A Sesson of Firsts!

This session was all about firsts! It was my first session working with Liv, my first time using a new IR camera with a model, and my first outdoor figure session in 2021. Usually, I've started to photograph outdoors by May, but because of Canada's third wave of COVID-19, it is only in early June that outdoor interaction (photography or not) with mask-less people who aren't within a house-hold bubble is permitted in Nova Scotia. 

While I received my infrared converted Canon EOS R5 in early May (after it sat in customs for a full month!), the only images I've made with it have been a few of landscape and architecture, and a load of technical tests...this session is my first using it for what I bought it for - photographing the Nude! The decision to shift to mirrorless for my infrared photography was a big one, and this session would put that to the litmus test.

As Nova Scotian COVID-19 restrictions began to ease in early June, I reached out to Liv about working together. I knew she'd done some fine art modeling before, and I found the energy and character of her portfolio revealed engaging. That, coupled with the fact a friend of mine had worked her, and spoke highly of the experience, made me take the (for me unusual) step of reaching out to see if she'd be interested in working together. After a meeting to share my work and process, we set up a first session date (which turned out to be the next evening, as chance would have it), and headed for the coast (in separate cars, due to COVID-19 restrictions)!

Digital infrared original

We began the session with Liv reclining in a tidal pool; the evening was not that hot at the coast, and would only get cooler, so we'd decided to start with water images, and make the most of location while we could. Having the first images of a session with a new model tie into a thread that's flowed through my work since 1996 is never an issue. The thin, high cloud provided some soft diffusion of the sun, while still permitting some brilliant highlights on her body, and in the reflection in the water around Liv. While I started working with the camera on a tripod, I quickly shifted to hand held, taking advantage of the reason I moved to the mirrorless camera for infrared - fully accurate viewfinder auto-focus. It paid off, and permitted me a very low, dramatic viewpoint for the best image of the pose and setting.

Digital infrared original

As the session progressed, Liv and I continued to return to her working in water pools. By the middle of the session, the sun had moved lower in the sky, and provided a really beautiful side light. Working in a larger tidal pool, I made a series of compositions of her facing the sun, arching back while emerging from the pool. Initially, I worked from a higher camera position, but was frustrated with her body being set against the line of rock behind her, as opposed to against the sky, so I moved the camera lower (inches above the water surface), and everything came together. To make such a striking (and for me, atypical) image during a first session with a new model is a gift indeed!

Digital infrared original, two image blend

As the evening stretched out, working in water became impractical (the air became too cool), so as Liv dressed, I packed up my gear, and we began to walk back to the cars...only to be brought to a halt by some good light on an interesting rock face! A line of granite bedrock was being kissed by the evening sun providing beautiful side lighting to work with - and Liv was happy to see what we could make of it. After some pose experimentation and lens and camera angle variation, the above image, with Liv's sun-lit hip just kissing the downward sweep of the rocks behind her, was made!

Digital infrared original

The last success of the session was born of careful pose and camera work, blended with the beautiful happenstance that working outdoors provides. On the crest of the bedrock ridge, a glacial erratic was perched on smaller rocks (rumour has it that Art College students in the distant past may have had something to do with this particular phenomenon). Using a wide lens and careful tripod positioning, I balanced the stone compositionally against the lovely sky that was happening above it, and then Liv slowly refined her pose until everything came together. It was a striking composition to end the session on, and both of us felt it at the time. I hope this bodes well for continued sessions with Liv in the future!

For a first outdoor session of the year, I am really pleased; mixing working with a new model and a new camera into the same session could have been unwise, but in the end, Liv's comfort, experience and trust in the process shone in the images, and the camera just did what I hoped it would do - worked. Being able to preview the infrared image in the viewfinder is revolutionary (with my previous DSLR infrared cameras, one could not know how an IR image would look without first taking a test image), and having fast and accurate auto-focus after more than 15 years of having to manually focus infrared images (initially using the IR focus dot on lenses, and since 2005, using LiveView) is absolutely amazing...and yet withing minutes, just became the norm, as the session progressed. Ultimately, tools are for creating, but in the case of the new camera, it is a vast improvement on previous tools!

A Spring Garden

With Provincial COVID-19 restrictions ruling out photographing people, and suggesting people limit their travel, I have done little in the way of photography. One element of the new Canon EOS 5R that continues to intrigue me is the "focus bracketing" option, which in theory makes in the field (and even hand-held) focus stacking surprisingly easy. I experimented a little with the approach on New Year's Day, and was very pleased with the results.

