August 31, 2000

Bernice Models by a Stream (Canajoharie Creek, New Hampshire)

The last session with Bernice was at the old mill, which Bill had taken me to the week before. My first thought, when I saw the foundations and remains in the woods, was how perfect a place it would be for a model. After driving to New Hampshire, we met up with Bill, who guided us to the old mill, and assisted us through the session.
4"x5" film
My intuition was right, and almost as soon as we started working, Bernice and I had successes. The light was perfect, with an overcast sky filtered through a high canopy of trees providing a wonderfully even, delicate illumination to the entire forest floor. Where we started working, within the huge rock foundations of a building, the sky was more open, giving easily twice as much light as elsewhere in the woods. In some ways, working with the foundations walls was a little frustrating - they provided a background more than an environment, and much of the work we produced used it as such, with no attempt to incorporate the lines or other qualities of the rocks into the pose.
4"x5" film
We worked in a methodical way, having walked through the site before we started, and identified spaces we felt had potential. After finishing with the foundations, we moved along the stream, working on the huge rocks and with the large trees. These spaces worked a little more fluidly, with the pose and body placement coming from the lines of the landscape. As the day moved on though, the exposures lengthened; it was three o'clock when we began, and by five, the exposures were reaching into the second long range. I only had ten sheets of 400 speed film with me, so many of the exposures were made on 100 speed film, resulting in longer shutter-speeds than I would like, normally, but the poses were more than easy for Bernice to hold steady, and the resulting images are both crisp and well exposed.
4"x5" film
In contrast to the first day of work I did with Bernice, the work created on this day was more considered, and a little less hectic. There was time for reflection and consideration, which I think shows in the results. I am very pleased with the body of work she and I created over such a short period,. and hope to have the opportunity to continue my work with Bernice at a later date.

Bernice in the Woods (New Hamsphire)

Our drive to New Hampshire was shorter than anticipated, even with a stop for a picnic lunch, and Bernice and I arrived about an hour before we were to meet my friend who had kindly offered to guide us to the old mill site on the Canajoharie Creek where I'd photographed a week before.
4"x5" film
Not wanting to waste the time, Bernice and I drove up into the hills and parked in an out-of-the-way spot. We set off into the woods with cameras in hand until we found a space that spoke to us, at which point we unpacked and set to work. The forest, like the one in Long Island, was very different from what I was used to in Nova Scotia, and presented something of a challenge in terms of posing. Where Nova Scotian woods are often filled with granite boulders, the New Hampshire woods was uncluttered and barren; we had to substitute the roots of the trees themselves as posing spaces, working with one particular tree that had particularly pronounced roots.
4"x5" film
I often avoid the obvious poses, partially because I feel they have been done before, and also because I fear my work will become cliché. That has to be balanced, however, with what a scene calls for, and with the strongest of the forest nudes, a simple back-on pose seemed the most appropriate, with Bernice's strong shoulder and sweeping back contrasting nicely with the downward lines of the tree behind her. After making this image, however, I asked Bernice to "fall" to her right, until she came against the tree; the result is above, with a much more complex set of lines to the pose, and a wonderfully tense hand capping it all off. Time being what it was, we never really had a chance to take advantage of what this space had to offer; before we'd made a dozen negatives, we had to pack back up and head down the hill to meet Bernice, and begin the real pursuit of the day, working with the old mill's remains.

Bernice Indoors (Boston, Massachusetts)

My second day of work with Bernice began at five in the morning, which marked the beginning of the commute into Boston proper, though I didn't actually meet up with her until ten o'clock.
4"x5" film
After a second light breakfast, and some chatting about the previous day's work, we got things underway. I had hoped to do some indoor work with Bernice, and one look at her apartment told me where we'd work - a comfortable white couch in her living room was perfect.

