The Year's First Session with Miranda

Miranda and I have not managed to work as much this year, partially due to the fact that she now has a full-time job, and partially due to the plans we have made for a New Brunswick Portfolio, to be produced in July. Fortunately, on this particular afternoon, Miranda was available, so we headed out to a new location, a river near Pennant Point.

Digital infrared original, 2 frame stitch

I had seen photos of the river before, but wasn't prepared for how wonderful it would be to work on with a model - there were plenty of conveniently placed rocks in the river, and while the water flow was significant, it was nothing dangerous to walk through. All this, sadly, was offset by how bright and sunny the day was - using neutral density filters I was able to get exposures down to 1/4 of a second, which isn't nearly long enough to get the fluid water blur I am so attracted to in water Nudes.

Digital infrared original

Working from the rocks around where I'd posed Miranda, I made a number of different compositions and attempted a number of multi-frame stitches, to increase the final image resolution. I say attempted, because while the day was generally bright and sunny, there was low, fast moving clouds that occasionally offered tantalizingly beautiful light for fleeting instants. Numerous times, I started a stitch, only to have the light shift half-way through, effectively disrupting the process. About the only positive outcome of this is that it led to the creation of a number of interesting incidental compositions, originally intended to be part of the stitch, but viable images all on their own merit.

The end of the session saw Miranda and I moving to the edge of the river and working with the trees that bordered it. Several had grown at very strange angles, flowing out and over the rocks and providing a perfect space for a model to perch.

Digital infrared original

While I did make some 8"x10" negatives during the session, all the water-orientated images were made with the infrared Nikon D70, taking advantage of the smaller camera's inherent speed and ease of handling. Even in the harsh sunlight, the infrared camera did a wonderful job rendering what caught my eye and converting it into a striking photograph.