Digital original, 60 frame focus blend

After some hand-held experiments (which for the most part failed), I moved the camera back on to the tripod, and used a more traditional approach. While the default in camera is set to a 20 image stack, it ended up that I needed 60 frames to cover the above composition of some forget-me-nots. The final assembled image needed some manual correction of blending errors, but overall, was really pleasing.

Digital original, 68 image focus blend

As convenient as the automatic focus bracketing is, it really works best with a static subject; the above image of hostas provided the perfect subject, and a camera setting of 70 images provided the 68 frames needed to get infinite depth of field, without any diffraction compromise. Unlike the first image, this needed no manual tweaking to generate the final composition.

Digital original, 2 image focus blend

The last image is less of a focus stack, and more just a two-frame blend - an f/11 image of the centre of the dandelion, and then an f/2.8 image for a super silky background.

A Second Infrared EOS R5 Session

As with 2020, my photographic process in 2021 is being heavily impacted by COVID-19; on the day these photographs were made, Nova Scotia posed another day of record-setting infections, and moved into a tighter lockdown, including the request that Nova Scotian's stay close to home...so no new photos for the remainder of May, while we hope to gain control over the pestilence that is running rampant in Halifax.

Where my first camera tests of the newly converted Canon EOS R5 were made literally the day after it arrived (don't ask about the 30 days waiting in Canadian Customs), these images were made on a day much more suited for infrared photography - bright sunlight and an interesting sky with high, whispy clouds.

Digital infrared original

Though I made the above image with my 17mm TS/E tilt-shift lens, I was interested in pushing the cameras to the limit, so no tripod was used. The camera's focus peaking assist worked wonderfully with the manual focus lens, and the built-in levels helped me avoid any significant camera distortion to the horizontal or vertical plane. It is undeniable that this image would have been faster and easier to make with a tripod, but the fact I could focus and compose so accurately was a real treat, and further builds my confidence that this new IR camera will take my work in directions I have not been able to head before.

Digital infrared original

This image of the tree shadow on Citadel Hill was initially intended to be a photograph of the clouds, but when I saw how start the shadows looked through the viewfinder, I knew the composition would have to include both.

Digital infrared original

The last set of images were made in a graveyard, looking towards the tallest building in the city (which is currently undergoing renovations). This image in particular points out the potential of the EOS R5 for infrared work - the shadows were open and detailed, even through the highlights were subject to full afternoon sun - this bodes well for upcoming work with models where the constrast with sunlit skin and shadows tends to be a challenge at times!

All I need now is an end to COVID-19, so I can head out with a model, and really see what this camera can do.

My First Session with an Infrared Converted EOS R5

When I first began the transition from working with film to working with digital cameras, one of the biggest questions was "how can I let go of working with infrared light?" Since 1990, infrared film had been an increasingly important part of my creative process, so this was certainly a concern. All my doubts were set to rest in the fall of 2004, when I made my first set of digital images with an infrared-converted Sigma SD-10; the results were thrilling (though only 3.1 mp in resolution), and this paved the way for more than 15 years of digital infrared photography, between then and now.

Infrared digital original

Since 2004, I have had five DSLR cameras converted to be infrared sensitive; but with my latest upgrade, I moved to a mirrorless camera design, the Canon EOS R5. Switching from DSLRs to mirrorless provides two distinct advantages when working with an infrared converted camera. The first advantage is to be able to see the infrared image through the viewfinder. With my previous DSLR cameras, when looking through the viewfinder, the image viewed is the world in front of the lens (as DSLR cameras permit the photographer to view directly through the lens, as opposed to a digital video image). 

Infrared digital original

For conventional photography, being able to see the real world through the viewfinder is often considered an advantage (especially for sports or action), but with infrared photography, being unable to see what an image will look like before it is made is a real handicap. The only workaround has been to work with LiveView; this shows a video image of the composition on the back screen of the camera - and this was certainly a game-changer with the Canon 5D MKII (which was my first DSLR with liveview), but it also imposes some pretty significant limitations on process, making a tripod pretty much mandatory for most sessions, and making viewing the image challenging on bright days. All this has changed with the mirrorless camera, which clearly displays the image, in all its glorious "infraredness" before I even touch the shutter button.

Infrared digital original

The second advantage is related to the first, but in some ways, even more significant. With a mirrorless infrared camera, for the first time, auto focus works accurately (as the camera focused with the light falling on the sensor (contrast detection), as opposed to the more traditional DLSR method of phase detection. For someone who loves working with large apertures, this is a game changer! Coupled with the incredibly fast and accurate focus of the EOS R5 (including eye focus), this makes working in infrared suddenly much faster and more accurate than ever before!