Lit by a large set of windows, the light on the couch was soft and wonderfully descriptive, giving some beautiful highlights, and nice, flowing shadows. The posing consisted of asking Bernice to "get comfortable" and then exploring the possibilities. One of the strengths of the couch in her living room was it was perfect for lounging about, with large pillows at both ends. Too often in the studio I ask models to get comfortable on hard floors with only a pillow or two - it was nice to ask for something that for once was a reasonable expectation.
4"x5" film
The soft light, combined with Bernice's comfort with modeling, lead to a very strong sequence of images. We worked fairly quickly, moving between poses and perspectives fluidly. I focused on the complementary relationship between the lines and shadows on the couch and those of Bernice's body. I also worked more than usual with limited depth of field. I've been using this technique in the studio recently, but applying it with natural light was unusual for me. The results were very pleasing, with the sharply focused portions pulling the eye to one portion, and the elegantly out-of-focus areas seducing it elsewhere. The combination of the two makes for a very complex visual plane.
4"x5" film
The couch session was a good start to the day. Its pace was totally natural, with Bernice changing poses when she became stiff, and I asking for something different when I'd run out of possibilities. The light, combined with the setting and model, all added up to a perfect combination. The work only came to a close when Bernice and I agreed we'd exhausted the possibilities of the space. We were both eager to get on the road to the spaces we'd planned to work with later in the day, so after a good hour of working with the possibilities on the couch, we packed up the cameras and headed off to New Hampshire.

August 30, 2000

Bernice at Peddock's Island (Boston Harbour, Massachusetts)

When we finally arrived at Peddock's Island, our plans again changed, modified by the situation. I had initially expected to work with the woods on the island, but when I discovered that the area we'd arrived in was scattered with old abandoned buildings, I quickly became distracted.
4"x5" film
Most of the houses were inaccessible - and for good reason- most were in such dilapidated shape that they were pretty much beyond repair and were probably hazardous to enter. We did, however, come across an old hospital building in moderate shape. We worked in this place, playing with both the rich textures of the abandoned building, and with the wonderful light coming through the shattered windows and broken ceilings.

As with the stairway nudes, working for the first time with a new mode in such a space was a chance, as many of the poses involved second long exposures but the risk paid off, and only one of the ten exposures we made had any hint of motion blur to it.
4"x5" film
After we'd explored the abandoned infirmary, we walked back to the shoreline and down along the beach. As we'd arrived by the ferry I'd seen a number of large rocks and driftwood trees I'd thought had possibilities, and as we had to get the ferry back to the city, I thought it better for us to finish up on the shore, rather than back in the woods away from the dock.

This time my intuition paid off, and the rocks provided us with a number of good images - by this point Bernice was loosening up some and had begun to find her own poses, as opposed to relying upon me for direction. I used a 35mm camera as we worked swiftly from space to space to record the possibilities. When particularly strong poses, like the one to the right, occurred, I set up the 4"x5" and made a more refined considered response to the pose. Using the 35mm camera as a exploratory tool has become a more and more common in my work in the past year or so.
4"x5" film
On the whole, the first day of work with Bernice was varied and rich, and while we didn't actually work together for all that long, the time we did have was well used. The best element was the reality that we still had a full day ahead of us to work within, and that this day, which also yielded some excellent work, was also an ice-breaker for what was to come.

Bernice Posing in Fort Warren, Boston, MA

Like Yvette, Bernice had also contacted me through my website about modeling. When she'd first emailed, she was in Toronto, Canada, and while I visit Toronto from time to time, the chances of me doing some figure work in that area were slim. Several months later, however, she relocated to Boston. As I was already planning the New England Expedition, I had hoped to meet up with her to make some images.
35mm infrared film
We managed to get together during my second week in the area, and for lack of a better place to work, we headed out to the harbour, hoping to model in some of the more remote areas of the islands. Our plans went awry almost from the beginning, as we arrived on George's Island only to find that is was 90 minutes before the next ferry to our destination, Peddock's Island, was to depart. Not wanting to just sit and wait, I suggested to Bernice that we walk through the fort - being new to Boston, she'd never been out to the island and I thought she might enjoy seeing it. So we walked up to the fort, and I began the tour, starting with, naturally, the spiral stairs.
4"x5" film
As it turned out, her immediate reaction to the stairways was to ask if I wanted her to model in them. I was a little concerned about doing a figure session in such a populated area (there were other visitors crawling all over the fort), but as we had a clear line of site on the top of the wall, and I would be blocking the stairway with my tripod from below, we decided it was a small risk, compared to the possible results.
4"x5" film
The results, 30 minutes later, felt really good (one of the problems of working so far from home is that you never get to SEE the results until a week or more later). While the space was small and confined, the 75mm lens on the 4"x5" was more than up to the job, and Bernice proved herself almost immediately to be a strong model, setting up the pose clothed, and then, after checking for strolling visitors, quickly re-finding the pose nude for the final exposure. In some ways, this was a less than ideal way to begin a new relationship with a model - in a space with so little time for image refinement, or casual work, but at the same time, the work was worth the effort, and it made the rest of the day seem like a cake walk.

