Lisa Indoors

Digital original, 5 frame stitch

Normally, I'd almost never work indoors, when an outdoor session is possible (thus, from April to October, indoor sessions are a rare beast), but this afternoon was dreary and wet, so Lisa and I opted to work indoors.. This was my first session in my new home in Halifax, and would serve to give me some idea of what the space would be like to work with models in.

Digital original, 6 frame stitch

I followed my standard modus operendi, covering the large front window with one white sheet, and draping the couch with a second. The result was exactly what I'd hoped for - a near reproduction of almost every other indoor space I have used this approach with! When I began working with white sheets to diffuse room light and cover objectionable pillow patterns and the like in 1999, I hadn't though about how uniform the resulting images would become, regardless of the location (I have used this approach in easily a dozen different locations, in three cities in two provinces).

Digital original

As Lisa and I had first started working together indoors, the session was nothing new for her, but having worked outdoors several times since, she was quite aware of how different the process was. An outdoor session is driven and motivated by the surroundings, both in terms of setting, and light. By contrast, an indoor session revolves almost exclusively around the model, to the exclusion of everything else. While the illumination levels will vary between locations and times of day, the actual look and style of the resulting images is nearly identical, with all the focus and attention being placed upon the model's body. For some models, this can be disconcerting, but in Lisa's case, she reveled in the attention, and from start to finish, helped me make a very consistent series of strong images, be them portraits or body abstracts.