A Demonstration Session with Jesse

One unexpected development in my photographic work in recent years is my involvement in teaching and photographic education. I have always presented on my work in conjunction with my exhibitions and shows, but increasingly I have been asked to present on my work independently, speaking to students or photographers, and discussing my techniques and approaches to working, both in terms of technology (large format and digital) and subject matter (the Nude).

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In 2004, I was invited to present on my work to the New Brunswick Craft College photo program in Fredericton.This year, the same invitation was repeated. One component of the presentation is a live demonstration of my working approach in the studio - for the first visit to the College, Miranda was kind enough to come up from Nova Scotia but for this year, I felt it would be preferable to work with a New Brunswick model. As things turned out, Jesse was available, and willing, so after one cancellation for snow, we set off a week later (the day after another major snow storm) for Fredericton.

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As with my first visit to the College, the presentation was well received (the students all had an assignment on the Nude due two weeks after my visit, so there was extra motivation to pay attention from their perspective). The studio session was, as always, too short but, as with the previous demonstration, in addition to presenting various techniques for lighting and framing an image, I actually managed to make a number of images that I am very pleased with.

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As with my first visit in 2004, I was struck by how different it is to work in front of an audience, and try to verbalize the decisions that lead to the making of an image while creating it - Jesse was wonderfully patient and her comfort with the situation and process only made the experience stronger for myself and the students of the Craft College.

Lynn Marie by Natural Light

In some ways, I felt like a refugee during this Halifax visit - the trip was planned for myself, Joy and Zoë to spend three night under three different roofs, spreading ourselves around so as to avoid overstaying our welcome. Our final night was spent at Lynn-Marie's; the easiest way to insure we worked together twice during the visit was to stay overnight and have a short morning photo session before we returned to Moncton.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

I had hoped for the morning session to be with available light but the day dawned snowy and gray, so we had to opt for plan B at the start of the session. I had brought a borrowed studio light (thanks Kevin) to use at Miranda's house, so I simply set it up in the front from at Lynn-Marie's and we began working. Because the room had a white ceiling, I simply pointed the flash at the ceiling and worked with the even, diffused light that provided.

We started the session working with Lynn-Marie lying on a long red couch she had against one wall - the couch was perfect for her to recline on, and with careful multi-image stitching I could keep the image resolution high and still show the full length of the couch. There was actually not a lot of variation possible in regards to the pose on the couch but, given that the session was by necessity a short one, it provided us with a good opening space. Between the full-body poses and closer-composed details and bodyscapes, I felt quite pleased with the images we accomplished in the first half-hour of the session.

Digital original, 3 frame stitch

As soon as I saw the room we'd be working in, I knew we would finish the session with images made in the bay window. The three windows provided some nice wraparound lighting, and Lynn-Marie had a comfortable rocking chair which I positioned between the windows, giving it the best of what light there was. The first images used the window light as rim-lighting, highlighting the flow and lines of the breast and belly. The difficulties here were compound - the windows had plastic insulation on them, providing a distracting element to the background, and I couldn't get far enough from the model to get the composition I wanted that would throw the windows enough out of focus to downplay the plastic lining.

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In the end, I changed the composition altogether for the final image of the session, shifting the chair so that Lynn-Marie was parallel to one of the side windows (essentially placing the other side window at her back), which in turn meant I could work further away from her and use a longer lens for less depth of field. The final image of the session was a three-image stitch of a mellow stretch with the right-hand window's rim-lighting setting off the back of the chair and Lynn-Marie's hand, and the dominant window to the left providing a soft, even illumination of her face and body. An all-too-brief session came to a beautiful conclusion.

Miles and Gilda's Second Session

My second day of photography in Halifax was even more focused than the first - three sessions in one day. The first session was more of a continuation of the previous one than a new session. Gilda and Miles met me at the studio and, within ten minutes, we had started working. This session, however, took place in a fully equipped space with more lighting than I could dream of using with two models.

