Miranda Returns to Herring Cove

With few exceptions, the pattern of my work this summer has been packing as many photo sessions into my weekend visits to Halifax as possible and then returning home to Moncton to process and edit the work I've made. The more I've followed this approach, the better I've become at planning my time, fitting as much into the weekends I have in Nova Scotia.

Digital Original, 3 frame stitch

On this particular weekend, my first session was with Miranda; she had been along with Bobbi for the afternoon we'd spent working at Prospect but had spent much of the time working with Jay. I'd initially planned to spend the whole afternoon working with Miranda, but she only had a couple of hours free, so I decided to stay closer to Halifax and work at Herring Cove - the same location where she'd modeled solo for the first time three years earlier.

Digital original

The lighting for the morning was as close to perfect as you can find - there was a thin layer of fog over the landscape - not enough to chill the air, but more than sufficient to diffuse the sun and even out the light. Because of the limited time, I decided to work only with the digital camera but I took full advantage of Miranda's patience, and made the majority of the compositions as multi-frame stitches. It also turned out that almost all the images were stronger in colour, so I took the unusual step of keeping all the images in full colour - this has only really happened in the past when I have worked with models at sunset, but in this case, Miranda's hair was so similar in tone to the warm granite rocks that it seemed a shame to remove the colour and render everything in black and white.

Digital original, 5 frame stitch

Given that this was our second time working in the same space (albeit separated by three years), it was very interesting to see how Miranda and my working process has evolved. In the intervening years, her relationship with my imagery has grown to the point that a session flows very smoothly with her and I moving over the landscape in a kind of choreographed dance. I'll point out a setting and she will work with it, refining my suggestions into a working pose. It isn't that our earlier images were any less successful, more that the same images take far less effort today.