A Student’s Point of View: Attending The RIT Big Shot
This is Ashley Crichton writing for the RIT Photo blog! For this post I wanted to share what it was like to be a student helper needed to make RIT Big Shot No 33. I was part of a team that David Turner directed needed to light the regions of the Big Shot’s composition that were too far for the regular flashlights to adequately illuminate. Since the painting with technique was a little different from what I have used, everyone on my team had to practice it before the big day.
A couple weeks before Big Shot, David, Clay Patrick McBride, Dan Hughes, Eric Kunsman and a couple other professors went out to the Genesee Valley Golf Course to perform some lighting tests. We practiced the “pop and walk” as David called it. This was a technique where we would set off the strobe while walking along holding the light under our arm. We had to ensure that we were moving during the exposure so that we would not show up in the final image. We could use the light from one discharge to fill in the shadow of where we had previously been standing. There was a lot of discussion about where to aim the light to make sure the buildings were as beautiful as possible so that when we got to Old Fort Niagara, we could uses the technique easily.
On the day of Big Shot, I arrived at the Fort just before sunset. I had never visited before and to see it bathed in golden light from the sun on a nice warm day was incredible. You could look across Lake Ontario and see Toronto on the other side when sitting on top of the hill where the cameras were set up. It was magical. You also couldn’t have asked for better weather. Being right on shores of the lake it could have been so cold and windy but it was pretty warm the whole time. As it started getting darker, we had a whole team meeting to discuss how the night was going to go. Once everyone knew what their assigned roles were, we waited for the bus to arrive with fifty-two RIT students. The gates opened for the general public who came to help light the Fort at 7:00pm.
We had to wait until it got fully dark before they could start taking the photo. I was assigned to be far away from the camera and was to light the French Hotel with David and another student. I spent that time waiting talking to the re-enactors who were stationed out there as well. They told me a lot about the history of the Fort and how they got involved with re-enacting.
The first exposure was at 8:30pm September 29th. We had been practicing where to aim the light a little while we waited but when the shutter opened. Everything was pretty chaotic. At first we didn’t realize that the shutter was actually open and then when we ran to starting lighting, the canon fired and scared us half to death. Then before I knew it, the shutter was closed again and we had no idea if we had lit the hotel properly. David ran all the way back to the camera to see how it was looking at see what adjustments needed to be made. The second exposure went much more smoothly than the first. I had a better sense of how long we had, and I remembered that the canon was going to go off. The third exposure went even better than that and by the fourth and final exposure, the chaos was almost completely gone. All the students packed back into the bus and their cars in the parking lot while the professors gathered in a small room of a little house at the fort to edit the final image so it could be sent out as fast as possible. The other students who helped to light and I carried all the gear back to the cars, running back and forth because people kept making jokes about the fort being haunted.
Click this file to see us lighting
All around it was a really fun thing to be a part of. I spend so much time with everyone in the photo department on campus here at RIT. It was really a nice break to get off campus as a group and do something other than class work for a change. It was also exciting to see our professors in action. We don’t get to see them in a working photographer role that often and it’s always a great reminder of why we want to listen to what they have to say. I can’t wait to be a part of Big Shot next year.
Below is the pre-shot of the scene before we painted with light and below that is the 90 second painted with light result. More than 825 people attended