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Because the previous evening's session was almost entirely focusing on the models reclining on a bed, for this one I designed the studio for standing poses. The studio I was using was very long and quite wide so I lay down a black sheet for a backdro, and used three lights to illuminate the models. The shift to working with standing poses led to the vast majority of the images being focused on embracing, hugging, or one model holding the other. With a full studio available, the images become more polished with rim and side lighting complimenting the main light (the previous evening used only one light, so there was less complexity to the images).

By this session, Gilda's third working with me, she had become quite familiar with the process and her ease and comfort showed in the images. Because I was working with studio flash, there was no need to work with poses that could be held for long periods. Many of my couples images focus on quiet moments between the models, in part because of the focus on intimacy and in part because much of this work is created with available light and requires a pose that can be held for longer exposures. During this session, however, the models several times assumed fleeting poses, taking advantage of the incredibly short exposures of the flash to freeze them with absolute clarity.

8"x10" film

Towards the end of the session, I put away all the studio lighting and backdrops, and finished the time we had to work with using the available light coming through the large windows at the end of the studio. There was a wonderful old brick wall by the windows which was a perfect backdrop for the photos. The light coming through the windows was both bright and even, the best of both worlds (often natural light is bright but incredibly harsh, which is the worst kind of light to work with in most cases). We made the final images of the session with Gilda leaning back into Miles, who was leaning in turn against the wall.

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Over this session, I created more then 3GB of RAW digital files which more than exceeded the storage space I had on memory cards. There was an unexpected advantage to working in the studio - there were computers on site which permitted me the ability to download my images as I filled memory cards. This avoided the problems I had at the end of the three-model session the previous morning and permitted me to work as I have grown accustomed to.

A Perfect Day Part II

After a morning spent working with three models by available light, I simplified the process slightly for a short evening session, working with two models with a single studio flash. Gilda and Miles had both expressed an interest in modeling together for me, so after a New Year's Day dinner with my family, I met up with the two models and turned the guest room at Miranda's into a makeshift studio.

Digital original, 5 frame stitch

I have mixed feelings about studio lighting for figure images, but for photographs of couples, they are in fact my preferred tool - using studio lighting permits me to focus on the pose and composition of the models and not have to worry about the lighting (usually my frustration with studio lighting is the incredible focus it places on the importance of pose but, with two models, the poses seem to happen spontaneously).

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The set-up for the session was quite similar to the morning's - I put the studio flash behind the bed so the light would flow across the bed and models, providing a sense of shape and form. I'd left the white sheets on the bed from the morning's session, but wrapped the back of the bed in a black sheet to simplify the space some. Where the session differed greatly from the morning, however, was in the posing which focused on the interplay between the two models; in many ways this is easier than trying to create abstracts or stylized images.

Even though Gilda had little previous experience with modeling, there was little time spent working on poses during this session - with couples, I tend to just let the space and moment dictate the position of the models, and only when I see small adjustments that need to be made to the pose do I make suggestions. With few exceptions, all the images during this session grew out of simple suggestions such as "lie down and cuddle" or "Gilda, why don't you just lie on your side facing me, and Miles can lie down behind you " - everything else just fell into place, generated by the natural chemistry between the two models.

Digital original, 5 frame stitch

Because of the tight time-frame (we were borrowing part of Miranda's house, after all), I opted to work only with the digital cameras for this session; several times I saw images that would have worked well if translated  onto the large format camera, but the slower pace of that tool wasn't appropriate for the session and would have locked us out of working with as many poses and possibilities.

A Perfect New Year's Day

All through December, while I was planning for Katarina and Lymari's visit in the last week of 2004, I was also trying to work out the details for a possible trip to Halifax during the New Year's weekend. At the beginning of December, Miranda asked about the possibilities of working over the holidays with her and a friend who would be visiting from Montreal. At the same time, Veronica had let me know she would be in Halifax until the New Year and would like to work with me. In the end, at 4pm on December 31st, all the family and camera equipment (one could consider the cameras family members practically) piled into a car and headed towards Halifax.

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The plans for New Year's Day were a mirror of the January 1, 2003 session with Elisabeth, L_ and Krista, though this time there were two photo session planned with four models. The first was with Miranda, her friend Gilda and Ingrid modeling together in a minimalist setting, lying on a bed below a single window. The session was initially planned around working with just two models, Miranda and Gilda but Ingrid was also available and it quickly evolved into a three-model session. After the experience working with three models in 2003, I was quite keen to have a second opportunity to work with such a dynamic situation.

