WPPD 2004 - My experience.

The weather in southeastern Wisconsin (USA) was poor for outdoor
photography for most of the day on WPPD. There was a heavy gray
overcast and fog when I left the house at 10:00 AM in search of things
to photograph. By the time I got to my first intended stop (a steel
railroad bridge) the fog was gone and there were "bright spots" in the
clouds - not quite full sunlight, but enough to create shadows if I
waited for the right moment.

In addition to my "old-reliable" zone plate Polaroid Super Shot 2, I was
also using an f/34 zone plate body cap (purchased on eBay from list
member Don Hill) with Kodak Max 800 color film in my Nikon EM. Even
though the brightness had faded by the time I got to the old cemetary
near my office, the bright green grass contrasted well with the
gravestones and the color shots I took there turned out quite well.

One of the most popular photographic locations in Milwaukee (certainly
one of my favorites) is the new wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum,
designed by Santiago Calatrava (see
http://www.mam.org/thebuilding/index.htm for more details). I had
tested out the new zone plate body cap there a week before WPPD 4, and I
wanted to shoot there on Sunday, too. I wasn't too optimistic about the
clouds when I set out for the lakefront, but in the 20 minutes that it
took to drive there, the sky changed from overcast to partly cloudy.

The wind, too, was in my favor. If wind gusts reach 24 miles per hour,
the Brise Soleil (as the sunscreen "wings" are properly called) is
closed. Althought there was a stiff breeze, it was not enough for the
computer to decide to close the Brise Soleil. The lighting varied from
dim to bright as clouds passed in front of the sun for about half an
hour before the heavy overcast returned. With a little bit of waiting
for the best lighting conditions, I got a number of good shots with both
cameras, before eventually running out of film.

I had hoped to use one of the color shots (mostly since I had used the
Polaroid for each of the previous 3 pinhole days), and one of those
shots has a sea gull frozen in flight in front of the art museum. But
in the end, the perfect cloud arrangement is what led me to choose the
shot I did (from the Polaroid) for my submission - number 247.

Mike Vande Bunt

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Received on Mon Apr 26 23:09:14 2004