August 29, 2000

Fort Rodman, New Bedford, MA

After I had shot through all the 4"x5" film I had brought to Fort Taber, and was content that I have achieved about all I could for the day, within its walls. I moved outside it, to the later defenses of Fort Rodman, named in honour of the man who invented the gun so influential to the defensive plans of the United States in the later half of the 19th century.
6x9 cm film
Similar to Halifax, the defensive positions used in the 19th century to defend the harbours of New England also proved the best place to place the concrete and steel emplacements of the 20th century. The contrast between the cut stone and brick fortress of Taber, and the simple concrete gun emplacements and bunkers of the later forts that surrounded it is stark, a strong indicator of how swiftly change forced evolution of coastal defenses, and how little consideration was given to form over function. The need to have an effective defensive position won out over the traditions of the past thousand years of fort building. Where Fort Taber has overlapping elements with the earliest European stone castles, little of the structures of Fort Rodman could be mistaken for a Norman castle
6x9 cm film
Finishing the day working with the Fuji rangefinder in and around the batteries of Fort Rodman was a real pleasure. While my intention for the day was to work with Taber, I was not going to turn down the chance to build on my body of work as a whole, and I spent the last couple of hours of the afternoon moving in and out of the fort, immersed in its contrast with the elegant and refined structure beside it.
6x9 cm film
Just as the 19th century American forts reflected elements of the British defenses in Canada, the concrete bunkers that once held the quick-fire and shore batteries of New Bedford were almost interchangeable with those in Halifax. There were small differences, such as the height of the shield-wall, the stairs to the gun-shelter and magazine being sheltered by the shield-wall but, on the whole, they could have been designed by the same engineers. Being my first glance at American defenses from the 20th century, I was left with the desire to further explore them and discover what other nuances moved between them and their more European-influenced partners further to the north in Nova Scotia.

August 28, 2000

Fort Taber, New Bedford, MA

Fort Taber was the last addition to my itinerary; it is currently closed to the public, but one of our hosts managed to obtain permission for me to work within the fort. The fort is one of several 3rd System Forts of the same design; including Fort Popham, in Maine, that I'd worked with in 1997.
4"x5" film

The joy of photographing Fort Taber lay in the fact that I already knew the basic design, as it was identical to Fort Popham - but, unlike that fort, Taber was complete. The difference between the two forts was still substantial though, with Taber's interior showing the damage that several decades of neglect and abandonment. All types of graffiti covered almost every surface within reach, and much of the wooden walkways that lined the top level had been pulled up and burned. At first glance, the space was a cacophony of visual noise, but a distinct advantage of working in black and white was that much of the damage was minimized, leaving the dominant architectural forms undisturbed as the focus of the images.
4"x5" film

Drawing somewhat from the experience at Fort Adams, I walked around the first floor before I started photographing the fort, discovering what spaces I'd like to work with, and what was of little use. My biggest initial frustration was discovering that all the interior arches, so beautiful in Fort Popham, were interrupted by huge wooden support, added recently, presumably, to add stability to the structure. My initial disappointment was mitigated by the fact that every one of these arches was marred by graffiti, and would have been unpleasant to image, given the beautiful lines and arcs which I'd worked with in Popham. That said, there was still rich feast of possibilities to draw upon and I quickly got to work.
35mm transparency film
Without a doubt, the best visual feature of the fort was its spiral staircases. Unlike those I've worked with in Maine, these were enclosed in rectilinear rooms, creating wonderfully sharp corners and a strong dynamic quality that lead to very different images than those I'd made with the circular spiral stairs. It was in these close spaces that the 14mm lens again came into its own, providing me with a way to capture the entirety of the stair in one image. Again, as with the other views, the ever present vandalism restricted the images somewhat, but by pointing the camera up, and working with the underside of the steps, almost all evidence of the defacing marks was omitted. The warmth of the granite, combined with the soft quality of the diffused light provided a wonderful subject to work with. My only regret is that I felt guilty spending so much time (perhaps 1/2 an hour) on the stair alone, and moved on, before I really had covered all the possibilities.
4"x5" film
Overall, the day was a real pleasure, with me moving from space to space, methodically covering the fort floor by floor As I knew I only had the single day to work within the fort, I carefully allocated my time and film between the three levels of the fort. Because the layout of the fort was familiar to me from Popham, there was an odd sense of déjá vu as I walked through it. While I was always aware of the unfinished state of Fort Popham, the experience was a little like discovering the wonders of a brand-new-car after a lifetime of only owning used vehicles. With such a compact size and layout, I was more than able to achieve a good overview of Fort Taber in the day I spent photographing it, drawing from my previous experience with Popham and other sites to intuit which views and images were crucial to understanding the space as a whole.

