Bouchtouche Beach

I have always had a love for subtle tones in blocky compositions; horizons and skies have always been attractive to me for some mysterious reason. On this particular afternoon, I had a car but no available models so, for lack of a better plan, I drove to the beach for the early evening light.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

I spent almost the entire time at the beach with my camera on a tripod pointing out to sea. The horizon was so beautiful, with a narrow band of yellow and red on it, that I couldn't leave it alone as a subject. I explored a full range of shutter speeds, from 1/30th of a second down to 30 seconds (using neutral density filters and smaller apertures) over the evening, eventually settling on the 4 to 6 second range as my preferred shutter speed - just enough to seriously blur the movement of the ocean, but not enough to remove all traces of the surf caused by the waves breaking on the beach.

Digital original

As the evening moved on, I shifted from focusing on the sky, horizon and beach, to working with the repeating lines of the waves meeting the shore; the sun was setting over the land, and the bright sky leant some beautiful colours to the water and wet sand. Again, the real challenge here was finding the right shutter speeds - my intuition was that I'd need longer speeds, to blur the water as it pulled back from the beach, but as it turned out, the best looking images were made with much shorter exposures, in the range of 1/8 to 1/2 a second.

Digital infrared original

The disappearance of the sun below the horizon brought the evening at the beach to an end but I was very pleased with the results. More than many recent sessions, the beach images reinforced how much my photographic technique has changed since the introduction of digital photography. The LCD panel on back of the digital SLR proved invaluable for post-viewing the effect of the various shutter-speeds on the images, and while I certainly use the LCD regularly, usually it is for the viewing of the exposure results via histogram, as opposed to the image itself.

Jesse at the Gypsum Tower

Digital infrared original

I suppose the irony with Jesse is that she and I live in the same city and never seem to manage to find the time to work together. Ironically, this is highly influenced by the fact that when I have a car, I am often in Halifax teaching. On this weekend, though, I did had a rental car and was around Moncton, so the two of us managed to meet up and headed out for an afternoon of photography. Still a little unfamiliar with the areas possibilities close to Moncton, we opted to head to the old gypsum silos where I worked with Ingrid during my first outdoor Nude session in New Brunswick.

Digital infrared original, 8 frame stitch

As I'd previously worked in the space with a variety of models (including Ingrid and Miranda), I tried hard to take the cue for the session's images from Jesse's reactions to the space as she had never been there before. We started by making a series of images in one of the towers but relatively quickly shifted to working on the riverfront before them. I eventually wandered upriver to explore the possibilities in the grasses along the bank. We quickly discovered that the lovely green grasses were all rooted in thick red mud which totally removed any chance of working with Jesse lying among the grasses. We did, however, find some old weathered wooden posts set into the mud, and managed to make a small series of images working with one of posts with the river and far shore in the background of an image rooted in the sea of luminous grasses.

Digital infrared original, 5 frame stitch

After exhausting the possibilities of the grassy shore, we returned to the towers, but this time to work with the remains of the piers there, taking a cue from the image with the wood further down the shore. Set horizontally into the shore below the silos were a series of long wooden poles (I assume these once supported a dock or deck formation in front of the gypsum towers, but the rest of this is long gone, so it is hard to tell). The primary advantage of working with the wooden poles was they kept Jesse out of the mud and much on the riverbank (at this point, the Petticodiac River is fully tidal, with more than five meters of rise and fall twice a day!), but they also gave the image some definite structure, something to form the final composition around. In the end, after much experimentation and trial of angles of approaches, my favorite image is from above, looking down on the shoreline, with Jessie off to the side, looking sandwiched between two massive logs. Potentially a disturbing image if you don't understand the depth between the two poles, but quite striking visually, with Jesse's body the only highlight in the entire image.

Miles & Natasha Model Outdoors

Miles and Natasha had accompanied Trisha and I to the coast; towards the end of that session, I'd asked if either of them would be interested in modeling or if they'd like to model together. The opportunity to work with one or two more models in such a beautiful space was certainly not to be missed.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

The first set of images I made was of Natasha alone. We took our cue from the last images I'd made of Trisha, and worked in the shallow water pool. We arrived at the peak of the tide, as the water level barely changed over the hour or so that I worked in the water pool. As opposed to focusing on her figure alone, I choose to make a series of more dramatic compositions, with the big sky above Natasha providing a balancing element to her pale form in the dark water.

