Christine in the Woods

At the end of the studio session with Christine, we made plans to meet up again, but this time to work more in my style, focusing on the Nude outdoors. As much fun as the previous day's studio session was, the images (fashion photos) were very much just for Christine's use.

Digital infrared original, 39 frame stitch

Christine had done some figure modeling before in the studio, but apart from one short session earlier in the year, she, hadn't worked outdoors previously. After walking for ten minutes to a location I'd worked in several times before, we started with some very classical images of her sitting among the granite rocks of a glacial till. I was using a borrowed telephoto lens for the session, so I made a large stitched image (39 frames) of the most successful image, using the lens' large (f/2.8) aperture to keep the depth of field shallow. 

Digital infrared original

After our first set of images was complete, Christine had become more accustomed to the process as a whole, and began suggesting locations or poses. For several hours, we worked our way through a visually rich landscape, predominantly focusing on her posing on and among rocks, but occasionally we managed to find poses that worked with the spring-bare trees, or even the small lakes, and the shallow Canaan River that flowed near the glacial rocks.

Digital original

Several times over the session, Christine and I worked on nude portraits, but it took some effort on both our parts to make these look natural and relaxed. So much of the photography that Christine is regularly involved with is fashion-based that it was her natural inclination to "pose" every time I would make a composition that was obviously a portrait. Over the afternoon that we worked together however, she gradually relaxed enough for several fine nude portraits to be made, portraits which seem to be very much about her as a person, not just about a pose struck for the camera.

Lisa's First Session

Lisa is, to my knowledge, the first model who has come to work with me as an alternative to getting a tattoo. While searching for a tattoo artist to work with, she came across a link to my work from a good friend's tattoo company, Permanent Ink. As a result, Lisa started to consider modeling, as opposed to a tattoo, as a way to express herself and work with her body creatively. Eventually, she reached the decision that she would work with me, and contacted me by e-mail.

Digital infrared original

After a couple of weeks of conversation online, I was due in Halifax to teach a workshop, so we made plans for a studio session.

There are many ways in which first time models work through the process of moving from fully clothed to modeling nude for the first time; Lisa fell firmly into the camp that just jumps into the pool, without even testing the water with a toe first. Ten minutes after we entered the studio, she was naked and modeling, with surprising ease and lack of stress.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

I had previously discussed with Lisa my frustration with the studio, in regards to difficulties with pose and inspiration. The warning was unnecessary; between the two of us, we worked for more than two hours, moving from idea to pose to a new idea and back again, with little time spent scratching our heads trying to think of what to do next. With studio images focusing so much on the model alone, personality is important in good studio work and Lisa brought lots of this to the session which helped guide the images.

Digital infrared original

By the end of the time we had allotted, both Lisa and I felt strongly the images would reflect the success of the session. And, to top it all off, Lisa immediately inquired about working with me again, even before she saw the results!

Alexandra & Liam in the Pool

Alexandra and Liam had come through Moncton on their way west in the middle of the winter and we made plans to work together again when they were on the return leg of their trip. I had hoped that would give us the chance to work together outdoors (all the sessions we have done together to date have been indoors, either with natural light or studio flash), but the schedule of their trip had them staying overnight and being back home in Nova Scotia by the middle of the next afternoon. With this plan in mind, we decided on a studio session on the first night and working with the morning light the next day.

Digital original

After the early successes with my wading pool nudes, I still had some technical issues to overcome. The biggest change was using black plastic to line the wading pool, hoping to conceal the texture of the plastic bottom. It turned out to be the perfect solution, removing almost all sense of the pool below the water.

Digital infrared original, 10 frame stitch

By this session, my third time working with the pool, I had worked out many of the other issues, so the session was much more straightforward than the previous two. Very quickly, I settled on the fact that it would only be Alexandra posing in the pool; Liam was simply too tall to fit. For the first hour or so, the images focused on the single figure emerging from the pool, but once we had worked through all the possibilities that presented, I proposed exploring the possibilities that would arise from adding Liam's arms to the image.

Digital infrared original, 25 frame stitch

It took a little arranging to get him into a position where it was comfortable enough for him to have his hands within the pool; after a bit of experimentation, we found something that worked. As I had imagined, just as working with a couple in a studio suddenly changes how easy it is to find successful images, after working with Alexandra for over an hour, and feeling utterly at a loss for new images, the addition of Liam's hands suddenly fostered the creation of a number of completely new compositions.

