Ingrid at the Coast

Ingrid and I have not often had the chance to head out and work together on our own for a variety reasons; this isn't to say that working with her when other models or photographers are present is a problem in any way but I have no doubt that it does affect the tone of a session. On this day, however, it was just Ingrid and me planning to work along the coastline of Polly's Cove, on what I expected to be my last chance to work outdoors in Nova Scotia for the year.

Digital infrared original

 The day was perfect; the air was a pleasant temperature and it was sunny with a scattering of high clouds moving through the sky, providing occasional shade to the shoreline if I was patient. The first set of images Ingrid and I made was a couple of stitches of her posing with the rocks at the top of the bluff overlooking the ocean, but these felt as if they weren't taking advantage of the magnificant scenery around us, so we picked up and headed down to the coast. I'd hoped to work on the rocks beside where the ocean met the shore, creating images of the breaking surf behind Ingrid. It took a while to find the pose and camera position, but once all was in place, it took perhaps two minutes until the right wave presented itself, throwing a fan of foam high into the sky behind Ingrid.

After finishing with the ocean surf (our experiments were cut a little short when a wave actually broke over Ingrid, soaking her thoroughly) Ingrid and I spent a little time exploring the massive bedrock forms along the shoreline, making a series of images in the crevasses and cracks in the stone. At this point, the sun was dancing between the clouds, and the images were swiftly changing between being harshly lit, and delicately described, which made it a little frustrating to work (with every change in the light, a new exposure was called for, which dramatically slowed down the working process, and caused a number of images to be lost, as I couldn't get the right exposure before the light changed for a second time).

Digital infrared original

The last portion of our day was spent working on the seaweed, working with the hard lines of the direct light, and the luminous quality that infrared sensitive cameras give to dark brown rockweed. By this point, the sun had settled high above the clouds, and the light was even and consistent, if a little contrasty. Most of the images we made on the seaweed were multi-frame stitches, with and angle of view wider than that of my widest lens (12mm, equal to 18mm on a 35mm camera). In most cases, I was stitching less for resolution than composition, as the spread of the seaweed and sky before me was just to dramatic but, for a couple of the images, I used a longer lens (50mm) and made higher resolution stitches to facillitate printing at much larger final sizes.

Digital infrared original, 6 frame stitch

The end of the session came somewhat reluctantly. I still had a three hour drive back to Moncton ahead of me, and the afternoon was growing cooler, so as the tide slowly drew the seaweed back under its blanket, Ingrid and I climbed back to the high ground and headed back to Halifax.

Miranda on a Hill of Sawdust

The second half of the day I spent working with Miranda was spent exploring the possibilities presented by a massive pile of sawdust from a long abandoned saw mill in the middle of the woods. I am not exaggerating by using the word massive - this sawdust pile has to have been close to 500m long, and easily 8m high - putting us close to the top of some of the trees that surrounded it.

8"x10" flm

Initially, I was somewhat dubious that the sawdust hill would present much of interest visually, but when we can across the first piece of abandoned machinery, a line of half-buried chain of massive dimension, I began to change my mind. Then, moments later we came across a partially buried drive shaft of some huge machine, and I immediately set down the camera gear, my eyes suddenly alive with the possibilities.

Digital infrared original

Five minutes later, Miranda and I were exploring the possibilities of the piece of machinery. We both were very careful to avoid placing footprints in the soft sawdust around the metal, while doing our best to discover the most successful pose possibilities. After a couple of minutes of experimentation and sketching with the infrared DSLR, we'd worked out a number of successful poses, and changed over to working with the 8"x10" view camera. I worked with the camera placed on the shady side of the drive shaft, using the direct sunlight as a rim light, which also had the side effect of helping to set Miranda's figure off against the surroundings.

After we finished working with the half-buried machinery, I made a small series of portraits of Miranda, standing with her back to the sun. This was somewhat of a hold over from the New Brunswick Portfolio, where our mods-operndi was to constantly inject a portrait series into almost every location.

Digital infrared original, 18 frame stitch

The end of the session was spent working with the huge chain that we'd seen when we first arrived on the sawdust pile. I wasn't sure what could be done with it, but the lines and shapes of the links, emerging and disappearing over and over again was quite engaging visually. After some experimentation, Miranda managed to find a number of very successful poses, which when combined with the lower autumnal angle of the sun, lead to some very dramatic images in this desolate location.

One thing to note about this session is that is was my last using my 8"x10" view camera. For personal reasons, over the fall of 2005, I made the transition to working 100% digitally, selling the last of my film cameras, and changing my chemical darkroom over to a digital one.

