Lynn Marie Outdoors (Feltzen South, Nova Scotia)

After the morning session with the skull was complete, we took a break for lunch, hoping that by early afternoon, the fog would have burned off, and the day warmed up enough to facilitate an outdoor session. As luck had it, this was the case, with the fog retreated to the open ocean, and the late day sun shining down on the rocks. It wasn't hot by any means, but Lynn Marie assured me it was warm enough to model, so off we went.

6x7 cm film

The Lunenburg Bay shore near Feltzen has become one of my favourite places to work since I discovered it during the Cassandra Portfolio. To date, each time I have worked there I have come away with striking images, and the more time I spend working with its rich rockscapes, the more I can see to work with. The debate of working with a space I know, and working with a new, unknown space is a hard one; with a known space, I am always, to a point, working against what I have already done, and have to struggle not to repeat myself. In seeking a new location to work, there is always the risk of having to settle for a less then ideal location, because something better came up. With a new model, I prefer to minimize the variables, and stick to know I know will work for the setting. This gives me the best chance of producing strong images, as I know the possibilities of the landscape ahead of time, and the only variables are what the models bring to the session.

6x7 cm film

In contrast to the indoor work, where the poses were either drawn from Lynn Marie's own body movement, or from the juxtaposition of her body and the caribou skull, the outdoor session's poses all came from the lines of the land, and evolved from the communication between the model and myself. This process is hard to explain, and impossible to prepare a model for. The only way to learn how well a model will interact with the landscape is to set to work, and see what happens.

6x7 cm film

In Lynn Marie's case, there was no problem in the translation from working indoors to outdoors; her main interest in my work came from the landscape Nudes, and very quickly into the session, she expressed how much she was enjoying the process. Both because of the limited time we had, and the fact it was Lynn Marie's first time modeling outdoors, I worked only with the smaller, faster roll film cameras, keeping the emphasis on the flow of the session, as opposed to the results. The outcome was more then pleasing, with several very successful images.