Day 72: Blame It On Mr. Gilliam

Today's post title says it all. I've been watching a lot of Terry Gilliam movies lately. We're watching 12 Monkeys in class on Tuesday night, but after reading the chapter that was assigned to us, I've been thinking that I may do my final paper on something with his films. So I rewatched Tideland this afternoon, I rewatched Brazil a few days ago, and I'm about to start The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus again for who knows how many times. One of the aspects of Mr. Gilliam's brilliant filmmaking that I enjoy the most are his ultra-wide angle shots. The man fits so much into a single frame and it makes me ridiculous jealous (mostly because I really, really want to buy an ultra-wide lens, but they're pretty pricey). So today's post is my (very weak) attempt at some Gilliam-esque photos (wide angle, askew view, etc.)

I'm going to give all three photos and then I'll talk a bit about them underneath. Each shot is essentially the same; the only thing I changed (as you'll see in the caption below each photo) was the aperture setting and the exposure. I wanted to experiment with depth of field a little bit today.

1.3 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 400.
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2.5 sec. exposure at F/5. ISO 400.
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5 sec. exposure at F/6.3. ISO 400.
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As you can see, increasing the f-stop number (thereby decreasing the aperture's size) increase how in focus I myself am. The only thing I did to any of these photos in Aperture (the software) was decrease the white balance temperature in each photo to 3900. I wanted all of the photos to have essentially the same things applied save for aperture and exposure settings to really emphasize the difference in focus and depth of field.

As far as lighting goes, I left my bedroom light on and opened the bathroom door just enough to let the light through (behind me). I also turned my closet light on and left that door wide open (to my right in the photo; left from the viewer's perspective). That's all the light that was used. I think that helped create a deeper scene as well. I just really wish I had a wider angle lens to get really crazy with the shot (i.e. more of the room and empty space to create a more isolated shot).

Well, I hope you guys liked my little experiment today. Like I said yesterday, I'm going to do some random shooting again this week. It's not that I don't like the themes that I've been doing, it's just that it gets monotonous and slightly boring after several days. Okay, peace out, g.