My First Figure Session in New Brunswick

Usually August is my busiest month for photographing, being that it is the warmest month of the year. This year, however, because of my move to Moncton, NB, most of August has been spent packing and unpacking, and renovating the new house (including building the new darkroom). While it was frustrating to have to take so much time away from making art, it would have been impractical to delay moving until later in the fall.

Digital original

All that being said, Lymari, a photographer/model from New England, has made a regular event of coming up to visit every summer since 2001, and this year was no exception. In some ways, she was short changed this visit, as much of my attention was focused on the renovations and unpacking, but all the same, we managed to fit in some time for photography.

Digital original, 14 image stitch

In the end, we settled on working in a section of beach directly below a small provincial camping ground, but separated from it by a high cliff and some fencing; this ensured that anyone approaching would have to come from the left or right, but couldn't come upon us from above. The setting was more the adequate, with the warm Northumberland Straight along one horizon, and the high cliffs on the other.

Digital original

After all the time we spent looking for a space, the session was surprisingly short; though I was working with the Canon EOS 10D, I worked slowly, carefully composing each image, and making most of them as multi-frame stitches. It was only about forty minutes into the session when we spied some kayakers paddling up along the beach, and decided we'd better end the session before they came close enough to see Lymari and I working (it is better to be cautious than foolhardy). So, with fewer than half-a-dozen compositions recorded, we gave up the beach to the kayakers and headed home. I did manage to make several strong rock-abstracts on the way back to the car, but this was more to off-set the frustration of not being able to continue to work with Lymari, than it was a real exploration of the rocks and shoreline.