Lilly by Cangle Light (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

I haven't made any new images of Lilly since 1999 but as she is both a good friend and model, we'd kept in touch. So, when she recently called me up and suggested a candlelight session, I was more then enthusiastic.

6x7 cm film

As it turned out, the best time for Lilly was on a Friday night, so we convened the session late in the evening after I'd worked a 10 hour day. I borrowed a medium format Mamiya 645 for the session, seeking a compromise between the impractical 8"x10"'s image quality, and the lower quality provided by 35mm film. After spending some time catching up with Lilly and discussing the procedure of working with candles (Lilly'd previously only modeled outdoors and in the studio), I loaded up the 645 with Ilford's Delta 3200 and we began.

6x7 cm film

Working with the 645 proved more challenging then I had expected; the lens on the Mamiya was much slower then the 35mm cameras I'd previously used for imaging by candle, which made both composition and framing difficult. Initially, I was confounded by this, because I'd done candle nudes with a 4"x5" in the past with an even slower lens. It was then that I realized that with the 4"x5", I was able to use a quality loupe to focus the camera, whereas with the Mamiya, I was using a prism finder. Once I'd removed that, and was just focusing and composing with the ground-glass, the session went much more smoothly.

6x7 cm film

After almost a full year dedicated to working with the 8"x10", it was interesting to work with a camera that gave a decent sized negative, and yet maintained a decent size; that, combined with the 3200 speed film yielded some quite pleasing results. I am certainly glad I tried the fast roll-film, which, when combined with the medium format negative, lead to a nice combination of grain and print size - certainly an improvement over the 35mm version of the film, which was almost as grainy as Kodak's infra-red film.

Victoria in a Dark Room (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

8"x10" film

In the fall of 2001, Victoria began renovating a small house she'd bought, gutting it down to the bare wood walls. This presented an unusual opportunity for image making; the top level of this house, when stripped totally, was almost black, with soot-darkened walls and floors presenting a soft, dark backdrop against which to work. When I asked Victoria if she'd model in the room, she was enthusiastic - we'd talked about doing more work together and the chance seemed perfect.

8"x10" film

The 8"x10" camera was perfect for the session, as the light was so low that I had to make each image with the lenses at their widest-aperture. Normally, this would have a serious impact on the depth of field with the images, but because of the ability to change the angle of the lens, I was able to compensate easily for this limitation and have the plane of focus follow Victoria's body. The limited light available in the room was less of a concern than the possibility of Victoria getting a splinter or worse from the floor, so for much of the session, she kept her shoes on.

8"x10" film

The most surprising images of the session came at the very end, as the sun was about to leave the sky. I had made all the earlier images with the portrait (375mm) lens, but wanted to finish up the session with a composition using the wide angle lens - such a lens would provide a much better sense of the room then the portrait lens had done. The composition that most caught my eye was placing the camera looking straight out the window, and them shifting the lens down so it could see Victoria, on the floor below. On the ground-glass the results were awesome, but I was unsure if there would be enough light to capture it. In the end, the exposure for the two images was 15 second each, with a reflector being used to add a little fill light to Victoria's body. The two photos go well together and probably will end up being printed as a diptych in the same frame.

Victoria Dancing (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

On the first day I met Victoria, she was introduced to me as a dancer but in all our times working together, dance has only played a peripheral role in our images; Victoria has, from time to time, tried dance poses during a figure session but generally the dance and the modeling have remained separate.

35mm film

On this particular occasion, however, it was the dance that was the subject of the images. Victoria, and a friend of her, Jill, needed portfolio photos of their dancing, and I was more than happy to volunteer to do the job, though I'd never tried making dance photos before.

35mm film

Fortunately, the studio we had for the morning was full of light and this, combined with high-speed film (Ilford 3200 in black and white, and Fuji 800 in colour), made the process more then feasible. Working with the two dancers was quite a challenge for me as I am used to working with static subjects and, given that dance is all about movement, there were very few images that were totally static.

35mm film

After an hour of photographing, I'd learned a good number of things and made a number of successful images. The challenge of working with such a different subject was really enjoyable, and I hope to eventually return to work more with dancers, though first I have to overcome the issue of backdrops - more then half the successful images are marred by the pipes and radiators in the background.

St. John's Anglican Church (Lunenburg, Nova Scotia)

In a senseless act of vandalism, Canada's second oldest Anglican church was burned down in a Halloween night prank. A couple of days after the tragedy, a friend suggested a trip down to view the remains. We went and I was haunted by the devastation I saw behind the police-line tap: blackened and scorched walls, hand painted boards running with creosote and painted-glass windows lying shattered on the grass. After returning back to Halifax, and as a result of long conversations with me and on the phone, Joy obtained permission for me to visit the church site and photograph within its walls, behind the police tape and before the reconstruction work started.

8"x10" film

The first time I visited the church, it was not possible to approach it very closely because of the security measures. The second visit was totally different, with full reign being given to access the church and document the effects of the fire. The week that had gone by had changed the building greatly - the majority of the windows were now boarded over and much of the northern end of the building was wrapped in tarps to keep the weather out but, even with those modifications, the building was visually rich and heartbreaking at the same time.

8"x10" film

The richness came form the visual spaces created by the destruction - everywhere I looked there were possibilities from books emerging from inches of ashes, to creosote stains on the walls. The heartbreak was equally obvious in the same places, as my eye took in the hand-written notes still tacked to the bulletin board to the hand-painted patterns on the walls.

8"x10" film

I spent most of the day working in the church, carefully moving the 8"x10" camera from location to location and turning its detail-gathering ability on composition after composition. At the end of the day, I had over a dozen negatives which captured much of what I sought to convey - the beauty and pathos that existed simultaneously.