Lisa in a Studio (Orono, Maine)

Working again at Laurel's house, I set up the studio lights with a very small (3'x5') backdrop, and worked with Lisa for an hour against it. The set up was minimal and simplistic, but a number of successful images were created.

35mm infrared film

The image above would normally, I suspect, bother me, since it is basically a generic glamour pose. There is, however, an undeniable power emanating from Lisa's shoulders, changing a potentially problematic image into one of incredible strength and confidence. I have an equivalent image on 4"X5" film, but it has a totally different feel because of the infra-red film I used instead.

35mm infrared film

The studio lights I brought to Maine only ended up being used two out of four possible nights, but the images with Neil and Laurel, combined with those of Lisa made the second night, made the lugging of the lighting equipment worth it.

Nude on the Stillwater (Orono, Maine)

In my practice, experience with modeling nude is not a prerequisite for producing strong images of the nude. Erica had come across a poster of my work in an art store in Orono, and had asked the store owner how to go about modelling for me. We set up our first session during a 30 second conversation, and met the next day to go to work.

35mm transparency film

Initially I was reticent about working with a new model without spending some time talking about my process, and what they were seeking from the work, but I didn't have another model available for the afternoon, and felt there was little to lose. Within half an hour of working though, I knew my hesitance was misplaced. Erica was an intuitive model, on par with Aeyla from last summer, finding poses quickly, and working within spaces until the flowed around her.

6x12 cm film

Over the two hours we worked, Erica and I moved through three areas along the Stillwater River, exploring the water's edge and the visual potential found there. The three images displayed here are all backed with water - horizon less images which draw on the luminosity and texture of the river to fill in the "sky".

4"x5" film

The speed with Erica found images made the afternoon an incredible success - the final image to the right was drawn from my simple request "what about that rock there?" - before I even had the tripod in place, Erica was lying back, perfectly positioned against the brilliance of the evening light.

Returning to Fort Knox (Prospect, Maine)

6x12 cm film

During my first trip to Maine in August 1997, I was surprised to discover the incredible visual space of Fort Knox, about 45 minutes south of Bangor, in central Maine. Having done so much work with the Nude recently, I thoroughly enjoyed spending an afternoon at Knox, working at leisure with light and space, perspective and view. Someone recently commented that what he liked about my work was the light, how tactile it was, and how I used it to shape the image. The spaces at Fort Knox are all about light and shape, and the bright, overcast afternoon we had at Fort Knox provided the perfect crayon with which to draw the images.

4"x5" film

I have not made many architectural images recently for two primary reasons - 1) I have an iron in the fire which would dictate a very concentrated body of work with Architecture, and 2) I have had models to work with - buildings and ruins (I hope) will be around another day, but a chance to work with a model may pass, and it is simply not worth the risk of missing an opportunity to work with the Nude to work with a building that could wait for another day.

4"x5" film

All this said, it was very enjoyable to spend three hours working at my own pace in a space as visually rich as Fort Knox. With a model I am always conscious of time, not wanting to bore or annoy the focus of my work - with a fort this is never a worry (although sometimes the younger people who are with me get a little tired of waiting) and I can spend as long as I want on perfecting an image on the ground glass before I expose it - or decide it doesn't work. In the afternoon at Fort Knox I made fourteen 4"x5" negatives, three of the strongest of which are displayed here. If I had worked faster and shot more, there would certainly have been more to work from, but I am very doubtful that it would have generated more to work with.

A Couple in a Studio (Orono, Maine)

35mm infrared film

This certainly counts as my latest photo session to date, running from 11:45pm to 2:15am. Laurel and Neil were keen to model again, but my short visit, combined with Laurel's early morning flight meant we only had the few hours late at night to work. Where my first couple images in Maine were made by candlelight, this time I worked with studio flash (on loan from a friend in Nova Scotia), equipped with a silvered umbrella and a honeycomb, so lighting was not an issue.

35mm infrared film

The more work I do with couples, the more I come to understanding the aesthetic I wish to covey. I have become very conscious that it is the sensual side of relationships I have been imaging - creating photos that convey comfort, intimacy and affection. While this focus is still central to my couple images, the kiss photo made me question the place of sexuality within my work.

