I Shot Ye 709 Miles Away.

After reading a ton of bullshit and a little bit of valuable information about the spiritual importance of February 22, 2022, I set out to take some cool pics that would be unique to the day. I woke up yesterday morning on a mission to capture something exciting, just so I could have it to look back on, because secretly I’m a basic astrology heaux.

My first thought was to shoot photos of the kids on my college campus. This wasn’t a new or exciting idea, but I was hopeful that the universe would bring me my subjects. Lately, I’ve had this urge to build my photo portfolio again. After months of neglecting my camera and letting it collect dust, I popped in a new SD card in hopes of filling it with new memories.

As soon as I woke up I checked the weather. No sun, just clouds and a few showers of rain. Warmer than most days we’ve seen lately, the weather still concerned me. People would not congregate outside on-campus if the weather wasn’t nice. I needed sun, but that ship had sailed. I still packed up my camera and set off to school with a special prayer that God would bless me with a cool idea to document for the day.

Ironically I went all day without touching my camera. Busy with school, friends, and my internship I didn’t have the mental capacity or time to make this happen. So I left it alone, at the bottom of my bag.

With so much on my mind, I had forgotten that Ye was dropping his new album, Donda 2 and that it would be live-streamed later that night. Luckily my best friend reminded me once I got back to my apartment, and like thousands of others, I waited in front of my laptop listening to Ye’s heartbeat for hours.

When he finally came out, the first thing that captivated me was the visuals. The burning house combined with fog and the dramatic cool lights drew me in. The fiery silhouettes walking through the shallow pool of water kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. I was enjoying the moment so much that I wanted to share it through my own eyes. It was here that I realized I had my unique 2/22/2022 photoshoot idea. So I pulled my camera out from under the day’s homework and empty snack wrappers to capture the moment.

I shot these photos on the manual setting of my Canon 5DS. There were quite a few things I had to take into account when shooting from a screen. I had to consider the brightness of my laptop screen and how the picture showed up to my natural eye. I also had to consider that there was an external light in my room lighting the physical screen allowing the texture of the laptop to show. For the shots with high contrast, I wanted to focus on the silhouettes and colors, meaning I needed the texture of the screen to be invisible. This required me to dim the external light, along with the screen, and shoot with a higher shutter speed. The texture didn’t completely go away, but it did flatten it and it doesn’t take away from the photo. In some shots, I chose to keep the texture even after editing because I liked the elevated VHS feel that it gave. Because I was shooting from a video screen, which had a wide range of movements, I toyed around with my shutter speed ranging from 1/30 to 1/1250.

Some of the shots explore movement while others I wanted to focus on color or texture.

Overall I enjoyed taking these photos. It was a great de-stress from my long day, but also a challenge to further learn my camera and explore what it takes to compose a “good” image.

This could have flopped terribly, but surprisingly it didn't.

I achieved the results I desired.

10/10 experience.