Bobbi in a Lake at Sunset

I seem to have developed something of a fascination for sunsets and water images - I think this is one of the areas where my shift to digital is most apparent. The freedom to work in colour when it is appropriate has unleashed a whole new area of possibilities where before they were lost to the black and white film I worked with.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

Given temporal realities, we didn't have the time to make the journey to Martinique Beach, where I have had such successes in the past with sunset nudes. The closest water that I thought would work was Chain Lake, on the outskirts of Halifax, so as the sun moved below the horizon, we raced from the car to the lake, arriving with enough light to work for a little while.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

Unlike Martinique, where the beach was sand and gravel, the bottom of long lake was decayed leaves and mud, but with some trepidation, Bobbi ventured in and we started working. It was very different from the beach, as the water gained depth relatively quickly, so I had to remain relatively close to shore, and was limited to having Bobbi move around in the water, as opposed to moving myself, to gain an alternate point of view. I also was forced to focus on working with the digital camera, as working with the 8"x10" camera would have been both too slow, and too limiting, given how hard it was to move around in the water. In fact, after working for fifteen minutes in our first location, I suggested we quickly move further up the lake - the light was fading by the minute, but I wanted to be able to move around her more and knew of a space further up the lake where that would be possible.

The move ended up taking a frustrating location and changing it to a fully functional one. The light had dropped even more by the time we started working in the shallows, but with longer exposures (four seconds) the images were perfect - the water blurred slightly, smoothing it out into a reflective glass sheet but Bobbi stayed still enough to be an anchor in the frame.

Digital original

Like all my other sunset session, the light faded well before either Bobbi or I ran out of energy, and we likely spent more time walking in and out of the space then actually working, but the results of the session were worth the efforts. I was pleased with how different Long Lake looked from my other sunset session, and am wondering if this will end up a motif - colour sunset nudes, as a subset of my water nudes.