4"x5" film

Though it is of no interest to me to cross the line into pornography, I am trying hard not to shy away from images because of a blanket condemnation of their implication. Thus the final image to the right. What would have been a reasonably decent solo nude becomes, with the inclusion of the second model, a charged image. The legs across which the woman reclines provides a heightened sexuality to the image which builds on the erotic implication already present due to the pose. I am not sure if this kind of image will become more common in my work with couples, but it builds upon the kiss, and again, pushes my work a little further past where I thought it would rest, while still maintaining my vision.

Two Models at Hadlock Brook (Mount Desert Island, Maine)

My second trip to Maine this year was in theory dedicated to picking up my exhibit, Evolving Beauty. I say "in theory" because my major activity once in Maine was continuing the work with the models I had photographed six weeks before. Almost all the images this April were made during my initial trip to hang the exhibit.

4"x5" film

The image above is by far one of my most successful dual-model nudes, with a strong contrast between the nude lying in the water on the rock crest and the closed nude crouched to the right below. It is often hard to work with two models in a single frame. This setting, however, called for a second model, and seemed appropriately finished with her addition.

4"x5" film

One of the biggest lessons I am learning about working with figure models is that while previous experience may be irrelevant, continued collaboration can do nothing but improve the final images. Ellen and Lisa had worked with me three times in April 1998. These two models are friends, and had asked to model together, so we headed off for Mount Desert Island to find a suitable setting.

4"x5" film

In the end, the session was fairly short - curtailed by bugs and cool temperatures, but it yielded a surprising number of rich images. This is, I think, due to a change in approach - rather than using two models for each image and struggling with the posing, I waited until a scene called for two models, and it came together almost immediately.

Kris Models at the Coast (Chebucto Head, Nova Scotia)

35mm film

My first full weekend back in Halifax was intended to be split between time with my daughter, and the processing of the more than 200 sheets of large format film I had exposed in Maine..until I received a phone call fro Kris, asking if I was up for a session. Never one to turn down an opportunity to make images, I put off processing the film, and headed off to Chebucto Head shortly after lunch. Kris and I had worked there several times in 1996, but we had only scratched the surface of the possibilities. I could work there every day for a year and still not exhaust its possibilities.

35mm infrared film

Though the day was full of blazing sunlight, there was a cool wind which very quickly took a toll on Kris - though she was still keen to model, she preferred to be Nude for as brief a period as possible. The afternoon was an interesting contrast to the work in Maine - there I tended to work very quickly, and intuitively, the afternoon with Kris was mostly spent walking, searching for images, and then setting them up with great precision. Once I had an image fully framed and readied, Kris would disrobe and take up the pose. In Maine I often spent as long as ten minutes exploring a pose through the camera, with the models nude through out the session; with Kris it was often less than a minute between disrobing and dressing again. On the whole, the session's pacing was about as far from those I did in Maine as it would be without changing camera formats.

4"x5" film

The outcome? After two and a half hours, I'd made 8 frames of 4"x5" and 4 rolls of film - two on 120, one infra-red 35mm, and one on the 35mm Horizont (swing lens panoramic). The session was slow, and methodical, and yielded a number of good images.

A couple Indoors (Orono, Maine)

Laurel had facilitated almost half the images on this trip to Maine by letting me work within her house, but it wasn't until the morning of my last full day in Maine that she could model with her partner, Neil. Like the previous days session with Lisa, the morning was full of sunlight, flowing across the couple and alternately frustrating and thrilling me - for one image the sun would be perfect, for the next, problematic. Working with two people made the process even more challenging.

6x12 cm film

As I work with more couples, I'm learning that there is no predictable dynamic - each couple reacts to modelling together totally differently. For Laurel and Neil, the session provided a break in a hectic schedule, and gave them time to simply be together with nothing else distracting them (all be it in a room with other people, and the constant click of shutters and shifting of tripods). Both mentioned afterwards that is was nice having the time to simply be together.

6x12 cm film

The comfort and openness of Laurel and Neil with the session shows in the work - out of the session came some really strong images - and the breaking of another personal barrier. A week before, I'd talked on a panel discussing aspects of working with the female nude in art, and had presented a short slide presentation of my work, which included several of my images of couples. In the process of elaborating on that aspect of my work, I delineated the line I felt I walked upon, using the example that while I might photograph a nude couple holding each other or cuddling, I didn't think it would work to take an image of, say a kiss, while the models were nude.