A Field Trip to Hillsborough

Digital original

The second field trip of the weekend followed close on the heels of the first, and provided me with a very similar mix of subjects. The small town of Hillsborough was once a thriving industrial community, but now only hosts a railway museum to remember its hay day. This proved to be a perfect setting for a photographic field trip, as students interested in landscape and wildlife can work with the wetland preserve at the bottom of the hill, and those more attuned to the industrial or man-made side of things can spend their time exploring the rich visuals of the railway museum.

Digital original, 12 frame stitch

I spent much of my time moving between the two locales assisting students with issues and generally providing whatever support was necessary. In addition, I did manage to spend some time photographing, alternating between macro photographs of flower, and more regimented images of the old trains and buildings. I worked in both infrared and colour, but it was a colour image which crowed the day - the last image I made, and without a doubt, the strongest result as well. As I was walking about collecting students at the end of the afternoon, I happened to walk around the back of one of the old buildings, which brought me face-to-face with a pair of old, weathered doors. There was no doubt what I had to do, and 16 images later, I had the stock material for the most magical image of the day - a beautiful, perspectively correct assembled stitch of the doors!

Digital original

A Morning Walk

Digital original

A definite side-effect of spending so much time teaching photography is that I now spend much more time photographing casually, either during the photographic workshops I teach, or just to create more material for my classes. On this particular afternoon, I was leading a field-trip for a 10-week photo course, an exercise more focused on helping the students work through the process of working with their cameras than making stunning images. All the same, it is quite surprising to me how easy it is to make strong images if one is just open to the possibilities.

Digital original

The field-trip was spent walking along the side of the Petiticodiac River in Moncton, though my eye was not drawn to the landscape but rather to the new bridge across the river and the rusted, discarded remains of the old span. I  have always had a fascination with abandoned and ruined architecture, and these spaces had everything I look for in a visual abstract.

Digital infrared original

Over the morning, I vacillated between grand, sweeping images of the underside of the new bridge, and close up details of the paint peeling off of old rusted pilings. In some ways, such images are sketches, designed to keep the eye nimble and open to varied possibilities visually, but regardless the results have an edge to them that really draws me in; a thread that runs through all my images is present in these as well.

L_ Models in Toronto

L_  and I didn't manage to meet up the last time I was in Toronto, but fortunately this trip had a little more time (as the Naked in the House exhibition was at night). After meeting up with her at the exhibition and crashing on her couch for the night, we had most of the next day to work together.
The real issue was not finding the time to make photographs, but rather a location. You'd think in a city the size of Toronto these would be a dime a dozen but in early March it was far from warm enough to work outdoors,and L_ only had a limited number of indoor places she had access to model in. As luck would have it though, a friend of a friend of mine in Moncton, whom I'd met at the Naked in the House 05 opening the night before, offered us access to a house she was house-sitting for a friend who had moved to Japan.

Digital infrared original, 19 frame stitch

With the choice of working in an unknown location, or not working at all, both L_ and I took up the offered location and, as strange as it was, began working in the house of a stranger, three people removed (half way to Kevin Bacon, I'm sure.).

As it turned out, the location was fabulous to work in; while the house was small, it had some wonderful architectural features, including a wonderful, railing-less stairway, which was the first location work worked with. After a couple of sketches, we settled on an elongated pose, with L_ 's head disappearing behind the ceiling - it both worked with the space, and with the lighting, creating a beautifully delicate image with a strong pose and composition.

Digital infrared original

The last part of the session was spent making a series of portraits on a couch in the living room. L_ has such a wonderful presence in front of the camera, and every time I have a chance to work with her, I set aside some time for portraits, seeking to build a series of portraits stretching over the years of our work together.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

While I am terminally frustrated that L_ 's moved to Toronto (in regards to how that limits our ability to work together regularly), it was such a treat to work with her again, and see such strong images come out of our time spent together in the house of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine.

Naked in the House

The culmination of the Naked in the House event was the exhibition of the 36 photographs produced by the 12 photographers, and the selection of the three top photographs. Scheduled a little more than 100 days after the photographs were made, the exhibition was the first chance for any of the photographers to view the work produced by the other competitors during the event.

After spending the morning working with Colleen, I wandered about downtown Toronto, eventually finding my way to "This is London", the venue where the exhibition and award ceremony would be held. The treat of arriving early was being able to see the exhibition without the inevitable press of people, who would flood the place once the doors opened to the public.