A Snow Session...on the First Day of Spring

Ever since my first snow & ice sessions with Ingrid in 2008, I have kept out for appropriate winter days to work with a model on...and this was the first time since that everything came together to permit a return to working outdoors in winter (obviously, there have been many days in the intervening 13 years where the winter weather was warm enough, or a model was available, or I was available...but this was the first time all three came together perfectly. The day before had a small snow storm, and while much of the snow had melted off the trees by the time the day had warmed to 5 celsius, there was still plenty of snow on the ground to leave no doubt these were images made in the winter (even though technically, it was the first day of spring).

Digital original

When we arrived at our planned location, another vehicle was parked, so we headed in a slightly different direction, and walked into the forest until we found a suitable location. A fallen tree, covered with a blanket of snow, but with some wonderfully weathered exposed wood was the perfect place to start working. With back lighting flooding across the scene, there was some great play between shadows and highlights provided, and a wide lens helped create some direction and flow to the composition.

Digital original, two frame stitch

Towards the end of the session, Hailey and I considered an oddly curved tree branch, and pondered if it could support her...which it did!

Digital original

The last set of images of the short snow-session were of Hailey exploring a tree that stretched out over the river. Again the back lighting was really pleasing, with the broad dynamic range of the Canon EOS R5 really contributing to the look of the final image (I doubt I would have had such a lovely result with the older EOS 5DsR)

All in all, the winter session with Hailey was fun; with the snow-cover being relatively light, it didn't have the wow factor that we'd both been wishing for, but beggar's can't be choosers, and given how mild the weather was, it was a really good session, and left us both eager for warmer weather (and water) in the coming months!

A Shower Session with Hailey

After my recent shower session with Ingrid, I'd asked Hailey if she'd be interested in working in a shower sometime. She was, but her personal situation made her modeling in her shower challenging...but then an unexpected development occurred, and after a short text discussion, we set up this session.

digital original

It may be stating the obvious, but I've come to realize that every shower is different; like Ingrid's, Hailey's shower has the light coming from the opposite side to the shower head, resulting in all the images being lit from the backside, in regards to where the water was. While less than ideal, short of bringing in my own lighting, this was the way things were, and I had to roll with it. The vast majority of the images were made with my new colour camera (a Canon EOS R5 that I will soon convert to infrared), and the camera worked really well...but in the end, I was less than pleased with the overall colour tonality of the images, so prefer the above black and white image, which calls more attention to the light and water, as opposed to being all about the colour.

A Winter Field Trip (Halifax, NS)

 As seems to be the trend in these times, this winter has been unusually warm, so it was mid-February before I had any opportunity to photograph water and ice (taking advantage of a Photo 101 field trip as an excuse to get out.

Digital original

As I've been working with ice and water for years now, returning to it felt much like pulling on an old glove - within minutes I was back into the pleasure of working with such a magical subject, and for more than an hour (after the field trip students headed off), I explored the potential of the small waterfall.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

The real gift of the session, however, came as I was waking back to the car - I passed a beach, and saw that the tide cycle had created lines of thin ice piles, which were catching the reflection of the afternoon sun off of a nearby building - which was quite interesting, visually. I set up my tripod, and discovered it was only with my longest lens (a 300mm f/4) that I could get the composition I thought...but with such a long lens, the depth of field needed to record the entire scene was essentially impossible. So, with great excitement, I turned to technology for a solution, using the Canon EOS R5's "focus bracketing" to create images to focus-stack together on the computer. After some experimentation, it turned out that between 35 and 40 frames were needed for each composition, and the below image was created.

Digital original, 25 frame focus stack

New Year's Day

With only one exception since 2007, I have started each New Year with a photography outing to Peggy's Cove, inviting students to join me for lunch, and then photography, to ring in the new year. This year, because of COVID-19, things had to be a little different, as the restaurant was closed, and gathering had to be with social distancing and masks.

Digital original, 30 frame focus blend

Having received my Canon EOS 5R only a couple of weeks before, this was one of my first chances to work with it, and I took full advantage of the opportunity, spending much of my time exploring the focus bracketing feature, which takes multiple images focused at slightly different distances, creating a series of photographs progressively focusing through a composition. These images can be combined in post production to create images with exceptional depth of field - impossible images that could not be created in any other way.

