Megan and I Head Outdoors (Prospect, Nova Scotia)

This day was perfect, and as Megan had no other commitments, we planned on spending the full day working, first at Prospect, then at Gold River. This session is the first time I have returned to Prospect since 1997. One of my favourite spaces to shoot, it has the double problem of needing a car to access and of being right on the frequently fog-bound Atlantic coast.

35m infrared film

We began working with a series placing the body on the spines of rock that run along the coast. Using an ultra wide lens on my 35mm camera, I used infrared film to create a luminous glow on Megan's skin, set against a darkening sky.

4"x5" film

The end of the work at Prospect focused on a Megan crouched in a small pool located high above the Atlantic. I'd discovered the depression in the bedrock in 1997 and it had changed little over the past two years. The only way to frame the entire pool was to use the wide angle lens and move the camera back as far as possible. A problem arose, however, as I moved back, because the rock slopped swiftly and it became difficult to position the tripod. In the end, the only way to make the image was with the shadow of the tripod legs in the lower portion of the image. By cropping off the sides of the image, the shadow of the tripod is almost imperceptible, and what was removed is totally unimportant to the composition of the image anyway.

After the rock-pool images, we packed up the gear and walked back to the car. We drove inland, picked up some lunch, and then drove to Gold River, where we finished up the day's image making.

6x6 cm film

Gold River has come to be a central point in my 1999 work; almost all my water nudes this year were explorations of a couple of hundred yards of the river. With Megan, we stuck to the upper portion of the river, near the road access, and where the water was moving the swiftest. We didn't have much time left in our day and wanted to make the most of what time and light there was. I worked exclusively with the Bronica at the river, working with a slow film and long exposures to produce enough water-blur to make the images please my aesthetic. The biggest problem with working on rivers on sunny day is getting exposures long enough to permit some water blur to occur; rating Agfa 25 at 6 ISO made this a simple procedure and yielded a very successful image. The strength of Megan's shoulders provides a solid contrast to the fluid water behind her.