I would like to thanks the office of the Mayor of New Bedford, for providing me with access to Fort Taber.

August 27, 2000

Urbanscapes (Fall River, Massachusetts)

As much as forts are the focus of my architectural work, I do enjoy working with other subjects - they just have to engage my enthusiasm.
6x9 cm film
The old mill buildings that are scattered quite heavily through the New England landscapes are about as appealing to my aesthetic as you can get without being either dilapidated or of military origin. On the drive from Maine to the Boston area, I watched with delight as the landscape, marked by the increase of the old mill sites on the horizons of the town and small cities we drove through, became more and more industrialized.
6x9 cm film
I only had an hour or so to photograph the mills in Fall River - one of the joys of having a smaller camera like the Fuji 6x9 rangefinder is that it permits me to work quickly in a spontaneous manner, yet keep the image quality high. I like the simplicity of the design, and the flat nature of the buildings is reflected in the images I made - the act of pointing the camera at the brick faces of the buildings and simply clicking the shutter seemed not only appropriate, but desirable. The rich detail of the images is a pure delight to me.

August 25, 2000

Fort Adams (NewPort, Rhode Island)

The real motivation for the New England Expedition was Fort Adams. I first learned about this fort in the fall of 1999 and the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to photograph it. As part of the American response to the British presence in North America, it fell well within the body of work I've been working on since 1990. Fort Adams, however, was on a far larger scale, containing more than five times the fire-power of the largest British fort in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In anticipation of my visit, contact was made with the Fort Adams Trust, to ensure I would have permission to work within the fort and to use my tripod.
4"x5" film
Upon arriving in Newport, I met with the Trust staff to show them examples of my work with the Halifax and Maine forts and to discuss my hopes for the work with Fort Adams. Following this, we received an extensive tour of the fort, given by the Executive Director who not only pointed out physical sites of particular interest but also provided a rich amount of anecdotal and historical information about the fort as a whole. This tour would prove to be central in shaping how I approached the documentation of the fort over the two days I worked with it, giving me a good sense of the space as a whole and permitting me to block it off into areas which would be easier to address systematically.
4"x5" film
Usually when I work with a new space, be it a fort or a place I am working in with a model, I photograph as I move through it, preferring the pleasure of discovering the surprises around the corners to knowing what lies ahead. With Fort Adams, though, it was for the best that I knew of the site as a whole before I began, as it was far larger than I had anticipated, even with the excellent websites I have come across on-line. After the tour and a break for lunch, the work with the fort began in earnest, focusing on the interior spaces which most closely mirrored those I'd photographed before. The northeast bastion is one of the most beautifully arched areas I have ever seen, with wonderfully interlaced brick arches providing the ceiling for more than ten gun emplacements. I spent more than an hour working with this small space, revealing in the wonderful complexity of the arches and the richness of the light that crept through the gun embrasures. Most of the exposures were in the range of ten to thirty seconds, giving some idea of how low the light was.

The remainder of my first day at Fort Adams was spent working my way through photographing the enclosed, vaulted emplacements on the northern curtain wall, and in a second bastion, on the north-west side. I also photographed a spiral staircase which lead up to the rampart on top of the western curtain wall and went outside of the fort to photograph the exterior by late afternoon light.
4"x5" film
While the fort had elements of both the British defenses and the New England structures of the same period, the use of brick for the emplacement facings and the over-all scale of the fort were totally new to me, and a constant source of surprise and pleasure. While some of the images I made were purely documentary, the vast majority of the images I created on this day were about visual beauty. The stark simplicity of these places, regardless of their original purpose, is something that always strikes me. The lines, deliberately designed with belligerence and violence as their prime consideration have a grace and elegance to them that is often missing in far more carefully designed public spaces of the same area.

I would like to thanks the staff of the Fort Adams Trust for their assistance in providing me with access to Fort Adams.

