Sunday afternoon at the Art Gallery of NSW

Being in the frame of mind to visit an art gallery this weekend, I thought this might be a good post for the retrospective project.

This is an image I made almost exactly two years ago, during a Sunday afternoon visit to the Art Gallery of NSW. The triptych painting, Three studies from the Temeraire by Cy Twombly, is one that I’ve admired for many years.

I wanted to photograph people walking past the painting as blurred silhouettes, planning from the outset to convert the photo to a black and white image. AGNSW permits photography in this part of the Gallery, but the rules are no flash, no tripod. No problem there … the work is hung beneath an enormous skylight that illuminates that wall magnificently and casts the foreground into shadow. I settled on a very small aperture, for the greatest depth of field, and the slowest possible shutter speed that I was confident of using without a tripod. And then held my breath while I pressed the shutter release.

I was fortunate to have these two women walk past, deep in conversation, at just the right time!

Shooting details: Nikon D80 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens; ~1/13 sec (7692307/100000000 sec according to the Exif data!) @ f/16, ISO 200; hand-held; natural light; aperture priority metering.