At first glance, this photograph might appear not to be too complicated. However, a considerable amount of thought and planning was required to pull it off.
I got the assignment from the architect who was looking for a variety of photographs of his completed project. I made an appointment for the day of shooting, only to find out that a truck load of gravel had been left in the driveway. A new appointment was more successful, and I was ready to shoot. That, of course, also included interior photographs. Those were delayed because after completion of building the house, it had been unoccupied for a while. That resulted of the floors being covered with dead flies and other insects. After a good cleaning, I was able to continue shooting.
The weather cooperated and a nice, clear evening was expected. That was necessary because I had planned to shoot the house, with all interior lights on, against the darkened blue sky. That might not appear to be particularly difficult.
I had chosen to use a 4x5 camera with transparency film, although any of my Leicas could have been used as well. One of the difficulties was that, with film, the shot had to be done with one, single exposure. That, in turn, required careful matching of the exposure of the interior of the house with that of the sky.
One common practice, especially with large format cameras, used to be to take polaroid test shots to determine accurate exposure. I have never subscribed to that practice, instead I have always relied on determining my exposure with a handheld light meter. Besides, in this particular instance Polaroid test shots would not have worked.
It was important to get the exposure of the sky just right, not just to match it with the exposure for the interior but also to obtain the right shade of blue. At this time of day, the lighting of the sky changes quite rapidly and a Polaroid test exposure would have taken much too long to give accurate information alone, in addition of changing from the polaroid film holder to a film holder with the transparency film.
To get the intense blue of the sky, combined with the warm colors of the interior, I decided on tungsten balanced film. That assured an intensely blue color in the sky along with the warm colors of the interior. Even though I used tungsten balanced film, the color temperature of standard, incandescent lighting is noticeably lower than that of the 3200K of the film, assuring a warm color rendition.
To assure an intensely blue color in the sky, I decided to underexpose the sky by about one stop. Incident light readings of the interior established the actual camera settings. After that, it was simply a matter of spot readings of the sky, just above the house, to establish the correct moment to expose the film.
I don’t recall the actual exposure time, but it was long enough to enable keeping the front of the house, including the landscaping, from getting too dark by using an electronic flash, set on manual, and fired several times.
No automatic exposure control or any other of the automatic conveniences found in today’s cameras would have been able to render this shot to any satisfaction. It is still helpful, often even necessary, to have in depth knowledge of photography to be able to accurately work our cameras in out of the ordinary situations.
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