August 24, 2000

Fort Warren (Boston Harbour, Massachusetts)

My prime reason for visiting New England was to work with more of the American forts from the same era as those in Halifax. While the main focus was to be on the largest fort in continental North America, Fort Adams, I also had made plans to work with several other forts, including Fort Warren, located on an island in Boston Harbour.
35mm transparency film
The scale of Fort Warren is somewhat lost to the visitor until they actually begin to walk towards the main gate. From where you land on the island only the eastern flank of the fort is visible and, while it was more than large enough to impress, the reality that the eastern face is one of the shorter sides of the forts is not readily apparent until one ventures inside. Like the other American forts I have worked with in New England, I encountered reflections of the British defenses in the architecture of Fort Warren but with a different approach to the same issues.
4"x5" film
Probably the biggest difference between the two systems was how many more guns the American forts were designed for, in contrast to their British North American counterparts. The difference is quite astounding, with Ft. Warren mounting more than five times the British arsenal within a similar sized structure. Like some of the other differences, I suspect the root of this response to the question of static defense lies in the fact that, while Britain was trying to keep its empire secure and intact, the United States was concerned with the defense of home soil - the two having very difference definitions of success.

As with Fort Knox in Maine, I worked extensively with the Tamron 14mm lens within Fort Warren, finding its extreme wide-angle perfect for the close quarters of the spiral stairways, and the expansive, sweeping barrel vaults of its interior emplacements. In black and white, I worked in a similar manner, working almost exclusively with the 75mm wide angle lens (equal to about a 20mm on a 35mm camera) and focusing more on the spaces in their entirety as opposed to the small details. This was as much a response to the limited time I would have with the fort, as it was an outcome of the spaces themselves.
4"x5" film
As I worked through the north-western and western edges of the fort, I gradually became aware of its size. The largest fort in Halifax, Fort George, (also called the Citadel), could comfortably fit within the walls of Warren and many of the smaller forts that surrounded it would hardly be noticed beside the broad walls and extensive gun ranges of the American fort. After spending the better part of a day within the fort, I had documented less than a quarter of it, and totally ignored the exterior. While the day was more than successful, for an image-making perspective, it left me disappointed at how little of the structure I had actually worked with and hungry to return and continue what I had started. As the rest of the trip was still unplanned, I would have to wait to see if this could come to pass.

August 22, 2000

A Ruined Mill (Canajoharie Creek, New Hampshire)

I flew back to New England from Long Island, New York, early in the morning, and was met by a photographer, Bill, whom I'd known for a while through the web, and who'd invited me up to New Hampshire, where he lived, for the day. Bill had previously told me of an old abandoned mill site up in the New England Hills that he thought I might be interested in photographing. I was more than keen to see what he'd described. We drove directly to the space and walked back into the woods, until we came across the remains.
35mm transparency film
All that remained of the 19th century mill were the dry stone walls (walls without mortar) and a few rusted pieces of machinery - mainly the gears from the mill-shaft and wheel. The hour or so we spent walking around the space lead to a number of different images; the early work was created with the 14mm lens on my 35mm camera, using a 400 speed slide film. I was a little hesitant to use such a high speed film, but as I wanted to hand-hold the camera, and the woods were a little dim, it was all I could do.
35mm transparency film
After completing an entire roll of the 400 speed film, I shifted to a roll of Fuji's new Provia F, which while restricting my image-making to brighter subjects (mostly those in direct sunlight), gave me a much higher quality image. With this film, I focused on some sun-lit foliage, and the large rusting gear which lay amid the water in the centre of the mill's remains. The slow moving water had reduced much of the mechanism to a algae and rust-covered blob under the water, but where it emerged, it was definite and defined, showing very little wear or weathering. Working carefully to keep a sense of the roundness of the gear, I tried to make an image which showed both the deterioration that resulted form the years of slow decay, and the grace of the original.

Yvette at Sunset (Long Island, New York)

The closing of my day working with Yvette took place on the other side of Long Island; while the sunrise had been on the beach on the southern side, the sunset, on a long sweep of rocky beach, took place on the north side.
6x9 cm film
By this time, both Yvette and I were feeling the toll of the day; we'd been up and working for more than fourteen hours and it was showing, both in the energy levels and poses. With the sun setting, and the evening growing cool, we looked upon the last images of the day as less a closing of a good day's work, than as a series of images we had to get through, to draw the day to a close. This is not to say they were rushed, or any less important than any of the earlier work, but given the cool temperatures, the rapidly diminishing light, and the amount of torture I had already put Yvette, taking it a little easy with the last light of the day was a forgivable compromise.

