Color again
December 4th, 2006
OK, back to something serious. Well, not to say that photography is anything to be taken seriously, but some photos are more serious than others, I suppose. This is one of those photos that I think all photographers have: One that no one but the photographer seems to “get.” I love this photo. But I don’t think anyone who I’ve ever shown it to has seen what I see in it without prompting. I’m willing to say that is most likely a failing of the photographer and the photo. But I still see it. Let me give you a hint.
Much of my work has to do with the interaction of the female figure with its surrounding environment.
OK…another hint: I’m very interested in color.
Still don’t see it? That’s ok, no one does…sigh. So I guess the photo is a failure.
What I see here, and no one else notices, is the effect the nude body has on the color of the surrounding background. If you look to the right of the figure, to the right of the shadow, you will see the “true” color of the barn siding. On the left, where the sun is striking the figure and being reflected strongly you will see that the color of the siding has been changed, warmed up, by the reflected flesh color.
I find that interesting. I know it’s subtle. I know it happens all the time, but we seldom notice it, let alone pay any attention to it. Does it matter? Maybe, maybe not. To me it is just one more small way to observe that we cannot be on this planet without changing it. Even just standing there in the sun we are changing the way the sun hits the planet and interacts with it. And the figure here is impacting the things that surround it in many ways. Color is just one, but to me it’s an interesting impact. Almost as interesting as the red rock glow in the desert canyons.
Christmas Eve
December 3rd, 2006
Well, this is something completely different. Pretty cheesy too, if I do say so myself. So just let me say up front, I meant that. This is the newest addition to my ongoing “Many Faces of Eve” project. If you’ve looked through my web site you may be familiar with some of the photos in that series. I’ve wanted to do “Christmas Eve” for a long time, but never was able to get just what I was after, but today, thanks to Amanda, I finally have it. The idea I’m trying to get to here is the temptation of the commercial Christmas as seen through the original temptress, Eve. But I hope that’s obvious.
Colors
December 2nd, 2006
Sometimes it isn’t about the light. Here the light is simply soft and unobtrusive. It’s the colors that I was working with in this composition. I saw the possibilities provided by the yellow flowers and green leaves. I asked the model to lie down in the stream and cover herself with the black mud in the stream bed. It was a hot day for once, so this wasn’t a huge sacrifice for her. I wanted the rich black as a background for the bright colors. I was also trying to change the way the model’s figure was seen, and to work on the theme of the unity of the figure with nature. You can probably draw some ideas about the woman as water symbol, earth mother, mother nature from this and many of my other photos. Those are the themes I work on all the time.
This photo was taken in a stream feeding into a small lake near my home in Ohio. While I often travel to different locations to do photos, I also work near my home and just where ever I happen to be when an opportunity for a photo comes my way. Most lakes have a lot of shallow swampy areas on the upstream end. There are usually beautiful backgrounds there.
Theda again
December 1st, 2006
It’s too cold out today to post an outdoor nude, so here’s another shot of Theda in a hotel room. This shot was posted on D. Brian Nelson’s Hotel Room Nudes blog in October when I was a guest photographer there. Again, like the last post of Theda, this shot is about color and light and about using the environment of a hotel room to make an image. Here’s what I wrote about it then:
In May I made a trip to New York City to do a studio shoot with Theda and another favorite model, Kat. When I contacted Theda about the shoot she said she would like to also shoot in a somewhat famous, but cheap for Manhattan, hotel. So I got a room…5th floor walkup and she came over to the hotel after the studio shoot. I work in color and this room really worked for that. I love the colors in this shot with Theda’s body becoming the only somewhat non-color element in the composition. I had just gotten a new lens before this trip, at 12-24mm zoom. It let me do wide angle work with my digital Nikon again, and made this shot possible. Light is from the single window. Shot at 12mm, f/4.5 1/80, ISO 800. Exposure done in program mode with a -1.3 compensation. The program exposure mode on most modern cameras is much better at getting the right exposure than even the most meticulous photographer with a hand-held meter. You just have to know when the program mode is going to be wrong. That’s easy with a digital camera. Just look at the histogram and see exactly where each tone in the photo is, using math, not guesswork. Using those tools it is very easy, and very precise, to set exactly the exposure you want to get the look you are after in an image. It helps to know a bit about the zone system and to have some ability to pre-visualize what you want the final image to look like. Here all I really had to do was be careful to hold detail in the highlights and then pull up the shadows in photoshop later.
