Megan by Candlelight (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

35mm film

This was another session with Megan, in a less traditional setting - a candle-lit room. I had done candle nudes in the past, but I felt new work was in order, and as I had Megan as a model, all we had to do was get down to business and make the images.

35mm film

The one thing about candle-lit images is that the exposures are long - even with Kodak T-max 3200 rated at EI 1600, my exposures were in the realm of 1 second at f/8. With the 120 negatives I made, I used Ilford HP5+ rated at 800, and the exposures were up to about 8 seconds at f/16 after factoring reciprocity failure. One advantage of the roll film over the higher speed 35mm film was that it was being shot on a view camera, and I could take advantage of camera movements to combat the shallow depth of field I had to put up with to get reasonable exposures.

4"x5" film

The most successful candle nude, on the left, was made towards the end of the session - the radiant light from the candle and the subtle fall off over the curve of her hip and back translated exactly from what I saw onto film, make the candle session a wonderful success.