When I finished working with Natasha alone on the rock, Miles joined her and we worked on a series of water nudes with the two of them emerging from the water surrounded by rockweed. At the time, I thought a dramatic wide-angle composition would be best and made the images with a wide angle lens to be stitched together later. In retrospective, however, the distortion added to the image from the wide-angle view was a little displeasing, so I regret not making alternative versions with a longer lens, for a different perspective. In my own defense, I avoided the long lens option because of some distracting rocks in the background, but I still suspect they would have looked better overall).

Digital infrared original

The final set of photographs I made of the two models was on a set of rocks that rose out of the still water of the pool; I started with just Natasha in the image, but eventually added Miles to fill out the
composition, in this case with him kneeling behind her and stretched out along her figure and the rock. With the infrared camera, the reflection in the water, while clear, is unusually dark, lending a mysterious air to the whole image.

Digital infrared original, 43 frame stitch

The short session with Miles and Natasha at the end of the day was lovely. We didn't work for all that long but made a number of notable images, and made the most of the day which is always a satisfying feeling.

Trisha at the Coast

I hadn't worked with Trisha since 1999 when she left for British Columbia in 2000; when I heard she was back in Nova Scotia for the summer and interested in modeling, I kept all of Sunday free. Truth be told, the day dawned bright and sunny, and my heart sank, as that yields some of the most difficult lighting possible.Given the innate changeability of Maritime weather, I decided to go ahead with the session as planned. We met up at West Dover and headed out onto the rocky shoreline to work for the afternoon.

Digital infrared original, 3 frame stitch

Because of the harsh light, the first place we worked was actually in a shadowed cave under a rocky outcrop. The light was beautifully even and the rocks had strong lines and shape to work with. Initially I had been concerned that Trisha's tan lines would cause a problem (her job has her outdoors for many hours a day), but they barely registered on the infrared modified camera, making the whole process easier. Once we finished working in the shade, we moved out into the sunlight, with Trisha modeling on several seaweed covered rocks right by the sea; in infrared, the dark brown rockweed practically glows, giving a surreal quality to the images. I ended up making several multi-frame stitches, though these proved challenging to assemble, as the ocean swept in and around the rock several times over the making of the image. That being said, through the patience of both Trisha and I, the final images worked out beautifully.

Digital infrared original

All through the seaweed images, I wanted Trisha to be immersed in the water but the open Atlantic, even in August, was just too cold for that to be practical. Around the corner in a cove, however, we found the perfect space, cut off from the receding tide by a line of rocks was a shallow basin, sun warmed and perfect for the final location for the session.

Digital infrared original, 8 frame stitch

One recent addition to my DSLR equipment was a right-angle viewer for my Nikon D70. This permits photography at a very low angle without having to look straight through the viewfinder itself. I'd used this the previous evening at Martinique Beach for the first time, but it was during this session that it came into use heavily – with myself standing in the water, it would have been impossible to have the camera at water level and stay dry enough to use it. With the right-angle finder, I could simply bend over and use a hand under the camera to keep from accidentally immersing it in the ocean. This permitted me to make a whole series of images with the camera at near-water level, while still keeping myself, and all the other camera equipment around my waist, completely dry.

Krista at a Beach...with a Friend

As Krista was leaving for Ontario at the beginning of September, she'd indicated she is interested in getting as many photo sessions in as possible before her departure. As this was my last planned trip to Halifax before she left, we'd made plans for an evening session. Like the week before, she brought a friend along, both as company and as a potential model, and we headed out to Martinique Beach in hopes of building on the beautiful images I'd made the week before with Monique. I had wanted to walk all the way to the end of the beach so I could photograph with the setting sun across the water but our timing was poor and, by the time we arrived at the beach, it was almost 8pm and with the sun setting around 8:30, the only option was to work on the beach proper.

Digital original, 6 frame exposure blend, 3 frame stitch

Krista and I began working on the low dunes bordering the beach. This had the advantage of providing some shade from the direct sun and shelter from the couple of pedestrians taking their evening stroll down the beach. Most of the poses we worked on explored the lines and form of the dunes but, in each case, I also tried to incorporate the evening sky into the image. We also explored some standing poses, working with the direct, angular light of the setting sun. These proved more difficult to work with, both due to the sparse landscape (dunes just don't have much to work with, in regards to standing poses), and the hard lighting. Even as the sun moved lower in the sky and became less intense, the light was still strikingly direct.

