Ingrid Returns to Pennant River

Digital infrared original, 6 frame stitch

This was Ingrid's second time working with me at Pennant River (the first being almost a year ago to the day), but unlike the previous session, we were cursed with the worst possible light - bright harsh sunlight, without a cloud in the sky. Normally, given a day like this, I would have opted to work in a different space altogether (one with shade), but Ingrid is such a water baby that I knew there wasn't an option.

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Working in direct sunlight has two serious issues when it comes to working with water nudes. The first is not specific to working with water and that is the harshness of the shadows; given that the session was two days before summer solstice, the light was about as top-down as it can be. This imposes some limitations on how Ingrid can pose, and where I can photograph from, but with some effort, is possible to overcome. The second, however, is uniquely specific to working with water, and can be more challenging to overcome. With direct sunlight falling upon the river and model, it can be hard to get a slow enough shutter speed to show the kind of motion in the water that I usually seek to show. By using my darkest neutral density filters, I was able to make exposures in the 1/6th of a second range with most of my lenses, which did show some motion, but usually this would be the shortest exposure I would make with moving water, not the longest!

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Unlike our expedition to Pennant River in 2005, this session was relatively short. Due to the sunny day, the water seemed proportionally cooler, and Ingrid needed several breaks to warm up, which slowed down the session; then, some people came along to swim for the afternoon, effectively putting an end to the work for the day. Ingrid and I did manage to make some very strong images, but the difficult lighting and shorter (proportionally) session did little to help with that. The reality, however, is that given that Ingrid and I have worked together now for close to nine years, the pressure to make loads of brilliant images has been replaced by the quest to build upon what we have already created in previous sessions.

Lisa at Chebucto Head

One of the first places I went to when I started working with the Nude outdoors was Chebucto Head. The location, a series of rocky headlands jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, is full of spaces perfect for posing a model within and it is set far enough away from the city of Halifax to insure the privacy necessary for working with the Nude.

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On this particular afternoon, Chebucto Head was chosen as a location not only for the location, but also the light. The day was bright and harsh, and Chebucto Head was one of the few location where I thought we'd be able to avoid the direct sunlight, using the rock valleys and ravines as locations to provide us with shade to work in.

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As soon as we arrived at Chebucto Head, we proceeded to walk down the coast for fifteen minutes or so, to get away from the parking lot and into some of the more interesting rock spaces. Lisa was quite impressed with the landscape and started seeing visual possibilities as we moved over the rocks, so it was no surprise that as soon as we found a deep enough ravine to shelter her from the sun, we started working.

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The only real issue of the session was how far away from Lisa I was for some of the compositions. Working in the narrow fissures of rock sometimes necessitated me photographing from up on top of the bedrock, looking down. The only compensation for this was how close I had to work for images made down in the crevasses; often I was working with an ultra wide lens, creating dramatic lines and compositions while working only a meter or less from the model.

The Dingle

With how I have structured my life, and how much I have chosen to focus on photographing the Nude, it is quite uncommon for me to just head out with a camera to see what I can make photos of. On this particular day, while I had made plans with Lisa for the afternoon, my morning was open, so I headed to the Sandford Flemming Park in Halifax to see what I could find to explore.

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Much of the time at the park was spent working with my new Sigma ultra-wide angle 10-20mm zoom, learning more about how to use it most effectively and exploring its functionality with my infrared camera. I've already used it several times with models, but in those situations, there is not a lot of time for experimentation or reflection on working with a new lens.

Midway through my experiments with the 10-22mm lens, I spotted something on the grass below the Dingle Tower (which commemorates the establishment of representative government in Nova Scotia); I walked closer to discover a massive moth clutching a single blade of grass. The sight was incredible as the moth's body was a good 10cm long and it was hanging motionless off the grass. I began by working with the lenses I had on hand (shifting from the wide-angle to my 50mm lens), but very quickly realized that, without my macro lens, I was missing all the details. I rushed back to the car to get my macro lens, worried that the moth would be gone by the time I returned.

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My worries were unfounded, however, as when I returned with the macro lens, the moth had not moved at all. The next fifteen minutes was spent working with the moth, exploring various angles and compositions before the sun finally struck the little insect and it flew away.

The real reward of the morning was less the photos of the moth, and more the pleasure of photographing for the joy of seeing. I often forget how much I simply enjoy spending time with my camera and the morning served as a reminder of why I enjoy photographing so much.