4"x5" film

Laurel and Neil blew that idea out of the water. Over the course of the 90 minutes we worked together, fully a quarter of the images made were of kisses...each touching on the tenderness and intimacy between them, and drawing upon exactly what I hope to convey in the work - the power of two. I chuckled as I made the work, recalling the very words I'd spoken a week before. The moment called for the images to be made, and in spite of my prior conviction that they would cross a line I am dreadfully aware of, I made them. On one level, this reinforces my conviction that the spontaneity of last summer's work is continuing, and on another, it forces me to re-evaluate the invisible line I had drawn with my work, question what I am loathe to stray into, and why...

Another Session with Lisa (Orono, Maine)

35mm infrared film

The second indoor session with Lisa was radically different from the first. As the afternoon sun moved across the sky, and flooded through the windows and skylights, the light changed and shifted. The session was far more dynamic than the previous one - the directional light provoked image after image, where before I had to seek them out. Where the previous session with Chandler was slow and contemplative, the afternoon which followed with Lisa was the opposite, charged with the flowing sunlight. The work has a totally different feel and focus to it, and provides a nice counterpoint to the first indoor session with Lisa.

6x12 cm film

The nicest aspect of direct sunlight is the modelling of form it provides the Nude, giving definition of form and a depth to images that would appear flat under diffused lighting.

4"x5" film

The best lesson of the session was that very little infra-red radiation is lost through window-glass - I worked through two rolls of infra-red film, over-exposing in an attempt to compensate for the infra-red light that I thought would be lost to the windows. There was no need in the end, as far as I could tell there was no loss in exposure. The strength of the first image, again made with my 4"x5" view camera and the 75mm lens (equal to a 24mm lens on a 35mm camera), is more than met by the infra-reds

Chandler Poses Indoors (Orono, Maine)

Chandler was the only solo male model I worked with in Maine. It is a very strange thing how hard it is to find men willing to model Nude; it is often a difficult decision for people to model for me...challenging their self-perception, and taking the risk they may not like what they see. The honest truth is that I think women find it easier to contemplate they may actually be beautiful, whereas men are raised to consider beauty as vanity, and frivolous.

4"x5" film

The first half-hour or so with Chandler was spent discussing this very thing, and how he felt about challenging it by exploring his body through my work.

The most interesting aspect of what we produced together was how much of it was interchangeable with the work I did earlier in the week with Leslie and Lisa. In one sense, all three sessions were bound to have common elements, having been produced in the same setting under the same light, but these are like saying the work is similar because it is in black and white. Rather, the work shares a visual thread in the representation of the bodies. There are images which would be interchanged between the sessions without any lack of continuity, or disruption of flow.

4"x5" film

Working predominantly with female models often leads people to think that I only photograph with women, or that my vision is tied to the female Nude. I do think that there are very specific issues attached to imaging the male body (a discussion in Art College with a student over males being too "blocky" for my work comes to mind) it is difficult to address or challenge these without models to work with. I have been fortunate in the last couple of years to have a small number of enthusiastic models, and Chandler plans to be in Halifax over the summer, so I hope to be able to push this work further, in the environment I thrive in, the rock-plains, weathered shoreline, and scrubby forests of Nova Scotia

Laurel Models along the Penobscot River (Orono, Maine)

My second outdoor session of the year focused on the banks of the Penobscot river. Many of the images of Laurel drew directly upon the sparse quality of the shoreline - bare trees and flooded spaces. The lighting was perfect - overcast with occasional light sun peeking through.

4"x5" film

The session with Laurel was another which showed the strength of the 75mm Rodenstock lens on the view camera. The lens is vast improvement over my former pair of f/8 wide angles, the 65mm and 90mm Super Angulons, both in terms of working aperture (with the new lens being twice as bright) and in terms of coverage, permitting more extreme lens movements, with less risk of vignetting.

4"x5" film

One of the nicest pieces from the work with Laurel is the colour image below. I have switched to working on 120 transparency film for my colour work, partially because I can no longer print my own colour negs from the 6x12 back, and partially because of the more immediate gratification of being able to see the image on a light table right after processing. This particular image would have been stronger if the transparency film had been faster - it's produced on Agfa's RSX 50, which has a very narrow latitude. A higher-speed film would have had more information in the water reflection, but this can be taken care of in the prints by digitally boosting the levels in the water, thereby increasing the information. Oh the wonders of the digital age!

6x12 cm transparency

A major influence on the look of the work I produced in Maine was the fact that almost all the models were comfortable with their faces being in the images. The first image in this session is a good example of where this strengthens an image - the only way to have made this image anonymous would have been to have Laurel turn away, which would have changed the image radically.