Digital original

As the sun moved towards the horizon, I moved from the dunes down onto the beach proper. There were few beach-walkers left and we had the space to ourselves. As Krista and I began working out the plans and pose for the first image, Caitlin announced she'd like to pose as well and the plans quickly changed to incorporate the second model. In some ways, this made the process
easier; with two models, the poses could have something to rotate around; a single model on a bare beach is sometimes a little hard to work with creatively.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

I decided to make the focal point of the images the tones of the setting sun. Using a longer shutter speed to get the water to blur (this was accomplished by using a 6-stop neutral density filter over my lenses, requiring sixty four times longer an exposure for the images), I was somewhat concerned that the models wouldn't be able to hold still enough for the longer exposures (between 2 and 8 seconds in length) but I thought it was worth the experiment, and in the end, the results were more than crisp enough to use. With each image, I made separate frames for the beach, sky and model, so while they may have moved in the first two images, I tried hard to communicate to them the importance of keeping still during the images of them alone, which definitely paid off in the results.

Digital original, 11 frame exposure blend, 4 frame stitch

One surprise from the session was how much infrared light there still was after the sunset; Caitlin, who had only decided to model after the sunset, modeled for a number of portraits against the fading light of the sky, and while the light was low (1/60 th @ f/1.4) there was enough light to work – a stark contrast to a month earlier with Miles and Natasha.

A Return to St John's Church

In the fall of 2001, on Halloween night, a tragic fire struck in the town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, totally gutting the second oldest Anglican Church in Canada. Several days after the fire, I'd visited the church to photograph the destruction, making a record of the devastation in hopes that it would someday be returned to its former glory, and that the images of the burnt building would be of interest historically.

Digital original

After finishing up at Gold River, the plan had been to journey to the coast for a second session, but the rain had finally arrived, so that option was out. Being so close to Lunenburg, however, we decided to take a look at the recently re-opened church, to see how the restored building looked. The first view through the doors was awe-inspiring. What I had last seen as a charred, broken mess covered by haphazard blue tarps and reeking of creosote and soot was warm and golden, a cozy, intimate space where before there had only been charred wood and many dense inches of ash underfoot.

Digital original

I cannot begin to understand the labour or love which went into the reconstruction of this beautiful building. Someday, I hope to have the time, permission and resources to return to the church and recreate the same images I made during my first visit. I think the juxtaposition of the devastation and restoration would be inspiring (both visually and spiritually, as resurrection is such a major theme in Christianity, and this is nothing if not a stunning example of that transformative process).

Digital original

The only frustration of this visit was the lack of time. We arrived literally minutes before the church was closed for the day and I only had the chance to walk through the church and take perhaps a dozen images (all without a tripod) before we had to leave, so they could close for the day. On another date, with more time, and permission to use a tripod, the results would be much more refined.

Ingrid & Natasha at the Killdevils

After the previous evening's unplanned session with Ingrid at Chain Lake, one might think I would have had my fill of water settings for this visit to Halifax and seek to work in a different locale, but nothing could have been farther from the truth. With last night's images still resonating in my mind, I couldn't say no when it was suggested we try working at Gold River. This was a space I hadn't visited since 1999 when Ingrid and I had our last session before she moved to the Pacific coast and, based on the strength of our collaboration since her return, I knew the setting would inspire both of us.

Digital infrared original

Ingrid and Natasha were both available to model for the day, so with the models, myself and my good friend Miles, a fellow photographer who was the model for the River God I & II images, we headed off to Gold River. The day was overcast with a forecast for rain but we all held out the hope that the weather would be different on the South Shore, or at the very least, hold off until the session was over.

As I haven't worked at Gold River in six years, I was prepared for change, but all the same, was rather surprised to see a handful of houses built overlooking the river, not close enough to interrupt our process working by the Killdevils (a specific place where the river narrows through a rocky passage, and then widens into a broad, deep bottomed bowl), but certainly preventing us ever working in the up area of the river again. Even so, the river was beautifully to behold, with plenty of water for motion-orientated images, but not enough to ever put the models at risk of being swept downstream.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

I began working in the Killdevils proper, exploring the possibilities of the slow moving water and more careful, refined poses. When working in water, the pose is often dictated by a combination of the setting and the temper of the water - a calm lake provides much more opportunity for careful composition and posing than a swift moving river.

