Natasha Models Indoors

8"x10" film

This session was more traditional then the one with Giselle; with her, I'd worked exclusively with the digital camera. For this session, I used the digital extensively but, when an image was particularly striking, I turned to the 8"x10" camera to make a more considered image. This is my time-proven approach, and worked well, with more fleeting, transient moments being captured with the digital alone, and more classic, static images being exposed on the slower 8"x10" camera.

Digital original

When I was working with 35mm cameras, I developed a strong affinity for narrow depth of field. With digital cameras, this is a little more difficult to do, given the small sensor size. With the EOS 10D, I've overcome this by using a 50mm f/1.4 lens for my portraits, which permits me to make images like this, where Natasha's hair and lips are in focus, but the rest of the image fades into softer focus.

8"x10" film

This was a very successful session for a variety of reasons. First, having worked in the middle apartment twice before, I was much more comfortable with the space's possibilities; there was little time spent looking for the light or the right camera position, and much more effort put into the making of the images. Also, as the session was my fourth with Natasha, there was a comfort and naturalness to the process that is impossible to artificially create. As models grow more familiar with the process, and see the results from earlier sessions, they get a better sense of what is happening during the session, and are able to contribute more, both in terms of pose suggestions, and those little changes to a pose (pointing toes, relaxing feet etc) that take a good pose and make it perfect. All of this really came together for Natasha during this session.