Gizelle in Halifax

Digital original

Similar to the session with L_ earlier, this session was spent working with the model below the bay windows, taking advantage of the copious light cascading down upon the sheet-covered mattress. Many of the first images of the session were spent working parallel to the model, with Giselle's body directly below the window and myself. Working with the soft, but angular light provided a rich sense of form and volume. All this was set against the lines of the white molding below the windows -  a beautiful juxtaposition of curves and fluid lines against straight edges and angles.

Digital original

After making the most immediately obvious images, I moved to more experimental approaches, working with a new Sigma EX 17-35mm zoom lens I'd recently acquired. I am not a big fan of zoom lenses, but with the 1.6x magnification factor of the EOS 10D, a wide-angle zoom is about the only affordable way to get an ultra-wide lens. While I have a penchant for using wide-angle lenses outdoors, it is much less common for me to work with them indoors; usually the perspective distortion is objectionable, and the space is too small to use such lenses effectively (a notable exception to this was a nude made in 1999).

Digital original

Both the portrait nude and the image of Giselle's back and hip take full advantage of the strong perspective of the 17mm lens (equal to a 24mm lens on a 35mm camera). I hadn't thought that the small indoor spaces I normally work in were cramping my style, but both these images make me realize how much more can be realized in larger spaces (not to mention that there is more room to spread out with equipment).