A Second Session with Colleen

Digital infrared original, 10 frame stitch

As soon as I had the confirmed dates for the Naked in the House exhibition, I got in touch with Colleen to see if she'd be available to work with me during my visit to Toronto. Our first session had gone very well and I was looking forward to building on those earlier images.

Digital infrared original

Colleen was able to spend the morning working with me and, after an early morning flight from Moncton, I arrived at her door with camera in hand and just half an hour later we were working. We began the session with a series of portraits but swiftly moved onto more abstract images, working with her body on a couch the couch had been delivered shortly after our first session together, so we didn't have the chance to work with it before).

Digital infrared original, 7 frame stitch

The most engaging part of the session began when Colleen began to work with a piece of jewelry she thought might be interesting visually. Normally I don't use much in the way of props in my work (apart from skulls, which I have always loved combining with the Nude) but, in this case, the flow of the necklace, combined with how the dark red stones looked in infrared made all the difference. We began working with the necklace around Colleen's neck and then finished experimenting with it on the small of her back - both yielding interesting results and while I can't quite see an entire series of Nudes with jewelry developing out of this discovery, it certainly was a surprising success.

Digital infrared original, 7 frame stitch

The final part of the session was dedicated to working with Colleen and some toe shoes she had suggested posing with. I was initially hesitant to work with these, as they seemed a little cliche, but given that the only thing an experiment took was time (one of the joys of working with the digital cameras) I decided to see what would come of the combination. As it turned out, the shoes worked surprisingly well, giving Colleen a focus to work with in the images, and while perhaps not the most logical combination, it certainly made for some engaging photographs.