The 36 images were displayed in sets of three, each set representing the images of one photographer. The display method, hanging them on large sheets of transparent plastic mounted in metal frames worked wonderfully, always permitting the viewer to get a sense of the room beyond while being able to easily focus on the images themselves.

A Second Session with Colleen

Digital infrared original, 10 frame stitch

As soon as I had the confirmed dates for the Naked in the House exhibition, I got in touch with Colleen to see if she'd be available to work with me during my visit to Toronto. Our first session had gone very well and I was looking forward to building on those earlier images.

Digital infrared original

Colleen was able to spend the morning working with me and, after an early morning flight from Moncton, I arrived at her door with camera in hand and just half an hour later we were working. We began the session with a series of portraits but swiftly moved onto more abstract images, working with her body on a couch the couch had been delivered shortly after our first session together, so we didn't have the chance to work with it before).

Digital infrared original, 7 frame stitch

The most engaging part of the session began when Colleen began to work with a piece of jewelry she thought might be interesting visually. Normally I don't use much in the way of props in my work (apart from skulls, which I have always loved combining with the Nude) but, in this case, the flow of the necklace, combined with how the dark red stones looked in infrared made all the difference. We began working with the necklace around Colleen's neck and then finished experimenting with it on the small of her back - both yielding interesting results and while I can't quite see an entire series of Nudes with jewelry developing out of this discovery, it certainly was a surprising success.

Digital infrared original, 7 frame stitch

The final part of the session was dedicated to working with Colleen and some toe shoes she had suggested posing with. I was initially hesitant to work with these, as they seemed a little cliche, but given that the only thing an experiment took was time (one of the joys of working with the digital cameras) I decided to see what would come of the combination. As it turned out, the shoes worked surprisingly well, giving Colleen a focus to work with in the images, and while perhaps not the most logical combination, it certainly made for some engaging photographs.

Alexandra & Liam in Moncton II

The morning after our studio session, Alexandra and Liam joined me at a friend's house for a short available light session, before they resumed their drive across North America. I had been helping with the renovation of the home and, from my first tour of the house, had known I wanted to work with the pillars in the front hall.

Digital infrared original, 24 frame stitch

My usual approach to working with the Nude in a specific location is to find a model and then a location but in this case, it was the reverse - I'd known about the pillars for about a month before Alexandra and Liam's arrival but as soon as they indicated their timeline, I'd asked if they'd be available for a morning session, specifically to work with this location.

Digital infrared original, 3 frame stitch

Fortunately, the two didn't mind delaying their departure, so early on Sunday morning, we arrived at the house, turned up the heat (as it was still in mid-renovation, there was no one living in it yet) and started working. As I had hoped, the morning light was perfect, with soft even light coming through the blinds and lighting the front hall.

More than any other session since switching to working exclusively with digital, I missed having the flexibility of a view camera for this session. To get the angle of view that I sought with the models against the wooden floor, I had to work from fairly high up (on the stairway), which had the side effect of causing the perspective of the room to become seriously skewed.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

With a view camera, overcoming this would have been easy, shifting the front lens lower to compensate for the higher angle. With digita,l however, while there are specialty lenses which can do a similar thing, they are expensive, and not really functional with my multi-image stitching technique. All is not lost for digital photographers though, as it is possible with Photoshop and similar programs to digitally correct the perspective in an image and, while this is much more time consuming than making the original image with the corrections as I could have done with a view camera, in the end I could achieve much the same effect, keeping the pillars square and level, while photographing from above the models.

For all that I only had one specific image in my mind's eye when we began (the one of Alexandra perched between the pillar and the wall) between the three of us, we managed to come up with a fair number of other compositions, including some very successful poses working with the two models together between the pillars. If I ever have the chance to work with the space again, I would change some things, but given what we had to work with, I am incredibly pleased with the results.

Alexandra & Liam in Moncton I

Digital infrared original, 7 frame stitch

When I heard that Alexandra and Liam would be passing through Moncton, and would have a chance to work with me, if I could put them up for the night, I was overjoyed. Though they arrived later in the evening, after some relaxation and tea, they were more than keen to model for a short session, before they headed to bed.

Digital infrared original, 19 frame stitch

Being well after dark, I had to use studio lighting, but I set it up to mimic my preferred back lighting, and off we went. One reason I prefer this approach is that it places the emphasis on the pose and composition, and as opposed to constantly refining and adjusting the lighting, I just worked  with what was there (as one would with natural light).

Digital infrared original

Alexandra and Liam are such a joy to work with - their comfort with modelling, and affection for each other both contribute to the strength of the images.