Algonquin College coordinator and professor, Tracy Byers Reid, used a single sheet of 4x5 film to document the last semester of a photographic theory course.
The story of this photograph began in 2013 when I was a new college professor
teaching Photographic Theory at Algonquin College in Ottawa. I was eager to inspire my
students and sought unique opportunities to engage them in the basics of photography.
I firmly believe theory informs practice and has the power to unlock creative potential.
I soon recognized my students' curiosity about extremes - what was the widest possible aperture, the longest possible lens, and the highest possible ISO. In preparing a lesson on shutter speed, I remember googling "What is the longest possible shutter speed?" and encountering the work of German photographer Michael Wesely, who captured images with shutter speeds measured in years.
For the next decade, I'd share Wesley's work with my students. I loved how his work
fostered critical discussions about exposure, light, and, of course, the passage of time. Each year, I'd promise myself time to explore this technique, only to let the opportunity slip away under the weight of marking, prep, and, eventually, a pandemic pivot to online teaching. As years passed and the film technology that enabled Wesley to explore such long exposures became less familiar to photography students.
In the Fall of 2022, a quiet but eager student booked a meeting with me to ask how to make month-long exposures. Students sometimes don't know how much they can inspire teachers! Excited to assist her, we sat down and ran through the variables. Film speed,
average amount of light to expect each day, what aperture to use, whether we need neutral
density (ND) filters, and how to factor in the law of reciprocity failure. After about 30 minutes,
we had a plan.
Over the following weeks, I had occasional check-ins with her about that weeks daylight
quantities. It was un-seasonally overcast, so we discussed lengthening the exposure by a few days. Finally, the exposure was over; she processed the film, and it worked! No longer was this a fun theoretical conversation. I was thrilled (and a little jealous.)
Time was slipping past in other ways. Our program was changing. I taught photographic
theory and production as separate courses; however, my colleagues and I recognized a disconnect with this delivery. For some students, the time delay between the delivery of the two courses weakens the connection between theory and practice. In 2021, we revised the program, merging theory with the practical production course. In December 2022, I prepared for my last semester of Photographic Theory, ending a ten-year run with that course, I decided that was the time to capture and commemorate my time uniquely.
When I began at Algonquin in 2012, the students still learned to photograph some
projects using a 4x5 view camera. I decided to use that camera to capture this last semester in a single exposure.
With the assistance of my colleague, Jason Machinski, we mounted a Sinar 4x5 view camera on the wall in the corner of the classroom. I framed and focused the shot and spent an afternoon determining the various factors that controlled the exposure.
How many hours of class would I have that semester with all the lights on, and how many with the overhead lights off and just the projector?
Could I calculate for both?
What aperture should I use?
Would that be enough to prevent overexposure?
Do I need additional filtration?
The last step was calculating the magic that makes extremely long exposures possible, law of reciprocity failure. I felt a lot of pressure to get this right; after all, I had taught Photographic Theory to almost 700 students, high stakes if I was off and it didn’t work.
Eventually, I decided to simplify the process with fewer unpredictable variables. I only
exposed the film with the overhead lights off and the projector on. This situation was the most
common scenario in the lecture-heavy class, and it allowed me to have less light, hopefully
making it easier to have a longer exposure time. Between two sections in a 14-week semester, I estimated I would teach 50 hours with the lights off and the projector on.
The initial meter reading for the room was f/45 for 8 minutes using ISO 125. To achieve a
50-hour exposure, factoring in light level and the law of reciprocity failure, I needed to cut the
exposure by 7 stops through ND filtration.
Our program did not have the correct filters to fit the lens; luckily, we sourced ND 8 (3 stops) sheets from Television Broadcasting. I cut down the ND 8 filters, stacked two on top of each other, and taped them around the inside of the lens. This tactic was common when I learned large format photography, as placing a lower-quality filter on the back end of the lens has less impact on image quality. The borrowed ND filters only came to 6 stops instead of 7, so I used f/32 for 4 minutes, with ISO 125 as the base exposure.
I introduced the project at the semester's first class and opened the shutter on January 16, 2023, at 9:33 am.
In each class, the students and I tracked the hours, writing down the precise time I lifted the lens cap to start the exposure and when I replaced it to end the exposure. I was nervous all semester that someone might ruin the project, open the shutter when I wasn't in class, or remove the film. I was comforted by how eager the students were to take part in the process, frequently reminding me to remove the lens cap at the start of class or record the precise time for the exposure. I was also nervous that I had made an error; maybe I hadn't focused or loaded the film correctly, or perhaps the tape had slipped knocking the ND filter out of place.
Ultimately, a few unforeseen changes affected the 50-hour exposure estimate (guest speakers, a class moved to the studio space, shorter lectures, etc.) and the final
exposure from the start of the semester on January 16, 2023, to the last class on April 3, 2023, only captured 34 hours and 10 minutes of overheads off and projector on exposure.
Once the semester ended and I closed the shutter, the image sat in a paper-wrapped film holder on my desk for a year.
Why? Only another film photographer might know the answer - the fear of the unknown.
Latent images are potent in potential but fragile.
Had I calculated the exposure correctly? Would anything be on the film? Was there a leak in the bellows? Did the students mess with the exposure? While the latent image sat in a covered holder on my desk, it lived only in my imagination as a perfect project. Once processed, I'd face the truth.
My students were eager to see the final image. Almost every week, at least one student
asked about the film. I laughed it off, full of excuses; I didn't trust anyone to process it or needed time to finish the calculation. But as time passed, I liked the poetry of the image waiting for them to finish their studies in the last year of our old program, still developing their skills before I developed the film to finally become a finished image.
On the day of their convocation, I drove to the lab in downtown Ottawa. Before leaving, I
checked my original exposure estimate against the accurate in-class exposure calculations,
confirming I was one-stop underexposed. I dropped off the film, requested a one-stop push, and headed to their graduation ceremony.
The image isn't the best I've taken, but is my most memorable.
It captures so many moments in one frame. The light trails visible in a few areas of the image are the traces of a lesson on lighting metal where the students use flashlights to find the family of angles. The students worked in groups, which explains why the light trails appear in clusters in a few areas in the room. I never thought that moment, which lasted 30 minutes, would be rendered so clearly in a 34-hour and 10-minute exposure. Another trace is the light fog along the bottom edge, which I am certain occurred when two students accidentally fired their small flash, full power, directly under the camera.
Two lamps are visible at the back of the classroom; however, we only have one. We rearranged the furniture for our grad show in mid-March, and evidently, we didn't put the lamp back in the same position. I love how consistent some students are with placing their laptops in almost the exact position each week. It even appears as though one student took extra care each week to sit still in the same spot and potentially appears visible in the middle of the frame. I like that their conscious dedication and clear understanding of the process have made them visible to me, if not to anyone else.
Beyond the image's content, it uses a capture medium we no longer teach to capture the
teaching strategy we no longer use.
This image represents my ten-year journey teaching photographic theory in the last remaining years of analog through the final transition to digital, relying far too frequently on lectures but hoping to inspire students by exploring the potential to push the medium's limits.
While I am happy I took the opportunity to make this image; it reminds me of missed moments and how much more I could have done with that time.
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