December 17, 2006

Christine Indoors

Christine and I haven't worked together for some time, so I asked her if she'd be interested in doing some indoor photos. This was also motivated by the arrival of a large mirror, removed from a friend's house during summer renovations, and only recently relocated to my house use with photographic explorations.
Digital original, 5 frame stitch
I'd already produced a body of work photographing models on mirrors, but as I haven't done much work with mirrors since 2000, I was interested to see how my approach to the setting might have changed over the intervening years. Previously, most of my mirror work has been done in a studio with black walls and ceilings, so one of the challenges of doing this in my current location, was controlling the room reflections in the images. I set the mirror in front on the floor in front of a black backdrop that was extended all the way up to the ceiling. This was a work-around solution, and while I did frequently run out of backdrop in the images, it did give me the deep black backdrop I sought for these images, even though it was with some limitation, in regards to camera angle.
Digital original
Once we'd exhausted the possibilities of the mirror set-up (there are only so many ways to pose on a mirror that lead to interesting reflections), we briefly worked with the studio set-up, removing the mirror, and simply photographing with the black background. A number of very striking portraits were made with this arrangement, with Christine's body forming overlapping curves receding behind her face.
Digital infrared original
The final part of the session was spent working with natural light (all the other images were produced with flash), with Christine posing on the futon below the living room window. I have such a strong preference for natural light, that it is always necessary to hold it until the end of a session, if flash is going to be used, or else I never will end up using the studio lighting. I am still getting used to the visual possibilities of my new home, but there's no doubt of the successes of these images of Christine.

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