Digital original, 40 frame focus blend

For most of the time I spent at Peggy's Cove, I made compositions taking advantage of this technique - capturing well over 700 course files in the process. Some failed (due to poor technique on my part), but those that worked were really quite lovely, creating sharp, detailed images that could not be created any other way!

Digital original

The last images of the session were made of the evening sky, as sunset approached - simple images with simple beauty.

The Final Session of 2020 (and goodbye to infrared DSLRs)!

I didn't plan this session, but when Ingrid asked if I'd like to do something on this particular Thursday, I immediately asked if she had a shower, and what kind of light it had...her reply was the right answer, plans were made, and the last session got under way on the second last day of the year. The correct answer, of course, was that the room was lit by a skylight, so with great enthusiasm (and no idea what the room looked like) I arrived at Ingrid's apartment, and we set about to make some images.

Digital infrared original

In addition to being the last session of the year, this was also the last session for with with a infrared converted DSLR; after some frustrations over the previous summer, I'd decided to upgrade to a mirrorless camera for my infrared work - this will permit me to focus and set exposures through the viewfinder, as opposed to having to use LiveView all the time (as I currently do with my converted DSLR). Fortunately, I found a buyer for my converted Canon EOS 5Ds, so after this session, that camera will be in the mail to a new owner, and in a couple of months, I will convert my new Canon EOS 5R mirrorless camera to infrared!

Digital original

After making some images of just the light in the shower,I started to work with Ingrid in the shower proper, working between the new mirrorless body, and my infrared converted DSLR; the two cameras worked quite differently, but both made some really pleasing images. In the case of the new Canon EOS 5R camera, the new auto focus system was amazing to work with, and really increased the number of potential images I had to work with (having worked a lot with models in showers, I know how hard it can be for cameras to focus in these settings). In the end, the best of the colour images, like so many of my shower images, were all about water and hands.

Digital infrared original

Towards the end of the shower photos, the angle of the sun had shifted enough to cast light directly on Ingrid's torso, so the last set of photographs of the session took advantage of this; most of the previous showers I've worked with had a window on the far side of the shower (behind the model) or a skylight above, so this set-up, with the roof skylight on an angle to my left provided a very different look for a quite familiar approach. All in all, a great, short session, and a nice way to say good bye to a camera I've enjoyed working with since 2015.

Digital original

 

The last photographs of this short session (and of 2020) were of Ingrid lying on her bed, drying off after the shower. I didn't have too many expectations for these images, which was not a bad thing, as the light in the bedroom was a little lack-luster, so after ten minutes of exploration, I felt I'd made what could be made, and brought the session to a close.

A Final Ocean Session for the Year

Though COVID-19 has shaped this year beyond reckoning, the passion Hailey and Ingrid have for working with water has shaped my work, and lead to me creating some of my strongest work in years (much of which is yet to be seen, as it is part of a planned exhibition). This session, the last outdoor one of the year, was also a session that had a little more drama than I'd hoped for.

Digital Original

The first part of the session saw Ingrid and I building on the water images I'd already created this summer - but this time, we came dangerously close to pushing things too far. Caution is always the name of the game when working with something as unpredictable as the ocean, but during the last of a handful of locations we worked in, a rouge wave came in with significantly more water than expected, and actually lifted Ingrid up, and had the potential to do quite some damage. Fortunately, moments later the water subsided, and Ingrid was only shifted a hands-breadth from her original location, but it was enough of a scare to put us both off ocean based images for the rest of the session...I could not help but thing how badly the session could have ended, if things had gone differently.

Digital infrared original

After bringing the work with the ocean to and end, we began to hunt for other spaces to work in, and with no little irony, ended up returning immediately to work with water, but this time, it was a still water pool further inland on the inter-tidal zone. After a series of exploratory posed, we hit on the above pose and composition, which was both flattering to Ingrid, and made the most of the oncoming evening light, which lit up the far side of the pool so beautifully.

Digital infrared original, 6 frame focus blend

I have not combined focus blending with the Nude often - in part because I am often far enough away from models to not need to extend depth of field in such an extreme way, and also because people breathe, and for focus stacking to work well, all part of the image need to be static. In this case, however, focus stacking was the only solution, as the rock pools in the foreground are mere inches wide, and Ingrid was a good 10 meters away from me - one frame of Ingrid, and five additional images, focusing progressively closer across the water pools yielded exactly the image I saw in my mind's eye!

Digital original

The last images of the session were made just after sunset, and for lack of a better space to pose in, Ingrid found a convenient rock shelf to arch back upon - I quickly shifted my position to place her directly below the sun's last burning light in the sky. A colorful end to a dramatic session!