As with Dolphin Beach at the beginning of the day, Rocky Beach was just about featureless, as far as setting which evoked poses went. And, like the morning, the most distinct feature was the light, providing rich, delicate side lighting to work with. While a variety of other successful images were made, for the close of the work Yvette I've chosen three strongly related images, made within ten minutes of each other, showing the power of the image to change the mood and portrayal of a space and model.
4"x5" film
Each image works well with the evening light, taking advantage of its ability to describe form, and yet they also take advantage of different photographic formats, to accentuate various elements. The 4"x5" image, to the left, has a richness of detail to the hair and skin that draws the viewer into the chill light of the evening light, while the softly defocused beach grasses behind Yvette provide a suitable counterpoint to the fluid lines of her body. With the colour image, made on the 6x9 rangefinder, it is less the detail of her body, and more the colour of the light that surrounds her that builds the emotion of the image, conveying more a feeling of warmth than descending night. And the final image, made on infrared film, has such a wonderful sculptural feel to it, that it more than makes up for what it loses in image quality against the larger 4"x5" negative of the first photo.
35mm infrared film
Without a doubt, this day marks my most intense single day of photographic work to date. It was not without its technical glitches, and contained more than a few amusing moments, but overall, it was a great success, yielding a surprisingly high number of successes, compared to the amount of images exposed.

August 21, 2000

Yvette Poses in Cathedral Pines (Long Island, New York)

Initially, I think we both found the Cathedral Pines disappointing - the trees were terribly impressive (to me at least) but their impact came from their height - straight up for close to 30 meters. It is pretty difficult to combine a human figure with such massive trees without encountering some problems. Our perseverance paid off however, when we found a beautiful tree with three trunks coming out of a single root-base. Of the day, this was the first space that called out for a Nude to be placed within it - as opposed to simply responding to light, I was now working with an environment that directly engaged me.
35mm infrared film
From this space, we moved on, and switched back to working with light - beyond the three-trunked tree there was a small growth of pines, with large, light needles close to the ground. I'd worked with pine needles on infrared film before, and knew they practically glow when struck by direct sunlight. Setting Yvette within the spray of branches, I worked with my 35mm camera to make a series of simple images - her standing side on to the light. The end effect was very pleasing, with a surreal background of white needles, and a lovely side-lit torso amidst them.
4"x5" film
The best image of the session (below) was also the last we made in the park. We were walking back from the end of the small park when we came across a fallen tree stripped of its branches, and arching across the forest floor. Immediately, I knew this space had potential, but it took a while to find it. The initial pose, lying along the trunk, worked well, but it lacked some of the energy and dynamism that I knew the setting had, so I challenged Yvette to work harder with the setting, asking her to twist even further into the space and see what happened. It worked, and a quick repositioning of the camera and a change of lenses made it all come together. Again, the 75mm lens came through, proving its worth with the powerful flow of lines through the image.
4"x5" film
Of all the places we worked on this day, the Cathedral Pines were, I think, the least productive. The space was beautiful, but in a way that was particularly hard to convey with the camera. The final image is stunning, however, and makes the entire session worthwhile, proving that you never know what you are going to get, or when in a session it will happen.

A Forest Session with Yvette (Long Island, New York)

The late afternoon of this day of furious image-making was spent deep within a coastal wood. The former site of a children's summer retreat, the woods where we worked were varied, from open grassy fields to older trees towering over the clearings, broad branches sheltering the grasses below. For almost all the time we worked in these woods, we explored the possibilities the trees offered - they were so different from the tall, straight trees of the Cathedral pines that we reveled in their spaces.
4"x5" film
Initially, Yvette worked within some smaller trees (in fact we spent more than five minutes clearing one of these of poison ivy, only to then decide the light wasn't right for what we had in mind), but further along, we came across an older, spreading group of thick trunks which offered up great possibilities. Because the trees sheltered their lower trunks, the light within this space was stunning, originating in the sun-lit field that was beside the tree and giving a soft, brilliant highlight appearing across the top of Yvette's body.
4"x5" film
From this tree, we moved further along, and came across an even more elaborate tree, with no less than four thick trunks emerging from the same root system. These trunks provided a rich area to work within, and occupied Yvette and I for the better part of an hour, with me trying to translate what was happening on the tree into successful images, and Yvette working with the lines and flow of the tree to come up with successful poses. Again, the strength of the space came as much from the setting itself, as it did from the light; the setting sun behind the trees, being softened and filtered through the leaves that surrounded it, gave enough contrast to the figure to provide a distinct side light to the poses, separating Yvette from the trees around her. It never ceases to amaze me how many disparate and successful images can be made in such a simple space.
4"x5" film
Of all the work Yvette and I did on this day, the images we made within this forest are by far the strongest, created thought the combination of perfect lighting, and a rich graphical quality, coming from the combination of strong poses and a striking setting. I think it is no mistake that these images came towards the close of the day, when Yvette had become comfortable with the experience and was more familiar with the process overall.

