Bobbi Poses in a Studio

Digital original

As the year draws to a close, the days get shorter and colder; I by necessity begin to move my image-making indoors. While most of my indoor work is with available light, when the resources present themselves, and the situation calls for it, I do work in a lighting studio.

Digital original

At the end of October, a friend and I had made plans for me to come to Halifax to help her with some view camera photography she was having issues with; as part of these plans, I kept an evening open to work in the studio with Bobbi. She and I have produced a broad variety of work since our first session in May but, to date, we have never worked together in a studio (the irony of this, of course, is that she first met me at a Studio Lighting Workshop that I helped co-ordinate). I often complain about how frustrated I am with studio sessions but, truth be told, I do enjoy them, for all their shortcomings. In some ways, they function more as sounding boards and practice sessions, but they do function.

Digital original

I began the session working with the same mirror which had fostered the creation of the Simulacra work and then moved onto more traditional portrait and body-abstract images. I worked for almost the entire session with a black background, preferring the more stylized look to my more usual approach with white sheets. It was only at the end of the session that I switched to working with Bobbi lying on the sheets and I by far prefer the dramatic, stark nature of the black backgrounds.