Miranda at a Dam

Since moving to New Brunswick from Nova Scotia in 2003, I haven't had much chance to explore new locations as much of my time photographing in Nova Scotia has been spent working with places I was already familiar with, the logic being that it is better to make images in known spaces than risk spending a day looking for a location, only to find nothing workable. This session, however, saw me journeying to a new location, guided by my friend, fellow photographer and occasional model, Miles. He'd worked at the Sandy Dam several weeks earlier with Ingrid and, after viewing those images, I agreed with him that this would be a great place to spend a day working at with Miranda during my next visit to Halifax.

Digital infrared original

The location turned out to be near ideal, especially given the weather. The day was both sunny and windy, and being an early fall day, the wind was quite cool. Miranda was well sheltered, however, as the dam dropped down below the surrounding landscape and protected her from the chill wind that swept across the lake above.

While I was somewhat frustrated by the harsh sunlight, I was well aware that it was all that made it possible for Miranda to model; without the sun, the day would have been quite chilly. In light of that, the first images I made worked aggressively with the shadows, both on Miranda. Using an extremely wide angle lens on the DSLR camera, I use the shadows as a composition element, drawing the eye to corners, and emphasizing the flow of the image.

Digital infrared original, 2 frame stitch

The other prevalent feature of the back side of the dam was the small set of steps that lead up to an access door. The steps were perfectly centred with the doorway above them; it was this symmetry that I worked with first, making an image with the view camera that centered Miranda on the stairs and used a rise movement (shifting the lens up higher in front of the film) to show all of the doorway alcove above her, without any distortion. Fortune shone her brightest as I was about to make the image and a small cloud passed over the sun, causing a brief shadow to fall across the scene.

Digital infrared original, 16 frame stitch

The final images of the session were created using the same pose of Miranda lying back on the steps but I prowled around her, exploring other angles of view. These I made with the infrared camera, using the different tonal response of the modified digital camera to give Miranda's skin a particularly sculptural quality that is impossible to obtain by any other method. In this case, it also showing some of the veining that infrared film can sometimes display under the right conditions. Again, fortune shone on me and, just as I began to make the image which would eventually be assembled into a 16 images stitch, the sun went behind a cloud, giving me the soft, even lighting I am so enamoured with and which produces such lovely results.

Hannah & Krista at Bas-Cap-Pele

Hannah and Krista had both expressed an interest in modeling one more time before they left for central camera at the beginning of September. As I wasn't able to make it down to Halifax again before then, they offered to drive up to New Brunswick, and spend a day working me.

Digital infrared original, 44 frame stitch

In stark contrast to our previous session together, the weather was gray, overcast, and threatening rain. Ever optimistic, the five of us (Miles and Natasha were also along, planning to work together in the same spaces as Krista and Hannah and I were going to use), headed off for the coast, planning to work with the rock formations Miranda and I had used just over a month earlier.

The model's response to the space was much the same as Miranda's, and very quickly they were discussing the possibilities of actually climbing up on the hoodoo to pose. I told them it was too high, and not practical, but moments later, when I turned back from my camera gear, both models were perched on the rock, smiling and asking for pose suggestions. The first step I took to making the final image was actually not working on the pose, but the surrounding image. Knowing the setting was so dramatic, I decided to make the image as a multi-image stich, and with the models such a small portion of the final composition, I made the overall image stitch without the models in position - this permitted them the comfort of sitting, and reduced the time they'd actually be nude to the small time-frame in which they'd be the focus of the camera.

Digital infrared original

With the stitch complete, I then checked around for unexpected visitors, and then moved to working with the models on the pose. Very quickly they discovered that there were only a limited number of positions they could comfortably (and safely) hold on the top of the rock, and with some suggestions from the camera's position, I helped them refine these into a very striking pose, with their bodies flowing in both directions off the side of the rocks. In about five minutes, I was finished with the pose, having made the final images to add into the stitch. Just as I was helping the models down off the rock, the weather started to break, and a light drizzle began to fall. Rather than give up the rest of the afternoon, after a quick debate, Krista and Hannah agreed that we'd try to work for a while in the sea caves, which would both keep the session going, and permit me to build on the images I'd made in that location last month with Miranda.

Moving into the cover the rocks provided turned out to be a wise decision, as the light drizzle soon turned to genuine rain. The rock caves provided plenty of shelter for me and the camera gear, but relatively swiftly, both models were totally soaked, so we proceeded to make some images with them working in the ocean. The most successful of these images was a portrait of Hannah rearing out of the water. This was made by blending two images - one with a short exposure to ensure Hannah's face was sharp and detailed, and one with a much longer exposure, to catch the water flowing over her body as it flowed off of the rocks around her. In the past I have used blended exposures to control image contrast, but never to combined part of an image with movement, and another part as totally still. The final results were very pleasing, and open up another digital technique to use when working with water.

