Miranda XII

After a well-earned and restful dinner, Miranda and I set out again for Bellville, to work with the trees and fields with the lowering sun (I would have loved to stay right to sunset, but with two hours to drive back to Moncton, I had to balance the beauty of the light with the practicality of getting home at a reasonable hour).

Digital original

The fields and trees we worked with were directly behind the abandoned house we'd worked with several hours before, but provided a vastly different setting to work in. Over dinner, the sun had finally come out from the clouds, through over the entire session it alternated between sunny and clouds so swiftly that if the light was wrong for a particular image, all we had to do was wait a couple minutes, and it would change.

Normally I prefer to work with diffused light, with with the setting sun, but the angular light was perfect, flooding across the fields, and providing wonderful modeling to Miranda's figure.When we were working with the line of trees dividing two of the fields, the side lighting also picked up Miranda's hair colour, making the images particularly successful in colour (the warmth of her golden-brown hair provided a beautiful contrast to the cool greens of the grass and trees).

Digital infrared original, 8 frame stitch

When we moved out to work in the field itself, I changed my approach for the first set of images, asking Miranda to work with a single fence-post, and waiting until the sun was behind clouds before making an image. I took inspiration from a photo I'd made of Victoria in Alberta, when working on my first portfolio in 1999. Waiting for the light to be even helped set the delicate tonality of Miranda's evenly lit figure in the field off against the stark contrast of the sky, with the white clouds set against a dark gray.

The final images of the day were made of Miranda sitting among the Timothy grass in the field, with the low sun back lighting her figure, and setting it off against the surrounding grass, which became a sea of light gray on the infrared camera. After ten minutes of exploring with working in the field, Miranda and I called it a session, and headed for Moncton.

Digital infrared original, 3 frame stitch

Hindsight being perfect, this day proved the most productive of the portfolio - the weather was ideal, starting with high overcast, and ending with intermittent sun, and with a guide, we had the opportunity to work with a number of spaces we couldn't have found on our own. It was also one of the few days that permitted the use of my 8"x10" view camera (most of the other days were just too damp to bring it out on) .