After the Shower (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

35mm transparency film

After finishing with the images in the shower, Joe, Billie and I moved into the front room, where I'd produced a series of inspiring images last spring. Ever since my first session with Cheryl, where I'd discovered the wonderful effects of working with the light in this room, I'd wanted to explore the possibilities of a couple as the subject, but did not have the opportunity until now.

Similar to the sessions with Cheryl, this work drawn on the contrasts between the skin and the room around it. Working with high-speed slide film, I managed to make all the images by hand-holding the camera, thereby keeping the spontaneity and freedom of the session intact. I tried from time to time to make large format negatives of some of the poses, but the time and patience required for such images destroyed the pace of the images, and seldom lead to anything usable.

35mm transparency film

The results of my first attempt at combining couples images with the luminous, natural light approach was encouraging. My favorite image, above, has a perfect contrast between the cool sheets and the warm skin, and an excellent pose depicting everything I wished to convey. The quality of the afternoon's light contributes to the photo, and the pose is something that would have been impossible in the original idea (on account of there being too many limbs in the image for a solo model).

35mm transparency film

The only real frustration with the session was the low light level, and the lack of "glow" to the images. By far the best light to work with in the front room is direct sunlight, in the late afternoon, but the weather precluded this. The only images which came close to mimicking the luminosity of a sunny day were a series of sitting portraits we did at the end, set against the white sheet I use to diffuse the outdoor light.