An Outdoor Session with Carol

This may well be my last outdoor session of the year - while the day was lit by beautiful light, thanks to some high cloud, it was slightly cool, with the snap of a fall day in the air. Since the beginning of Carol's pregnancy, the plan had been to document the pregnancy with the indoor sessions, and than do a session or two outdoors at the end of her term. During my last visit, ten days earlier, a baby shower and other plans precluded working outdoors so, after some debate, it was decided to make a special trip to Halifax, just to insure that we had the opportunity to do some images outdoors. The logic of a specific car rental and six hours of driving for one hour of shooting might escape some but I think the importance of wrapping up the images of Carol's pregnancy with some outdoor images far outweighed the effort and expense.

8"x10" film

As it happened, the day was a little cool for the images we had initially considered - outdoor images along the coast so, as an alternative, we headed to Spion Copp, one of my favorite architectural spaces to work in (and where I'd worked with Christine at the end of her pregnancy). Though technically not an outdoor setting , the old fort was definitely different from the indoor spaces in which we work for the previous five months and gave a very different type of image.

Digital original, 30 frame stitch

Carol was more than indulgent in providing me with the hour that we worked; this late in a pregnancy, pretty much anything gets uncomfortable after a few minutes, and working barefoot on the cold concrete floor was above and beyond the call of duty. I knew we wouldn't have much time to work, so I tried my best to photograph swiftly while still using all the tools at my call. For the digital images (all multi-image stitched), I first made the exposures of the part of the image in which Carol was present and, as soon as those exposures were made, got her back in her robe and shoes, and continued with the rest of the image. This permitted her to warm up between exposures and helped keep her from becoming too stiff and uncomfortable. For the 8"x10" view camera images, I did my best to get the composition and exposure set before Carol disrobed, making the final image in thirty seconds or so, with only a quick conformation of the final composition being made on the ground glass.

Digital original

With the end of the session also came the end of the body of work Carol and I have created over the previous five months focusing on her first pregnancy. A little over a week later, she successfully brought her first child into the world and both mother and baby are doing well!

Elisabeth under a Bridge

It turned out that the second space was right where I'd parked the car. The huge highway bridge which we'd parked under was quite awe-inspiring but both Elisabeth and I were unsure if it could be used as a setting for a figure session, given the massiveness of the scale, and the limited elements involved (basically, the huge concrete base and two pillars).

Digital original

Throwing hesitation aside, I helped Elisabeth up onto the concrete and began walking around it looking for angles to photograph from. Very quickly I realized the 12-24mm lens would be the best lens to use, as it was the only one capable of showing the bridge and Elisabeth with any sense of scale. I let Elisabeth know that I thought it would work, she undressed, and we started working.

Digital original

In actual fact, over the entire session Elisabeth probably moved less than ten feet; she started standing next to the left-hand pillar, then shifted to lying on her back below the pillar and finally to working standing on the inside edge of the concrete. Almost immediately, I saw that the real strength of the images would come from the contrast between the deep blue sky, the warmth of Elisabeth's skin, and the gray concrete. The limited range of poses that were possible was a little frustrating, forcing me to work more with composition and framing, but the graphic qualities of the bridge, combined with the rich colours made this more than possible for the twenty minutes we worked.

Digital original

In the end, the bridge images were in some ways more engaging than the river Nudes we had done at the beginning of the afternoon. Where those images were comfortable and familiar, the lines and stark colours of the bridge were totally new and invigorating, something that is near impossible to plan to build into an image.

Elizabeth in Jemseg

Although I moved to New Brunswick a year ago, I have actually worked very little in the interior of the province, preferring to concentrate on the areas closer to Moncton and between there and Nova Scotia. When I learned, however, that Elisabeth would be moving back to her home in central New Brunswick in the fall, I immediately asked her if she though it would be early enough in the year to permit a session or two before the winter weather closed in. She thought this wouldn't be an issue so we made tentative plans early in the year.

