Natasha's First Session

My work is very much dictated by the world in which I live; it flows in cycles, just as my late spring to early fall work embraced the great outdoors, my late fall to early spring work revolves around enclosed spaces, either available light session, or studio sessions using electronic flash. I'd love to spend the entire year working with the Nude in landscape, but Nova Scotian winters preclude this, so I change to working indoors.

35mm infrared film

Before 1999, I spent most of my winter months in hibernation, using the time to do darkroom work and assimilate the images from the previous year. From that year onward, however, I have pretty consistently photographed year round, as subjects (people or places) and resources permit.

35mm infrared film

Like Kim, Natasha's first exposure to my work was at the the release of the "Revealing Beauty" documentary in November. After meeting and talking, we decided for various reasons to place
our first session in the lighting studio, where we could make the most of the time Natasha had to model (two days after the session, she was leaving Nova Scotia for two weeks).

Digital original

As it turned out, only about half the session was spent using the studio flash; one of the cameras I was using for the session had problem with its flash synch; after fifteen minutes of frustration, I changed the session around, opening up some of the blinds on a studio window and changing the session over to a natural light one. After suspending a white cloth for a backdrop, I had a more than adequate setting to work within (there is a certain amount of irony behind being in a studio with thousands of dollars of lighting, and resorting to using available light). Truth be told, as much as I enjoy working with the electronic flash, the most dynamic part of this session was the available light portion. Mostly, this was because of the beauty of the light coming in through the diffused studio windows, but also it was the simplicity of working with the model in response to the simple, unchanging light, as opposed to positioning the lights and reflectors in the studio, and having a near infinite combinations of lighting possibilities.

6x6 cm film

As seems to be the case lately, this session was predominately a portrait session, taking
advantage of Natasha's comfort with the camera. Split between the available light images
against the white sheet, and the studio images against a black background, the session shifted
back and forth between Nude portraits and more traditional nudes, focusing upon Natasha's
body alone.