I made a number of compositions working with both models in the same frame, before heading off with Natasha to make some images of her alone. I was particularly enamoured with the possibilities suggested by her pale body emerging from the deep, dark water of the Killdevils - a stark contrast further enhanced by the creation of the images in infrared. The final results, with her pale, radiant torso set among the darker water was everything I'd hoped. One interesting side effect of working with digital infrared is that I find myself back in the world of a darkroom-based image; while I can get a sense in the field of how an image will look, I don't know for certain until I am back at home and have processed the image in the computer.

8"x10" film

After finishing the series of images of Natasha, I switched to working with Ingrid, who had been further up river modeling for Miles. Ingrid has always had a love of water and, for perhaps fifteen minutes, I made a series of multi-frame stitches of Ingrid in the swirling river. At this point, I decided to switch from the digital SLRs to my 8"x10" view camera. I had seen a number of possibilities in the spontaneous river nudes of Ingrid that I wished to try with the larger camera. After carefully clambering over the rocks with the camera and lenses, I proceeded to make the previsualized series of images with varying success. Most missed the freshness that I'd seen with the digital cameras, but one in particular, of Ingrid lying back along a rock, with her hand stretched out over the raging water behind her, looked perfect on the ground glass. After refining the pose to get the angle of Ingrid's body just right, I made the exposure. With a bit of cropping in the printing, the image is just as I envisioned it - drawing subtly on the hand of Adam in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.

Victoria at an Abandoned Farm

As Victoria and I still had an hour or more left to work in, we decided to change the look of the space we were working in, and headed to an abandoned farm I had discovered a week earlier, while working with Miranda.

Digital infrared original, 15 frame stitch

Almost all the images I made of Victoria in this space were multi-image stitches - a frustrating approach to try with rapidly changing light. Numerous times, I had to abandon stitches as the light changed half-way through the image creation. Still, there were frequently periods of shade long enough complete a multi-image stitch in, and the increase in image fidelity and resolution was more than work it.

Digital infrared original, 7 frame stitch

Though I spent much of my time waiting for the right light, I did made a number of compositions when Victoria was lit by the direct sun - with these, I simply resorted to bracketing the exposures heavily, and hoping I managed to get one that looks right. This is a frustrating process, but necessary, as the infrared camera’s exposure cannot be judged by the histogram as is recommended with conventional digital SLRs. I usually use the colour of image on the LCD screen to judge the success of a given exposure, but in bright sunlight, this can be difficult to do.

At the very end of the session, Victoria and I worked on a set of concrete sets leading to nowhere - the original building attached to them had burned down years ago, so now the stairs go nowhere. Victoria found them quite easy to pose upon, and while the light was harsh, once I found the angle to work from, the compositions were relatively easy to create.

Digital infrared original, 5 frame stitch

The real issue came from the steps proximity to the road, less than 10 meters to the right. We had a somewhat restricted view in either direction, and had to rely on the sound of approaching cars to know whether the coast was clear to continue working. The whole process was reminiscent of working with Victoria in the Canadian Rockies while we were producing the Alberta Portfolio in 1999 - there we made an image on a rock outcrop by the road after more than half-an-hour of waiting for a cap in the traffic. This space was by no means so busy, but it was still amusing to have Victoria ducking on and off the stairs, as cars would rumble their approach in the distance.

Victoria departed in the winter of 2005 for Great Britain, where she will be studying for her PhD - quite possibly the next time I will see her, she will be Dr. Vicky!

Victoria in Hampton, New Brunswick

The internet is a wonderful thing. Victoria and I have only worked sporadically since she moved to central Canada to work on her master's degree; in 2004 we managed a single session during a simultaneous visit to Halifax, but apart from that, the chances to work together just haven't presented themselves. Two weeks before this session however, Victoria popped up online, asking if I would be around New Brunswick in two weeks, as she was coming down for a weekend. After ten minutes to typing back and forth, our plans were laid, and after an early rise and an hour drive, I picked her up and we headed off to work together for a couple of hours.

 I don't know the area around Hampton well, so we stopped in at Jamie Wilson's to ask for suggestions for places to work (as it turned out, Victoria 's grandmother had been photographed by Jamie's father many years before, proving again just how small the world is). Jamie suggested driving down the road past his place, keeping an eye on the left, where the river ran. The advice was solid, and less than ten minutes later, Victoria and I were working by the side of the Kenebikasis river.

