A Test Evolves (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

6x6 cm transparency

This studio session was intended to be simply a test of film exposure-speeds, but it ended up yielding a couple of good images all the same. One of the most surprising was a portrait off one of the film test rolls; a pensive moment as I was cranking through film. Once I had finished the couple of rolls of film tests, Cheryl  had had some ideas for poses, drawn from our previous session in November. 

6x6 cm film

Quite early into the work, we happened upon a pose which was surprisingly strong. I quickly switched the background to white, changed the lens to a wide angle, and made the image above. 

The final results are an excellent example of the power of photography to control a viewer's response. With the wide angle lens and the high-key approach, the image becomes all about the models pose, and the interweaving of limbs. The original image, drawn from the model's own ideas, was all about the heavy negative space above the figure, but by moving the pose onto white, and centering the pose in a square (the full negatives on a 120 camera, like the borrowed Hasselblad I was using), it changes it radically. 

6x6 cm film