Christine in the Woods

At the end of the studio session with Christine, we made plans to meet up again, but this time to work more in my style, focusing on the Nude outdoors. As much fun as the previous day's studio session was, the images (fashion photos) were very much just for Christine's use.

Digital infrared original, 39 frame stitch

Christine had done some figure modeling before in the studio, but apart from one short session earlier in the year, she, hadn't worked outdoors previously. After walking for ten minutes to a location I'd worked in several times before, we started with some very classical images of her sitting among the granite rocks of a glacial till. I was using a borrowed telephoto lens for the session, so I made a large stitched image (39 frames) of the most successful image, using the lens' large (f/2.8) aperture to keep the depth of field shallow. 

Digital infrared original

After our first set of images was complete, Christine had become more accustomed to the process as a whole, and began suggesting locations or poses. For several hours, we worked our way through a visually rich landscape, predominantly focusing on her posing on and among rocks, but occasionally we managed to find poses that worked with the spring-bare trees, or even the small lakes, and the shallow Canaan River that flowed near the glacial rocks.

Digital original

Several times over the session, Christine and I worked on nude portraits, but it took some effort on both our parts to make these look natural and relaxed. So much of the photography that Christine is regularly involved with is fashion-based that it was her natural inclination to "pose" every time I would make a composition that was obviously a portrait. Over the afternoon that we worked together however, she gradually relaxed enough for several fine nude portraits to be made, portraits which seem to be very much about her as a person, not just about a pose struck for the camera.