Yvette after a Shower (Long Island, New York)

The session on Dolphin Beach came to a close at 8 AM, as I had worked through all my 4"x5" film for the session, and more and more people were venturing onto the beach - not close enough to be a problem, but certainly serving as a portent for the hordes that were to come. We drove back to Yvette's, to grab some breakfast, permit me to change film, and allow Yvette to have a shower to wash the sand off her.
35mm transparency film
Before we headed out to work at our next outdoor space though, I wanted to do some colour images of Yvette indoors; I asked her not to dry off after her shower, and we worked on a small window seat she had in one room. We spread thin shears over the window to diffuse the light, and remove any of the outdoor scenes from cluttering up the images.
35mm transparency film
The colour work came fast and intuitively, with the images coming as much from the light as Yvette's position. As we worked, her body slowly dried, leaving her hair damp and curling - my favourite image of the session, to the left, wouldn't work at all had Yvette's hair been dry. The wonderful curl of the lock of hair, and the deeper colour of the wet hair above and behind root the image in a solid reality, while the rich, luminous quality of the skin pull it to somewhere else entirely. It is a wonderful mix of reality and fiction.
35mm transparency film
The more I work indoors with colour, the more I fall in love with the luminous, ethereal quality which it brings to the work. While I have a deep and ongoing affection for black and white, the difference between that work, and the colour indoor images is that of night to day. Black & White's beauty and delicacy comes from its subtlety and its richly detailed shadows, while the colour work draws all its impact from the delicate highlights it creates from the skin backed by white. There is no equivalent within my monochrome work, and, perhaps, this is why I am so drawn to it. With much of other colour work, I am often simply repeating my black and white vision on colour film, celebrating when both worlds mesh. With these images though, if they were monochrome, they would be totally different, and in my opinion, far poorer for the conversion. Off all the work I have created in colour, the indoor work, more than anything else, is about colour itself.

Yvette on a Beach (Dolphin Beach, New York)

Though we had stayed up past midnight the night before, Yvette and I were up before dawn, arriving at Dolphin Beach just as the sun slid above the horizon and into the day proper. We were lucky that the day was calm and clear, without a cloud in seamless blue morning sky.
35mm infrared film
Though Nova Scotia has beaches, they are nothing like what met my eyes when we stepped between two dunes, and down onto the beach - an unbroken white strip from horizon to horizon being raked by the warm morning sun (and backed by summer residences, on the other side of the low dunes). Knowing that the light would be changing by the minute, Yvette and I began working immediately with the long shadows being cast along the sand. Having only worked on a beach in morning sun once before, I didn't have much previous experience to draw upon (and the session in 1998 was on a beach with rocks).
4"x5" film
Initially, the hardest part of working on Dolphin Beach was its utter lack of features. Most of the spaces I work with are rich with textures, variation and possibilities which suggest images, but the beach was flat, subtle and near featureless. When the sun was just on the horizon, I worked with Yvette up on a dune, silhouetted against the sky, but just as the flare of the 14mm had caused problems in Fort Knox, they pretty much ruined these first images. Once the sun was a hands breath above the horizon, we moved down onto the beach plain, and made a series of images on the sand, using its flat simplicity to play with the long shadows from the new sun. From there, we moved swiftly to work in the water (surprisingly warm for 7 in the morning), and then back onto the beach.
4"x5" film
In reality, the session was spent less thinking about what to photograph, and more thinking of how to best keep my cameras away from the sand (working in a camera store has taught me nothing if not the danger of sand and water to cameras). That said, the success, and consistency of the work on the beach surprises me - work with a first-time model is seldom this strong, and the setting, though new to me, worked well. Given that so much of my attention was dedicated to keeping my gear out of the sand, the variety and impact of some of the images we made is really an accomplishment.