Theda
November 30th, 2006
Another way of looking at color. This is Theda in a nice upscale hotel room in New York City about three years ago. This was my first shoot, first meeting, with Theda and she really impressed me. She is a very talented model and is great to work with. I’ve since been back to NYC to work with her and hope to do more in the future. I keep trying to talk her into an outdoor shoot…who knows, maybe she’ll give in and go become one with nature for me one of these days. So far the closest I’ve come is the shot of her on a fire escape outside a Manhattan photo studio. I posted that shot on here last month.
The light for this shot is from the bedside lamp in the hotel room. I was using auto color balance on my D100 and Nikon always seems to go pretty warm in this kind of light. I’ve corrected the color in photoshop, but didn’t like the result. The color here seems to be more “correct” in how it feels…maybe even how it looked at the time. So that’s the way I’ve left it, because it feels right. I thought of this photo after yesterday’s post with the bright red light from the Wave at sunset. I decided quite a few years ago, after decades working in black and white, that I was really interested in color. So I’ve been shooting color for a long time now. And, as in these two and many other photos, what is happening with the color is very important to me, and to the photos.
Light and The Wave
November 29th, 2006
The Wave is a special place. In the red rock desert on the Utah-Arizona border, it’s hard to find if you don’t know exactly where you are going. It’s so popular that the Bureau of Land Management requires that specific reservations be made months before a visit. Visitors are limited to 12 each day. And yet, it’s become something of a cliché because so many photographers have been there and photographed it. I made my trip about 5 months after my trip to Maine. By this time I was fully committed to exploring the figure in nature. I was fortunate to find a fantastic model, perfectly suited to the difficulties of this shoot, not to mention beautiful and very physically able to take on any challenges that a shot might pose.
We hiked in before sunrise and stayed all day, hiking out at dusk. The dark contributed to our getting lost. Well, we weren’t really lost. As Daniel Boone said when someone asked him if he had ever been lost in the wilderness, “No, I’ve never been lost. I was bewildered once for three days.” Actually, we always knew where we needed to go. It was just that there is no real trail across the rock surface and we would head in a direction, come to a cliff or other obstacle and have to change course. But we found our way and spent the day shooting. It was a very productive shoot.
This is the last photo I took before we left at the end of the day. It’s my favorite. The reason is the light and the wind. The wind was a constant while we were there. And it is wind full of sand. I had to send one camera in for a cleaning by Nikon after it was exposed to that sand for the day. But it’s really the light that makes this shot so special. As the sun approaches the horizon it enters the narrow openings in the rock from the side and it reflects off the red rock. As the light bounces around in the rocks only red is reflected. So the light gets redder and redder every time it bounces. It almost seems to be on fire. That’s what’s going on here. This isn’t photoshop. (For the record, I very seldom do any manipulation with photoshop. I do the things that would be done in a conventional wet darkroom, but not much more. I don’t add backgrounds or place models into scenes…I don’t have anything against that kind of photography, but it isn’t what I do.) I’ve recently read some debate about the statement, “Photography is about light.” I have to acknowledge that the subject matter is important. But often it’s the interaction of the subject matter with the light that makes a successful photo. That’s what I see happening here. That’s often what I’m looking for in my work with the nude in nature.