Digital original

When everything finally fell into place for a session, at the end of September, we were looking at the dying light of summer, and one of the last warm days of the year. Because neither of us had very much in the way of local knowledge, we decided to simply drive along the old highways of New Brunswick, and keep our eyes open for possible spaces. I have long been interested in photographing along the riversides in New Brunswick, but such a space, both isolated and accessible, seemed elusive, as the road was either directly beside the water, or too far back to permit us to judge if the space would work or not (the day proved again how important local knowledge can be to finding spaces).

Our real break came as we drove along the old road, under one of the new highway bridges, built in the past decade. we spotted a dirt road heading off from the highway, towards the river, underneath the new bridge. A short drive later, we had the perfect space to work, in trees overhanging the slow-moving Jemseg River.

Digital original, 12 frame stitch

The session was actually quite short; there were only a few trees with the right shape and form to work in and the direct sunlight, while great in terms of keeping the day warm, was difficult to work with. In the end, after a little more than thirty minutes spent working with a couple of trees, we packed up the gear, and headed back to the car, planning to look for a second space to work.

Bobbi in a Forest

From mid-September onwards, outdoor sessions take on an extra edge. Not only is each session a crap-shoot in regards to the weather, but the light has a particularly beautiful quality as the sun moves lower in the sky for the winter months. Even for a session like this, where the lighting was muted and subdued, the low angle of the sun still had an influence, providing a direction to what would have otherwise been a totally diffused light.

Digital original, 12 frame stitch

I haven't done many woodland sessions this year so, knowing the bugs were long gone, I suggested to Bobbi that we work in some trees for this session - the day seemed warm enough, as long as we were out of the wind. For lack of a better place to work (one woodland setting is pretty much the same as another) we drove outside of Halifax and then parked by the highway and walked into the woods.

Digital original

As I'd expected, the light in the woods was beautiful; none of the trees had turned to their fall colour yet, so the space was predominately shades of green, though there were undertones of gray and brown. The muted colour palette suited colour images, and while a few of the photos we made were converted into black and white, the vast majority of them I chose to keep in colour, playing with the contrast in hue between Bobbi's warm skin and hair, and the cool tones of the forest around her.

Digital original

This session was produced exclusively with a digital camera; I had considered bringing the 8"x10" camera, but as it was pretty cool when we started working, I didn't want to sap Bobbi's energy by having her stay still for the longer poses required by the larger camera. In retrospect, the best reason for using the digital camera turned out not to be the working process (it ended up being much warmer in the woods then we'd anticipated), but the fact that the images were made in colour. So much of what I responded to in the woods was the beautiful vibrant colours of the trees, and while many of the images we made work well in black and white, it is the colour images  which appeal to me the most.

A Final Sesion with Carol

Digital original

This session marked the completion of more then five months of work. What Carol and I had begun at the end of April was brought to a conclusion, with the last of our indoor sessions focusing on her pregnancy. The work that we'd produced was very different from any other photographic project I'd done to date; where most of my work revolves around singular images, this project followed a number of poses through the pregnancy, working with the idea of repetition and growth, as opposed to chronicling a singular grace.

Digital original

In many ways, we were fortunate over the course of the project. Our sessions were regularly spaced and by luck more than design, the poses and setting we chose in her house had surprisingly consistent lighting, given how much the time of year could have changed this.

Digital original

The final part of the project will take place over the coming fall and winter - taking the images and assembling each series into the final, printable, images. Done the easy way, this would require little effort, simply placing each image next to the previous, and calling it finished. Early into the project, however, I decided that I would rather keep the only variable the evolving pregnancy so I will be pulling Carol's figure out of each composition and carefully matching the images in size and composition on the same background. This will accomplish several things - by insuring the background is identical in each image, it will increase the sense of repetition of each series, but by the same measure, it will increase the sense of difference between each of the photographs, focusing the eye on the subtle differences in the body between each frame in the final composition.

Some Field Trip Images

Digital original

I do not often include images in the Photo Diary that are make on the various photographic workshops I teach, often viewing them more as side-effects of the teaching process. Over this summer, however, more and more I find myself making images that resonate during the workshops. These images are very different from my work with the Nude, but still rooted in my love for visual exploration and revelation.

Digital original

This particular workshop was about photographic perception - being open to visual possibilities at any time, as opposed to setting out to photograph preconceived notions. Of all the classes I teach, this is the one most rooted in the idea of actually making images, so it also tends to be the one that I make the most images in.

