Top Of The Stops, Aylesford

In a weird way stops have been a very big part of my life. When I'm talking about stops I really mean f stops, of course. Back in the old sheet film days at work getting the f stop right was very important indeed. So important that we always shot a bracket when it came to film and due to the latitude of the transparency film we used (very narrow) everything was judged by a third of a stop. It had to be so accurate that your duping copy had to be a third of a stop darker than your ideal transparency just for reproduction purposes. My now boss started off as a duper of transparencies which meant reproducing copy after copy of an image in film form.
One of my abiding memories was having to shoot endless sheets of 10 x 8 film of the painting Massacre Of The Innocents by Rubens. Waiting for them to come back from the processing lab was anxiety inducing as, if you got the exposure wrong, you would have to start all over again.
Even now when I am completely digital f stops still rule my world. I can tailor my studio flash right down to a tenth of a stop and yes, weirdly, it can make a tiny but important difference. When it comes to my own photography I often use aperture priority (with exposure compensation) so it's just as important in my own photography as it is with my professional work. That's why I took today's image, the word STOP really resonates with me!