that throwaway shot turned out to be my very popular photo, Pocket Bliss.
The Pocket Bliss side quest is a whole other unlikely story worth reading.
This extremely fulfilling experience convinced me that I needed to pursue this series.