Miranda was kind enough to let us work at her place, so we set up in the largely empty guest room and quickly began working with the available light. The space was near ideal with bare white walls, and a single window directly above the bed where I'd placed the models. This provided a beautiful angular light over the models and more than enough room to work in the room with the cameras (many of the indoor spaces I have worked in previously have had wonderful light, but cramped quarters, limiting angles I can photograph from).

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 Much of the work revolved around ideas of repetition, playing off the repeating lines, shape and forms of the three models. Using longer lenses (equal to an 85mm lens on a 35mm camera) I compressed the space between the three models and made a large number of abstract bodyscapes. This approach was the least demanding on the models; for the most part, this required them to lay still and only occasionally change their body positions. There were a number of reasons to work this way; first, it is the easiest way to photograph three models in such a limited space (any other way of posing quickly taxes the space on a bed); second, as it was Gilda's first time working with me, I didn't want to put too much emphasis on elaborate posings - the simpler and easier the session was, the better.

Thought the majority of the images were body abstracts, over the session, I did make a number of images focusing on portraiture but, as Gilda was new to modeling, I was not certain how comfortable she would be with her face in the images so I focused on more anonymous images for much of the session to make the most of the opportunity.

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Sadly, technical issues pulled this session to a halt before I was really finished exploring all the possibilities that presented themselves (the portable storage device I use to store digital files when I travel refused to download any files) but, regardless, the images we made in the ninety minutes we worked were very rewarding, especially the portraits, of which all three models heartily approved.

A Snow Nude Session

One of Katarina's first questions when she arrived was "When can we do snow nudes?". My initial response was that it would be too cold but she kept insisting she wanted to model in the snow.On the final day of their visit, several hours before she and Lymari drove back to New England, we headed out for what probably will be remembered as the shortest photo session I have ever had.

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If we'd had more time, I would not have chosen to work on the morning we did; the temperature was a chilly -17 C° and, while there wasn't any wind, the air temperature was bitter enough on its own. In a small attempt to mitigate the cold, Katarina bundled up in a heavy one-piece snow-suit before leaving the house, the logic being she should be toasty warm until the actual time to model arrived, in which case it was just one piece of clothing that needed to be shed and kept track of. Because of the depth of the snow (0.5-1 m), she could keep her socks and boots on through the session, which was a small blessing - I suspect the cold snow on her feet would have ended the session before it even began (not that you could have told Katarina that - she was so insistent on working in the snow before she went back to the US).

I carefully selected a space which Katarina could work into without her footprints showing in the image - I sought a smooth, unbroken sea of snow for the setting. Also, because the morning had direct sun, I chose an area with some brush, to both break up the image a little and provide some shadows to lend form to Katarina's body. When I was in place, and Katarina was ready, she quickly stripped off the snowsuit and walked a meter or so through the snow to where I wanted her to pose.

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Despite all our precautions, in the end, Katarina lasted a little more than five minutes before it became too cold to continue. I made just over a dozen exposures, mostly variations on framing the same pose before Katarina grew too cold to vary the pose much and the session came to a halt.It took several minutes to get her back into her snowsuit and back to the car where she started warming up (though I suspect the warming process took longer than a few minutes).

I hesitate to say that snow nudes hold potential, as that would imply I think they are an area I plan to pursue but I do think that the results from the short session with Katarina will please her and make an eyecatching addition to my body of work as a whole.

Lymari & Katarina Arrive

One of the unexpected rewards of working with a single subject (the Nude) for so long is the extended collaborations so integral to the pursuit of my vision. Most of these ongoing relationships have been with local models but some come from further afield. Lymari first drove up from New England to work with me in 2001 and since then has turned her visits into an annual event, coming up to photograph, be photographed, and catch up on each year's evolution in my work.