August 20, 2000

Yvette by Candle Light (Long Island, New York)

Over and over in these diaries, I state the obvious; how big an influence the internet has had on the evolution of my work. The Web provides a forum for me to exhibit my work, a way to fund the creation of my images (through sales to patrons), and, most importantly, it has lead to relationships with models that would never have occurred otherwise (Ingrid and Victoria are probably the best cases in point).
35mm film
Yvette had first e-mailed me in 1999, asking about purchasing a print. During our discussions of my work over time, she indicated that she'd actually be interested in being involved in my work in a more direct way. Given the distance between us geographically, we both agreed this wasn't likely to come to pass. When the expedition to New England was being planned, I got back in touch, to see if Yvette was still interested in modeling for me. She was, and we began to make plans. Initially we'd planned to work in the Boston area, close to where I was to be staying, but when a problem surfaced around the issue of finding places to work in in area neither of us were familiar with, we began exploring alternatives. In the end, a week before I departed for New England, it was determined it was a more sensible use of Yvette's resources and time for me to fly to Long Island, and work with her on familiar ground, rather than for her come up to Massachusetts to work with me.
35mm film
On a sunny Sunday evening, I boarded a 30 minutes flight from Providence, RI to Islip, NY, where I met Yvette for the first time. We drove back to her home, and spent the evening looking through her photo books, my portfolios, and discussing what it was she was looking for from the process we were about to embark upon. Though very enthusiastic about modeling, Yvette was pretty nervous about the actual first steps, and much of our discussions of the evening were focused upon reassuring her that the sessions we had planned would go well, and yield strong work worth her (and my) time.
35mm film
In order to make the upcoming work easier for her, Yvette and I had planned to make some photos that first night, working with candles and treating the session as an introduction to the process. Candle nudes are one of the most relaxing forms of indoor nudes, requiring the model to be still, and as such, they provided a good venue for Yvette to start modeling. The results were as I had hoped, both in terms of the images, which had some real successes, and in how it set at ease some of Yvette's qualms about the next day's sessions.

August 19, 2000

Returning to Fort Knox (2000) (Bucksport, Maine)

One of the wonders of architecture for me is how much it changes from day to day, no matter how many times I return to the same space. This is a change not brought on by growth, or decay, but simply by the wonder of light, and the changes brought on by different days and weather.
35mm transparency film
Fort Knox is one of my most visited sites in New England, and was the first American fort I photographed in 1997. It is also the most intact 19th century fort I have ever worked with. Many of the forts I photograph are amalgams of various eras of fortifications, with later evolution of military technology being build on top of (or right into) the earlier architecture. This leads to a wonderful stratum of military technology, readily visible to the knowledgeable eye.

On this visit to the fort, my interest was twofold: I wanted to continue my general documentation of the site, and I wanted to work more with the spiral stair, using a 14mm rectilinear lens on loan from Tamron Canada. Though I've been at Fort Knox numerous times, there are still elements of the site that I've been unable to record, and this visit provided the opportunity to photograph several areas which were previously closed to the public. The interesting thing to me about these sites is how much they mirror each other while still having an infinite number of variations on the same themes.
4"x5" film
The work with the spiral stairs was a continuation of the images I've made in the past. This time, however, I was using an ultra-wide angle lens, which helped open up the small spaces, and give a better sense of the sweeping arch of the stairs. As before, I worked with the underside of the stairs, avoiding the handrails and keeping the lines as simple as possible. The first (and most disconcerting) discovery with the 14mm lens was how much flare it exhibited. This is to be expected with such a wide lens, but as it came with a petal shaped hood attached, I had expected it to be somewhat mitigated. Not so. I had to be careful to shelter the lens from direct side light, but even with this care, many of the images I made had strong flare within them.
4"x5" film
In spite of the flare issue, most of the session was spent on two stairways, working with the 14mm lens, and taking advantage of its sweeping viewpoint to record the spiral stairs. The resulting images (at the top of this entry) are very different from my earlier stair images; for the first time, it was possible to include the entire stairway within the camera frame, and I was able to explore the possibilities of colour with the stairs. The stone used in Fort Knox is unusually warm for granite, and this, combined with the bright green of the algae growing on the rock, made the colour work particularly engaging. For a short (4 hour) session, the results were very pleasing, and a good addition to the other images I have made within the Fort.