Lymari at a Quarry

Digital original

The final session of Lymari's visit was my second try at working with a model with landscape in New Brunswick. Just like the first session, we spent as much time driving, and looking for a location, as we did actually making images. Finally, at a loss to find a better space, and running out of daylight, we settled on an empty rock quarry to work in, hoping to make some successful images working with the piles of rock and stone.

Digital original

It turned out easier then I thought to work with the quarry - the rock piles were arranged with repeating peaks and valley (I assume these came from the rock-thrower that had made them), and these provided enough form and shape for Lymari to work with. As with the Burntcoat Head session from a week before, the session was all-digital. I often wished I had the 8x10 along, for the increased detail and focus controls but the thought of waiting a month or more to see the images kept me firmly focused on working with the digital camera.

Digital original, 7 frame exposure blend

On one level, the rock quarry was a very limited space to photograph in, with nothing but the piles of rock for Lymari to pose upon. But by the same token, they provided us with a very simple space to work with, so the images focused upon the light and form. With such a minimalistic setting, the images focus even more upon the model, so the combination of pose, angle of view, and lighting are crucial to creating images that worked.

At the end of the session, I was quite pleased with the results; I would have been much happier if we had found a more dynamic or inspiring space, but given what we had to work with, we did exceptionally well. It is the test of a model to be able to work in such basic a setting and Lymari did well, spending a couple of hours working with the piles of rock and generating a number of very compelling compositions.