Digital original, 6 frame stitch

This year's visit was loosely planned for the fall but kept being pushed back later and later until Lymari suggested visiting during her December break. She brought Katarina, a friend who was also interested in modelling. On December 26th, in the middle of the afternoon, Lymari and Katarina arrived several hours ahead of schedule and a storm.

It wasn't until the next afternoon that we started photographing - I had hoped to start photographing in the morning but the snow-storm precluded that, keeping the light low and dull throughout the day. In the end, I opted to use the living room as a setting, taking a cue from the previous sessions with Jesse and setting up the space much the same.

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I started the session working with Lymari. Katarina, who had never modeled nude before though she had been appeared onstage nude, decided to observe for a while to get the flow of a session.As with much of my other indoor work, I began by focusing on portraits and portrait nudes, revelling in the strength of Lymari's gaze and the muted beauty of the snowstorm light. Truth be told, the light was pretty dim, but it was so even and enveloping that the longer exposures were more than worth it just to get that particular look in the images.

After an hour of working with Lymari, with an eye to the clock, I asked Katarina if she would be comfortable trying some modeling with Lymari (I figured if she was going to model today, it had better be soon as the light would begin to drop rapidly ). A minute or two later, she and Lymari were side-by-side on the futon with the late afternoon light falling over them.

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By this point the light was dropping rapidly and my exposures were growing longer which put added pressure on me to make the most of the time we had before the light totally left the session. Fortunately, I have a particular attraction to images with shallow depth of field so working with large apertures is never a problem. By the time we conceded defeat to the low light and packed in the session, I was making second-long exposures at f/1.4, indicating the light had dropped more then 256 times in brightness from my first images of Lymari ninety minutes earlier!

A Third Session with Jesse

Jesse and have seemed to developed a two-week schedule, though this session will likely be our last of the year given the coming holidays and how hectic my December work schedule is, December being the only month when I work full time. For this session, I decided to continue working in the living room (where we'd worked during the infrared test session). By putting the futon flat and moving it below the windows, I could make the most of the limited afternoon light.

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For most of the session I worked between the Canon 10D and the Sigma SD-10, exploring the subtle difference that the infrared camera creates in the results. The dramatic differences possible with infrared photography will only really come into play when I resume working outdoors in the spring. Part of this is my chronic "new toy" syndrome, but it is also partly learning the new tool and its place in my working process.

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Although I began the session with my usual portrait series, because of the soft side-lighting of the space I worked with more bodyscapes and abstract nudes than usual. With Jesse, this required the breaking of a long-standing personal prohibition - namely the inclusion of tattoos, of which Jesse has numerous. Traditionally I have avoided including tattoos in my work, mainly because I feel they ground the images in the individual, as opposed to the universal.

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Over the past years, the number of models with tattoos has been steadily increasing but with most of them, I try to work around them, either through careful posing or limb placement. With Jesse, however, I have found myself responding more to line and pose and seeing past the tattoos. I think when I do this, at some level I am aware that I could retouch the tattoos out of the resulting image (as they are produced on a digital camera, this would be easy) but, to date, I have always opted to leave the tattoos in the image. I suspect I may feel differently about Jesse's tattoos when I start working with her outdoors but for the moment, they seem to be creeping into my work.

A n Experiment with Digitial Infrared Photography

In recent years I have developed a spontaneous habit of changing equipment in the winter; in 2001 I switched from 4"x5" cameras to a larger 8"x10", in 2003, I switched from 120 and 35mm roll film to using digital SLR cameras. With each of these transitions, I used the slower winter months to accumulate the new equipment and gain familiarity with it. This winter is no different, with the acquisition of a dedicated digital SLR for infrared photography.

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When I replaced my roll film cameras with a digital SLR, the only area of my work that I knew would suffer was my infra-red images. While infrared film is available for view cameras, it is prohibitively expensive; this, combined with the unpredictable exposures, pretty much ruled out shifting my infra-red imaging to large format.

I have been carefully watching the world of digital infrared photography for the past couple of years with a plan to take that route eventually. My initial plan had been to adapt a Canon DSLR through an American website offering the service but when I learned that the Sigma SD-10 was easily modified to infra-red by removing one screw, I decided to look into that system as a way of returning to infra-red imaging. As luck would have it, I was able to purchase a Sigma SD-10 demo kit and, in short order, I was up and running with a dedicated infra-red camera.