Digital infrared original, 8 frame stitch

Thought the day was bright and sunny, because we'd got such an early start, the light was wonderful and angular, and as we were on the western side of the river, coming from the same direction as Victoria would be facing, providing beautiful rim lighting. There wasn't much flexibility possible in the way of posing, as the river here was predominantly marsh, but the light (and model) was beautiful, and the images came relatively quickly. The vast majority were standing portraits (as Victoria and I have been working together since 1998, I find the evolution of our portrait images one of the most compelling aspects of our collaboration), but some images were more classical images of the body set against a sweeping backdrop of the marsh and river's edge.

Our second location along the river was actually within the flood plane, but away from the river proper. Here, the trees grew in a more open pattern, with rich ferns and underbrush growing between them amonst the detritus of the spring floods. This gave Victoria and I the opportunity to make some tree-based images (something that is underrepresented in my work due to the prevalence of bugs in New Brunswick, more than anything else).

Digital infrared original, 15 frame stitch

We started working in front of a tall, graceful tree, making both an 8"x10" negative, and a digital multi-image stitch, with several pose being created to drop into the final image later. This is a technique I am using more and more - making the multiple frames necessary for the landscape, and then making the images of the model for inserting into the final, assembled image later in the computer.I don't know the area around Hampton well, so we stopped in at Jamie Wilson's to ask for suggestions for places to work (as it turned out, Victoria 's grandmother had been photographed by Jamie's father many years before, proving again just how small the world is). Jamie suggested driving down the road past his place, keeping an eye on the left, where the river ran. The advice was solid, and less than ten minutes later, Victoria and I were working by the side of the Kenebikasis river.

Thought the day was bright and sunny, because we'd got such an early start, the light was wonderful and angular, and as we were on the western side of the river, coming from the same direction as Victoria would be facing, providing beautiful rim lighting. There wasn't much flexibility possible in the way of posing, as the river here was predominantly marsh, but the light (and model) was beautiful, and the images came relatively quickly. The vast majority were standing portraits (as Victoria and I have been working together since 1998, I find the evolution of our portrait images one of the most compelling aspects of our collaboration), but some images were more classical images of the body set against a sweeping backdrop of the marsh and river's edge.

Our second location along the river was actually within the flood plane, but away from the river proper. Here, the trees grew in a more open pattern, with rich ferns and underbrush growing between them amonst the detritus of the spring floods. This gave Victoria and I the opportunity to make some tree-based images (something that is underrepresented in my work due to the prevalence of bugs in New Brunswick, more than anything else).

8"x10" film

We started working in front of a tall, graceful tree, making both an 8"x10" negative, and a digital multi-image stitch, with several pose being created to drop into the final image later. This is a technique I am using more and more - making the multiple frames necessary for the landscape, and then making the images of the model for inserting into the final, assembled image later in the computer.

The end of the session saw is exploring the possibilities offered by a fallen trunk lying among the ferns. For this setting, I switched from the infrared to my 8”x10” view camera, making one of my most successful large format images of the year. As much as I like the infrared version of the image, the large format negative captured a totally different scene, with Victoria 's body looking delicate and sculptured among the darker tones of the surrounding woodland floor.

A Drive South of Moncton

Because of my artistic, work, teaching and personal schedule, I don't often have "open" time, when I am not committed to a specific project, but on this particular day due to workshop cancellation I had a rental car, a full, open day, and no plans. It so happened that on this particular weekend, a town to the south of Moncton was having a weekend festival, including a photographic contest, so for lack of a better motivator, I decided to head down towards Dorchester, take in the photo exhibition, and see what I could find to photograph.

Digital infrared original

With so much of my imagery focused on working with the Nude, it is quite refreshing to spend a day just making images, with particular agenda or subject other than what catches the eye. The landscape around Moncton is very different from what I am used to, with low sweeping hills and broad, flat fields of reclaimed dylelands besides the river.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

It was on this farmland that I spent much of the afternoon, making numerous images in infrared of the fields themselves, and their contents. Because of the static nature of these subjects, I took the time to make most of my images as multi-frame stitches, increasing both the resolution of the images, and the angle of view of the camera. With a heavily clouded sky, I didn't expect the images to be all that successful, but in reality, the sky rendered quite well on the digital SLR.

Digital infrared original

The most interesting space of the afternoon was a group of old mill stones piled in a field near the road. These were covered with dark lichens, and surrounded by thick grass and other ground cover. On the infrared camera however, much of the lichen ended up very light in tone, setting a contrast to the darker sandstone of the mill stones. I made a number of images of the scene, with a close detail of the stones among the flora being my favorite - a beautiful image with no real subject, but a very functional visual logic to keep it coherent.