For our first exercise we had to film two shots, 50 seconds each, in the style of Lumiere Brothers films such as:

Washerwomen on the River (1897)

I was very much inspired by this piece for my own camera practice task. The depth and layers of action within the image, each layer telling its own individual story made me want to find a place that would express similar qualities for my own piece. So after some thinking I found the Princess bridge, a bridge with many layers; a river running beneath it, a path with steady foot traffic both above and below and cars and trams running across it constantly.

I was lucky enough to have Jenny there to help me through the process (so much heavy equipment!), and I found what I felt was a beautiful composition. Even the blue tones of the camera’s preset white balance of 3200 Kelvin looked good, although my viewfinder was set to black and white, so it was hard to tell. Looking back at this exercise I realise that if for any reason you are uncertain about exposure it is better to move a half stop down and be slightly under-exposed than over-exposed, as through reviewing the footage I can see that the river and the whites in the bridge just past the Princess bridge, while not the focus of the image, are peaking and loosing information and detail. Therefore it is important to examine all aspects of the image in detail, no matter how small, to ensure the correct exposure, as opposed to examining it as a whole.

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