My very first thought on receiving the camera was "When can I try this out with a model?" I immediately checked with Jesse to see if she'd be available anytime soon for a session and four days after receiving the SD-10, I made my first infrared nude in more than 18 months.

Digital infrared original

Normally, I wouldn't choose to test new equipment on a model's second session working with me, but because of Jesse's previous modeling experience and her positive response to our first session, I wasn't too concerned. As opposed to working in the kitchen, which has little direct light this time of year, I decided to spend the session photographing Jesse in the living room, starting with her reclining on the sheet-covered couch and then proceeding to work with the last of the day's sunlight falling across her body through the horizontal blinds.

On the whole, the first session using digital infrared was quite encouraging, both in terms of workflow and results. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to shift between the Canon 10D and the Sigma (the Sigma has a smaller sensor so the same focal length lens on both camera gave a slightly different composition) and how easy it was to judge the exposure of the digital infrared images.

Digital original

One of the distinct advantages of working with infrared on the digital is the post-exposure view of the image (with a histogram) which permits easy exposure judgements, without having to wait until the film is processed, hours later. The second difference was how little difference there was between the infrared and non-infrared images of Jesse - unless there was direct sunlight in the image, they looked practically the same. The greatest surprise, however, was how much difference there was between a film infrared image and a digital one: film has a distinct glow to the image due to the lack of the antihalation backing on the film. The digital image, however, is sharp and distinct with none of the glow inherent to film. It will take some time to become used to this different look but, on the whole, I am very pleased with my first foray into digital infrared nudes.

Jesse's First Session

Jesse had contacted me about modeling after hearing about my work through Kylie - the irony of the digital world is that a model in Moncton, where I live, learned out my work through a model in Halifax, three hours away. Jesse and I met up and spent a couple of hours talking about my photography, and her interests. She'd responded to my work well, and me made plans to have our first session together several days later.

8"x10" film

Often, Indoor work takes a little more preparation than working outdoors (for that, I generally pack up my gear, and head out the door, deciding on a location while en route). For this session, I spent most of the morning watching the light in the house, and trying to anticipate where it would be by the time Jesse arrived. The kitchen is probably the best room in the house for photography, but this late in the year the light is very different from during the summer. It took about fifteen minutes to move around the furniture, and have everything in place by the time Jesse came through the door..

Because she's had previous experience modeling nude, Jesse and I started working shortly after her arrival (with new model without previous experience, the transition between arriving and modeling is often much slower). I'd left the futon-couch in its upright position for the start of the session, making some images of her first sitting, then lying on the couch. The first image of the session that really resounded with me was the first portrait we made, with Jessie lying down on the couch and looking at the camera over her bent arm. The light, while a little low, was beautifully soft, and when I added a white reflector to soften the shadows, the resulting portrait was a beautiful mix of delicate skin tones, and rich, dark shadows around Jesse's hair and face.

Digital original, 3 frame stitch

Regardless of the experience of the model, a first session is always about exploring the model's response to the camera, and about learning their personal body language and mannerisms. These are what make an image of Jesse different from one of Victoria or Miranda. Most of my focus for a first session is on making the model comfortable, and watching how they move, and responding to that with the cameras. In some ways, this is the magic of a first session, as until you start working with a model, the tone and flow of the session is unknown and is exactly what makes or breaks a session.

Jesse very quickly relaxed and at ease, responding positively to my suggestions and refinements of the images we were creating. We worked for a couple of hours (until the light dropped too low to work easily without resorting to flash) and made a broad range of images. Most of the photographs focused on portraiture, as this is where I tend to begin working with new models but we made a number of bodyscapes and more abstract images.

Digital original

As the end of the session came, I moved the futon out of the kitchen totally, and worked with Jesse standing. Standing poses can feel quite vulnerable and are often difficult to do during first sessions but, based on Jesse's comfort with everything else, I suspected she'd have little or no problem; I was more than correct - some of the best portraits of her were her standing, capturing her personality quite successfully!