Digital original

We spent most of the morning photographing along the Halifax waterfront but, rather than making images of the space as a whole, I was drawn to the little details, the rope lines against boats, the weather marks on the wharves and concrete. What really caught my eye though, was the rise and fall of the waves; when I have extensive experience photographing moving water in lakes and rivers, I haven't done much photography of the ocean, so I pulled out my ten stop neutral density filter (which makes the exposure 1024 times longer then it would be without it) and made a thirty second exposure of the water moving between the wooden beams of an old pier. The result was extremely pleasing, and was a peak to the day.

Brianda Poses Indoors

The final morning of Brianna's visit was spent working indoors, with the available light coming in through the deck doors. The day was perfect for an outdoor session, but as she had to drive back to the US, the best use of our time was to spend it working indoors, as opposed to losing more then half of it to driving to the closest space I know to work near Moncton.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

As opposed to putting the couch down into the bed form, and working with Brianna lying down, with the light coming from beside her, I opted to keep it in couch form, and set it running away from the deck doors. This provided the same kind of lighting that I am so enamoured with on the bed, but a totally different space for the model to pose it. Initially I worked from inside the kitchen, exploring the side lighting flowing across the couch, and Brianna's body.

Digital original, 13 frame stitch

The really interesting images from the kitchen, however, came when I shifted to shooting from the living room, towards the deck doors. As I shifted the camera to the new location, Brianna was playing around on the couch, and had thrown her legs up onto the back. Just as I has set up the camera, I glanced at her, and saw the soft glow of the window surrounding Brianna, with her legs creating a strong diagonal to the frame. I made several variations on the final image, each one made of multi-image stitches, to insure the final images were of the highest quality.

Digital original

The final part of the session was spent working with Brianna posing in the cut-outs between the living room and the kitchen. Since we bought the house, I had eyed the cutthroughs, but never actually suggested working with them to a model. Brianna however, saw the openings when she first arrived at the house, and immediately mentioned she would like to pose in them. As a close to our two days of working together, I cleared off the walls, and hung a backdrop on the far side of the openings. With such a limited space, I was surprised by how many variations Brianna could come up with, in regards to the pose. Still, in fifteen minutes, all the potentialities seemed realized and we drew the session to a close. Less than an hour later, Brianna was driving back to the US, and I began the processing and editing the images from the previous 48 hours.

Briana's Second Session

After we finished up in the water and shoreline of Neville Lake, we drove for another ninety minutes to arrive at Burntcoat Head shortly before 6pm; the tide was at its lowest and we had several thousand feet of beach to work on. Brianna and I had agreed to make the most of the daylight we had and planned to work until the light faded totally which gave us about three hours to work.

Digital original, 2 frame exposure blend

For most of my previous visits to Burntcoat Head, I had focused my image making on the small island, exploring the curves and lines of its wave-worn red sandstone but, given that the tide was so low, Brianna and I decided the best place to begin working was far out on the tidal flats. From a distance, the mud flats at the lowest edge of the tidal region look featureless and dull, but as we walked into the space, numerous possibilities presented themselves. By far, the most striking setting was a beautifully textured rock, backed by a round smooth bolder. Both Brianna and I thought the space had possibilities, but all the rocks were covered with sharp barnacles and I was unsure if Brianna would be able to find a pose that would be comfortable enough to hold.

Digital original, 2 frame stitch

It turned out to be relatively easy to generate a successful pose, and I spent several minutes working with the space. The sky was covered by drab clouds, but I planned to post-process it into something more dramatic, taking my cue from the earlier cloud images I'd worked with earlier in the month. This isn't to say that the image wouldn't have worked without the post processing, but just as I might decide to use a particular filter for a scene in black and white, this image was created with the sky post-processing specifically in mind.

Digital original, 2 frame exposure blend, 2 frame stitch

After working on the flat-lands of low tide, Brianna and I moved up onto the water-carved rocks that line the shore of Burntcoat Head. This space is now becoming more and more familiar with each subsequent visit, and that is making working in the curves and flows of the red rock all the swifter, as I have an idea of the spaces I wish to work in, and which ones would be better left for another session.

