Miranda VII

The final session for the day took place less than thirty minutes south of Cape Tormentine . We'd decided to continue south along the coast, and see if there was any other space that caught our eyes. For the most part, this area of New Brunswick is flat and densely forested with spruce and pine trees, but occasionally these are broken by fields or houses, logging roads, or narrow tracks leading out to the sea. It was just one of these spaces, a long broad field, which caught my eye as we were passing it – not the field in particular, but the broad beds of Queen Anne's lace that were scattered through it.

Digital infrared original

After parking the car, Miranda and I headed into the field – there were a number of particularly thick patches of the tall white flowering plant, and we selected one of these to work in. I chose to use a longer lens, my 50mm portrait lens, for the images to begin compressing the space, and give some sense of depth to it through selective focus. In initially I had thought the images would be all in colour, with the pale white flowers complementing Miranda's skin, and the green stalks and leaves providing a counterpoint, but when I made my first exploratory images with the infrared converted DSLR, I knew that would be the way to go, with the surrounding field becoming a sea of delicately detailed white with Miranda emerging from them.

Digital infrared original

The session is the field was quite brief, and apart from Miranda having to duck down a couple of times due to cars passing on the nearby road, without incident. As much of the final image focused on pose, once the camera was set up and the proper exposure determined, the session was really about working with Miranda to generate spontaneous, comfortable poses that worked well with the setting.

Digital infrared original

The final image of the session is actually my favourite portrait of Miranda from the portfolio – as I was packing up my equipment, I turned to find her taking a photo of me. I returned the favour, and was pleasantly surprised with the results, a one-eyed Miranda standing in a sea of luminous lace.