Bobbi & Ingrid at Neville Lake

A tradition of sorts began on July 1 (Canada Day) in 1998 when I first worked with Ingrid. Since then, more than half my Canada Days have been spent photographing the Nude, usually connected to either Ingrid, or Miles (who initially introduced me to Ingrid). Though we had met up for a day's photography two days earlier, both Ingrid and Miles were quite interested in the idea of meeting up again to celebrate Canada in our unique way, so we set upon northwestern Nova Scotia as the meeting point and made our traditional holiday plans.

Digital original, 3 frame stitch

Not knowing the area, I kept my eyes open as we drove and, close to Parrsboro, where Bobbi, Miranda and I were planning to meet Ingrid and Miles, I spotted a possibility and after hooking up, we returned to Neville Lake, a provincial picnic park. The shoreline curved away out of sight form the picnic area, so after walking down the road a couple of hundred meters, and walking through the rather thick woods, we found ourselves in an area on the shoreline where we could work in the shallow water out of sight of other people.

Digital original

The lake turned out to be a perfect place to work on water nudes - the lake was so shallow that even a hundred meters from the shore, it was barely a metre deep. This meant it was perfect for modeling in, as most of the poses I liked were stretched out and the bottom was close enough that the models could lie half-out of the water without being right next to the shore. One of our first discoveries of the session was that the water seemed alive with pollywogs - both Bobbi and Ingrid had great fun catching the largest of these in their hands and watching them wriggle out of the water.

Digital original

The session overall had a great sense of play to it; Ingrid and Bobbi enjoyed the warm water, and the constant darting about of the dark polliwogs kept their eyes alight with glee - at times I had to fight to keep their attention on modeling. But the reality was that the space was so isolated that the models could afford to take the time to play; there was next to no chance of interruption and, while most of the spaces I work in are isolated, there is seldom such a sense of isolation and security that the lakeside provided. While the whole day was in front of us for working, we didn't know what other spaces would present themselves, so while we had the resources (plenty of memory for the digital camera), we worked and played away, making the most of the early afternoon.