8"x10" film

In the end, the light faded before my ideas did, and Brianna and I had to walk back to the car in deepening twilight. We'd made the most of the day, and while we had to drive into Nova Scotia to find it, the weather was close to ideal (though to be honest, it could have been a little warmer at Burntcoat Head, but as long as we kept out of the wind, it was quite bearable). Given how little time Brianna had available to model, the extra effort we went through for the photos was more then appropriate.

Brianda's first session

Brianna had first contacted me about modeling in 2002, when she lived in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. I told her it was unlikely I would be up her way anytime soon (NWT is farther away from Atlantic Canada than Europe is, even though it is still in Canada). I did however encourage her to let me know if she was ever coming this way, as I would be more than happy to work with her.

8"x10" film

As it happened, this summer found Brianna with a job in Maine a relatively short distance away in Maine and, after some e-mail discussions, we settled on the last weekend of August as the best time for her to come up and work with me.

Though the afternoon when she arrived was sunny and warm, the next morning dawned more then a little wet. The day's weather was calling for thundershowers, and the threat of rain all day, so we decided rather then chance the whim of the weather, we'd leave New Brunswick for the promise of cloudy with sunny periods in Nova Scotia. Not wanting to drive all the way to Halifax though, I
decided to head for Neville Lake, where'd I'd previously worked with Bobbi and Ingrid. This time, however, the light was perfect - soft and even, and we spent more than two hours working at the lake, both in the water, and in the trees surrounding it.

8"x10" film

For someone who had never modeled before, Brianna had a striking sense of confidence (she claims it was rooted in two years of wanting to model, but I think it was still surprising, regardless). The first couple of images in the water had some hesitance and reserve to them, but before we moved out of the water an hour later, she was totally comfortable before the camera, and some of the most striking images of the session were standing portraits - one of the hardest poses to ask of a model.

Digital original, 4 frame stitch

On the whole, the session went really well - it was less chaotic then the previous session with Bobbi and Ingrid (two models often increases the possibilities, but inevitably leads to a measurable distraction factor), but at the same time, having worked in the space before made the session stronger- I had an idea of where I wanted to be, and what sort of poses and compositions were possible.

Bobbi & Elisabeth at Martinique Beach

This session was a second try this summer at the elusive sunset at Martinique - the session with Bobbi and Ingrid was successful, but I still had ideas in my mind's eye that I wanted to try to realize. Both Bobbi and Elisabeth had worked with me earlier in the year on sunset images and were keen to see what else could be created.

Digital original, 6 frame stitch

As it turned out, the sunset was brief and unimpressive; most of the images we made working with the sunset sky was made well before it dropped below the horizon. Still, taking inspiration for the two-model nudes of the previous session, I made a number of compositions with the two models below the dramatic sky that are more than pleasing. It is frustrating on some levels to feel so close to realizing these sunset images and then be foiled at every turn by the weather, but such is the lot of a photographer in the great outdoors.

Digital original

After the sky lost its lustre, and the water grew too cold for the two models, we moved up onto the dunes, and made a number of images with the 8"x10" camera (these were the same dunes where I'd first worked with Bobbi three months earlier). I made several images of each model, working with Bobbi on an image rooted in some work on the Boutouche Dunes, and making a very striking portrait of Elisabeth. I'd asked her to roll slowly down the dune (a feat that proved both impossible and quite funny to watch) and she'd landed, and then looked up at me from the dune. The resulting image is everything I look for in a Nude Portrait; confidant, challenging, and most importantly, unquestionably about Elisabeth.

8"x10" film

The end of the session came with both models running out in to the surf on the ocean-side of the beach...a little crazy half hour, with me standing to my waist in the water, and the models frolicking in the water.

Digital original

It was in the middle of this session that I rolled past 50,000 exposures made with my Canon EOS 10D, in about 18 months. That adds up to 5,000 rolls on the Mamiya RB I sold to buy the camera...even allowing that I have only kept half of those images, that still translates to more then $10,000 CDN in film (not even thinking of processing) which I have not had to purchase. Digital is not a panacea, and I certainly can't see myself setting film aside in the foreseeable future, but I certainly do not regret the shift of about half my image-making to digital.