Christine at the Coast

This session, Christine's third posing nude, was our first to follow my preferred mode of working; we met in the late afternoon and had the freedom to work until the light, energy, or ideas ran out.

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We decided to work at Prospect as it is one of the few coastal areas near Halifax which permits a good view of the sun setting over water. The evening had a near featureless blue sky which kept the contrast high and while we had come to Prospect in hopes of working with the sunset, my natural aversion to high-contrast kept Christine and I working in the shade for much of the session.

Christine's colouring is so fair that I'd expected much of the session's work to be in colour, but it was only the small series of images I made in the beginning of the evening that were made that way. Focusing on her reflection in a tidal pool, the contrast between Christine's skin and hair, and the rocks around her works much better in colour than monochrome.

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Almost all the other images created during the session were created with my infrared camera. We made a series of portraits in a crevasse-like corner and even when we moved out into the direct evening sunlight, I kept working in infrared - the sunset light was so contrasty that I felt it would be better to accentuate that through using the already high-contrast infrared, rather than try to tame the contrast in colour images. In retrospect, I think I might have made some strong colour images if I had decided to work with colour at this point, but Christine and I planned to work in colour at the actual sunset, so more than anything, we were just waiting for the sun to set.

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As it turned out, well before the sun set, the air temperature dropped, and Christine and I had to abandon our plans. With some reluctance, we packed up and headed back towards the car, only to be pulled to a stop less than five minutes later. A lone tree was growing on top of an exposed rock, and both Christine and I agreed that while it was still cool, away from the water it was warm enough to follow through with a final set of images. After exploring the possibilities for about ten minutes, Christine was beginning to get seriously chilled, so we called it quits for a second time, and headed for Halifax.

Flowers in Halifax

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Flowers have become something of a side-passion for me. Not to the point that I am actually interested in acquiring a green thumb and planting them but more as an academic exercise in composition and technique. The more I work with flowers, the more engrossed I become with the difficulty of making images of them that aren't just "pretty photographs".

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On this particular day, I had an afternoon free before I started teaching, so I went to the Halifax Public Gardens and sat down with my camera, a tripod and a macro lens to see what could be created.
The biggest issue of the day was the sunlight - the afternoon was bright and sunny, so I found myself either working in the shade or using my diffuser to shade the plants. I could have worked in the sunlight but I have such a strong aversion to the strong contrast that this gives. I prefer the richness of detail possible on a cloudy, overcast day.

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Probably the most interesting element of working with the flowers is how much higher the bar is for perfection; with models, I often have to accept small technical flaws in favour of the perfect expression or pose but, with flowers, I can keep photographing until everything is as perfect as possible. For each composition I made in the gardens, I suspect I recorded more than a dozen separate exposures; in the end, after the couple of hours I worked in the gardens, I kept slightly more than twenty images of the three hundred or more I made. Shooting digitally, I had the freedom to experiment without worrying about material costs.

Lisa in the Cobequid Pass

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Lisa had been interested in working with water from our first session working together, so it has been constantly at the back of my mind since then. Similarly, I have been driving back and forth from Halifax to Moncton for three years now and frequently noted a specific spot by the highway with a narrow ravine, cut over the ages by a small stream. For years I have wanted to work with this space, and with Lisa's visit to Moncton, followed by driving her back to Halifax, I finally would have my chance.

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Or so I thought. As it turned out, while I knew the exact location of the ravine from the Halifax to Moncton side of the road, on the return trip, I misidentified the location, and while Lisa and I found a river, it was not in the dramatic ravine we had hoped to work in. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to continue searching, as Lisa had to be back for a work shift, and we were already tight for time.
It turned out that the small river we found had several places where Lisa could pose successfully (being early June, the water still had not warmed up enough to model in, and as Lisa had to work early in the afternoon, it was best to keep her as dry as possible.

Digital infrared original, 20 frame stitch

Even though the day was bright and sunny, working under the thick foliage and trees of the riverside helped keep the contrast low, and avoid any of the bright highlights that often come with working in wood on sunny days. While the river was not flowing with any force, there was enough current to blur with longer shutter speeds, so we were able to make several compositions that made the most of the location. By the time we'd worked a couple of hundred feet upstream however, time was running short, and we had to abandon the space to head back to the car, and on towards Halifax. I will definitely return to the Cobequid pass again, to try a second time to find the ravine I'd originally sought to work in, but the images from this session definitely point out how possible it is to make successful images in the most regular of woodland spaces.