Digital infrared original, 43 frame stitch

The final image of the sessions was one on Krista emerging from one of the rock caves. Hannah, Krist aand I had just finished a series of images focusing on the two of the in the caves, when I asked Krista if she could fit inside one of the small holes, and lie back, as if she was emmerging from the opening. The results looked stunning, so I very quickly shifted to using a longer lens and stitching the image together, to increase the final print's resolution and quality.

The combination of two keen, enthusiastic models and such a stunning space lead to a wonderful final session for these two, before they departed for central Canada.

Miles & Natasha Tother Indoors (and snakes)

The second day of Miles and Natasha's visit to Moncton was split between working with them in the morning and two other models in the afternoon. The morning session was indoors for several reasons; first, I wanted to concentrate on couple images, and an indoor setting was easier for this, and second, Miles wished to spend some time modeling with a pair of corn snakes that recently moved in. I hadn't worked with the snakes and a model yet, but Miles was quite interested in the possibilities, so without really knowing what would happen, we made the plans for the session, and crossed out fingers.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

The beginning of the session was spent photographing Miles and Natasha cuddling, working with white sheets covering the window and futon, and focusing the compositions on the two models. The light was perfect, with the sheet-covered window behind them providing some rim lighting, and the other window to the left giving the main lighting.

We started out with prone poses, both models lying on the couch and embracing, but eventually shifted to sitting and kneeling poses; the variations of pose and composition possible when both models are lying down is somewhat limited. The best of the kneeling poses were of Miles embracing Natasha from behind, their knees formed a solid base for the image to sit upon.

Digital infrared original

When we shifted to working with the snakes, I immediately made some changes to my photographic approach. I changed from the infrared modified DSLR to the regular colour DSLR camera, and boosted the ISO from 200 (the minimum for the Nikon D70) to 400, which gave me a little higher shutter-speed to work with. The snakes sometimes move amazingly fast and I wanted to be able to stop their motion as much as possible.

Digital original

As it turned out, it wasn't the snake's motion that caused an issue, but the low light level's influence on the camera's autofocus system. Several times over the session I had the perfect composition and snake position, but the camera took too long to find the focus, and the snakes moved.

Miles & Natasha at Cape Enrage

Miles and Natasha drove up to Moncton from Halifax, for a combination visit and modeling trip; they had seen several of the locations I'd worked in with Miranda during the New Brunswick Portfolio production and hoped to be able to model in them. The plan was for Natasha to model for both Miles and me and the two of them to pose together.

Digital infrared original, 16 frame stitch

The day they arrived was bright with direct sun so we headed for Cape Enrage where I hoped the massive cliffs would provide enough shade to give us more even light. My guess proved correct and we arrived to find the entire cliff-face shrouded in shadow but lit by a mostly cloudless sky which gave the most beautiful, even description of tone a photographer could wish for.

After walking down the beach for a half-hour, we began working with most images beginning as solo poses of Natasha, with Miles being included once I'd made the most of what a single model in the  space could present. This method of working is very methodical, and not a luxury I can usually afford but, as we were planning to work for most of the day, my only concern for time was the tide, which was approaching its ebb when we'd arrived, providing us with six or more hours to work in.

Digital infrared original

 As the afternoon progressed, I became gradually more and more focused on the images of the two models. There is an subtle chemistry that flows between two partners when they are modeling together and, more often than not, this can take what was already a successful pose or composition and add an element to it that is impossible to create through direction from behind the camera. The more this occurred during the session, the more I focused on it, making fewer and fewer images of Natasha on her own and, much to Miles' chagrin, interrupting her partner's own photography to call him into the pose. Miles is quite indulgent in this regard, which I definitely appreciate, given the images it has helped me create over the years.

As the session moved along, the shadows along the shore lengthened until it covered all of the rocks, down to the sea. The three of us began moving down the shoreline, exploring the possibilities away from the rock shelf, where I'd focused almost all of the images I'd made to date at Cape Enrage.

The best aspect of moving below the high-tide line was the rockweed that is scattered around on the rocks. To the naked eye, this looks to be brown but, with the infrared converted DSLR camera, the rockweed turns into a luminous, pale plant, adding much needed contrast to the rocky landscape.

Digital infrared original, 5 frame stitch

The first images we made on the shoreline were of the two models entwined on the rocky bedrock, working their bodies to the lines of the rock, and into the lines of each other. Gradually, however, we shifted to working with landscape-based poses where Miles or Natasha would find a pose and then the other model would be fit into the space around the first pose. Unlike our earlier approach, each composition was intended to include the two models, so the design of the photographs was a little more deliberate and premeditated. By the end of the afternoon, we had spent more than six hours on the beach, the tide was coming in, and I knew I had some very successful images, both of Natasha alone and with Miles.

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.