3,000°K at the Jericho Drive-In

It’s Memorial Day evening, and I’m here at the Jericho Drive-In with my cameras and my tripod and some digital CompactFlash card chips.

No, I’m not trying to get a “film it off the screen” pirate copy of The Fast and the Furious 6.

For me, the Jericho Drive-In is a place where I can recalibrate myself.  I can reconnect with whatever I’m going through in my life, and hopefully turn the bad things away and focus on the good things. The Jericho has always been a place where I can find the innocence of an evening at the movies, where all I have to worry about is popcorn and stars, movies and cars.

But back to why I brought my camera to the open-air palace of dreams.

I’ve shot panoramic photos in the past; in these instances I’ve locked the camera to the tripod, and then, as I move the camera on its axis, I take pictures until I have a 360-degree panorama. After that, I use some software to make a polar panorama photo – you know, those “planet” shots that I experimented with a few years ago.

Well, this time it’s different.  I’m not creating a polar panorama this time.  What I’m trying to accomplish is something called “time-slice” photography.

“Time-slice” photographers take several pictures, from dawn to dusk, of a building or road or harbor.  Then they digitally slice the pictures together, creating one image out of the span of many.  You can see the bridge at dusk, and then see more of the bridge at a later time.  It’s tricky, and you really need a steady tripod and a lot of patience.

I’ve done that kind of stitch-together photography in the past – two years ago, I built a rainbow out of 35mm slides shot in rapid-fire succession – but that was with film.  This time I’m working with my digital gear.  Nikon D700 camera, Vivitar 19mm f/3.8 wide-angle lens.

I arrived at the Jericho early – approximately 7:00 p.m., and waited until the gates finally opened.

The panhead on my Vanguard Tracker 4 tripod will allow me to tilt my camera to 90 degrees (shooting portrait instead of landscape), and then I can slowly move the tripod from left to right.  I did the math.  I’ve got a 180-degree field of turn.  If I start shooting this picture at say 6:30 p.m. and finish it at say 9:30 p.m., that’s 180 minutes.  So one picture every five minutes, one picture every five-degree panhead turn.  I can do this.

I have to make this perfect.  I can’t let any outside distractions interfere.  No popcorn or diet cola right now.  I’m not taking a chance in the Jericho bathroom, I’ve seen cleaner lavatories at CBGB’s.  I’ve checked the forecast.  No rain.  Clouds I can live with, but not rain.  I’ve positioned myself out of the way of traffic; last thing I need is some clod showing up in a rustbucket minivan and ruining my shot.  And I don’t have time to watch the movie.  I need the sun at my back.  I can’t have the sun shining in my eyes while I’m taking this picture – er, pictures.

I start off with a stitched panoramic shot as a “before” image.  Just as a test.

Not bad.  But I need to relocate my setup.  I moved my gear closer to the snack bar, and marked off all the dimensions for my endeavor.

I would take a picture, rotate the camera five degrees, and then take another picture five minutes later.  If this worked, I would have sunlight and bright skies at the left of the picture, and stars and the movie at the right.

Snap.  Turn.  Wait.  Snap.  Turn.  Wait.

Oh wow, this is actually working.  Happy dance.  Happy dance.

You can see the daylight on the left side of the snack bar, and the light from the projection booth to the right as the skies get dark.

I can keep this up, I can rotate the camera all the way to the movie screen and –

Oh crud.  Someone decided to park their sportscar next to the white fence, in the only remaining spot available.  Crumbs.

I can’t back up the shot.  It’s already dark.  And I can’t continue shooting, if I run it through the panorama software it will look like there’s half a car parked there.  Nertz.

Oh well.  Maybe this timeslice idea can wait for another day.  At least I know it will work.  There’s the photo evidence.

Well, I’m here… May as well make the best of it.

The film continued.  I tried to watch it.  But it was difficult.  I mean, there must be some major plotline that cycled through the first five Fast and Furious movies, and I just… well… forget it.  I have to keep going with this project.

I walked around to the left side of the projection booth.  Maybe I can still get a good shot and make some chicken salad out of these chicken feathers.

It was dark enough that I could see the dirt and bugs and dust, all the particles that were captured in the beams of light that traveled from the projection booth to the screen.

Wait a second.

I’ve shot the projection booth and its light rays before…

Got an idea.

I opened the lens to its widest aperture.  I set the camera for a 30-second exposure.

And got this.

Hokey smokes, are those the trees in the background, captured in the light trail to the screen?

Awesome!

Okay.  Time to make this picture work.

I took a few more shots, and this time I adjusted the white balance on the camera.  It was a trial-and-error exposure, but it gave me an opportunity to play with white balance and see what would happen.

That’s 10,000 Kelvin. Skies are too reddish-brown for my taste.

That’s 2,500 Kelvin. Skies have too much purple in them.

And somewhere between that angry red 10,000K shot and the oversaturated purple of the 2,500K picture… I got this.

Got it. Around 3,000 Kelvin, it looks more natural. And I still get the light trail.

And just for a lark, I added a still shot from the movie into the screen, so it doesn’t look like everyone at the drive-in is hypnotized by some blank white screen. This is Fast and Furious 6, not John Carpenter’s They Live.

The first film ends.  Time for me to get into the Blackbird and drive home.  I’ve already seen The Hangover Part 3, which was the second feature.  I think I laughed a total of three times through that entire picture, and how can you make a Hangover film without an appearance by Mike Tyson?

I gotta tell you.  Although my original “timeslice” idea got screwed up, I was able to put something else together and create some magic.  And now I have more ideas on how to make both the timeslice concept work… and this new light trail photo series work.

You may call the Jericho Drive-In just an outdoor movie theater…

I call it a place of inspiration.