Lisa in the Pool

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After more than six months, working with models in the wading pool has before quite familiar; I almost use the word formulaic but while the approach is almost always the same (excepting the small improvements I have made to the technical side), the difference in the models I have worked with is as important to the pool work as it is to my work outdoors. In the same space, two different models lead to a dramatically different set of images.

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By this session, all the technical issues of working in the wading pool were solved, and Lisa and I could focus on the real work - making successful images. Unlike much of my earlier pool images, I focused less on full body poses, and more on singular images of tightly focused compositions. I think in many ways this is a response to how similar the earlier images of bodies emerging from the water looked; it tended to be the images of details that set the previous sessions apart from each other, as opposed to the larger, more general composition.

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It is likely this is my last water-pool session for some time, given that later in the summer I am moving back to Halifax. The only thought in the back of my head would be to return to the water-pool idea in Halifax, but, as opposed to using a child's wading pool, build a specially designed space to work in and create a wide variety of images over a short period of time, using the specially built set.

Lisa Models in Moncton

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Lisa and I have worked indoors a couple of times in Halifax (once in the studio, and once with candles) but both her and my main interest is in working outdoors together. With this in mind, she came up to Moncton for a visit and to do some modeling. An added bonus to this was the fact I was teaching in Halifax the following weekend and she could get a drive back to the city with me which would hopefully provide an opportunity to work together outside somewhere during the drive back to Halifax.

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This session was our first working together with natural light and the comfort and experience that Lisa had gained through the studio and candle sessions really paid off. As soon as I was set up, we started working, and the session went straight into some very successful portraits, focusing on Lisa's striking gaze. Working with the infrared camera for most of these, I was using large apertures to throw the sheets behind Lisa out of focus.

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While there were some abstracts and bodyscapes made during this session, almost all the immediately apparent successes came from the portraits. After almost eighteen years of working with the Nude (and almost twenty photographing), I really have to admit my figure work breaks down into two classes, one of which revolves around striking indoor Nude portraits.

Lis in the Pool

The second session of Lis' visit to Moncton was a continuation of my exploration of studio water nudes. By this session, pretty much all of the technical issues had been worked out (filling and emptying the wading pool I was using, how to light the scene, what to line the wading pool with to ensure the best quality images), so I could concentrate on making the actual photographs.

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As with the previous wading pool sessions, I focused almost exclusively on the interplay between the light reflecting on the water, and the shadow of the model. The most important part of this process is waiting for the water to become still and then finding the perfect angle to photograph from; too high an angle removes the reflection from the water and too low an angle often had the edges of the water pool in the image. This, combined with the fact that many of the images I was making were multi-frame stitches, made for a very slow, methodical session, with many long pauses as I waited for the water to settle down, and made the series of exposures for each image.

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As I've noted before, to some degree the studio water sessions feel like I am working with the same compositions and poses over and over again. In a literal sense, this is quite true, as there are only so many positions that look good with the particular combination of lighting and setting I am using, but by the same token, the process is not really focused on making new and different images, but rather on honing the realization of a process, and perfecting the results as much as possible.

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Truth be told, if Lis and I had more time, I would have been much happier heading outdoors, and working in a real river or lake, but with only so much time before she flew back home, we had to make the most of the possibilities.

Carol's Pregnancy Session II

The second pregnancy session in the second series of images of Carol's second pregnancy followed very much the same pattern as the first. I had reviewed the images from the first session and made a decision about which poses I'd planned to follow during the pregnancy. The final piece from her first pregnancy was a long horizontal (presented online as two rows of images) so for this series, I decided to work with a horizontal pose I could assemble as a vertical for the final piecer. With this in mind, I selected three horizontal compositions to follow over the coming months, each of which has the potential to yield a good looking series focusing on the changes that are part of bringing a new life into the world.

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I can't state often enough how much of a privilege it is to have the chance to work with Carol over another pregnancy. Our friendship has spanned more than a decade and she was my best-person at Joy and my wedding in 2002; the opportunity to again be a part of such a special time in her life, making a lasting record of it in my images, is a real honour.