Maine
November 27th, 2006
I’ve become known for my photos of nude models outdoors. This is one of the photos that originally started creating that reputation. I’ve been a photographer, and I’ve photographed nudes, for far longer than I like to think about…much longer than many of my current models have been alive. But it was this shoot in Maine when everything from all those years finally came together and at long last my personal style was defined.
I’d wanted to photograph on the coast of Maine for as long as I can remember. It just never seemed to happen. I’d made trips there, but without a model or plans to find one. On this trip it was different. I contacted Hope Hoffman and she agreed to work with me and bring along another model, Rachel. And Hope knew of a private spot were we would be able to work.
I had in mind working with sunlight on the rocks. That was not to be. The day was completely socked in with fog. What seems to be a great distance in this photo is actually only about 20-30 feet. That’s as far as we could see in the fog. Of course, the light was perfect for what I wanted to do…not what I had originally intended, but what, in fact, I was after in the photos. It was rough work for the models. The temperature was 62 degrees and, of course, it was very damp in that fog. Added to that, the black flies were biting. Hope really suffered from the cold and she took frequent breaks to warm up wrapped in a sleeping bag that I brought along for that purpose. Rachel is a Maine native and seemed to feel like it was a warm summer day to her. The backbend was Rachel’s idea. Hope then decided to give it a try too. I love the look of this photo. I almost expect a unicorn to come trotting into the frame.
For me, the real joy of this shoot was the experience of working with nature. You can never predict what weather, sun, plants, insects…nature…will present when you go out for a shoot. The fun is to take what nature gives you and work with it to make the photos that are there to be made. That’s what I love about working outdoors. It’s a Zen thing to me. I think of it like surfing. You can’t succeed if you fight the waves. But if you understand the waves and connect with the power of them, you can have a blast and go somewhere.
California
November 25th, 2006
Model Xochitl posing at Vasquez Rocks outside Los Angeles. This was shot last March. It was a cold and windy day. Totally unlike normal LA weather. In fact, shortly before we did this photo, Xochitl had posed in snow that was falling in another area near LA. We had to change our plans for the day and ended up here because the snow was making roads impassible. Xochitl did a great job. She’s a very fine, talented model. And a lot of fun to work with. She has a portfolio on Model Mayhem: http://www.modelmayhem.com/member.php?id=51982
Speed Holga
November 24th, 2006
I know some photo-
graphers who work with Holga cameras. Some of them do truly wonderful photos with that tool. I worked with Diana F cameras many, many years ago and never really enjoyed the limitations and inability to predict results with that camera. But I do appreciate the fun that can be had with a simple camera.
But, Holga photography is not a religion, despite what some who practice it may tell you. And the Holga camera is not a religious icon. It’s just a cheap plastic camera that takes crappy photos, at least from a technical standpoint.
I was talking with one of the more zealous of Holga photographers…also one of the best photographers I’ve ever seen using that camera…and she got a bit upset with me for pointing out that any crappy camera setup could produce “Holga” photos. There have always been crappy cameras. I have an old single-element soft focus lens in a Nikon mount that I sometimes use on my digital Nikons. When I referred to that arrangement as my digital Holga, that seemed to infuriate this particular Holga photographer. In the course of the discussion I said that I could take any cheap lens and make Holga photos. I said I could hang a cheap magnifying glass on the front of my Speed Graphic and do Holga photos. That was met with total disbelief.
So, I did it. I went to Walgreens and bought a magnifying glass for $3. I duct taped it to an empty lensboard and put it on the front of my 4×5 Speed Graphic. This is one of the photos I shot with it, my “Speed Holga.” I used Polaroid film and window light in my studio. I like the result. I think it does have that “Holga” look…although I did refuse to poke holes in the Speed Graphic’s bellows to get the characteristic Holga light streaks.
The model is Nemesis who was featured here in the moon photos last month. Nemi is always willing to make herself available to model for my weird ideas. I really appreciate that. Thanks, Nemi.
Shelly wades
November 23rd, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving. It’s a beautiful day.
Here is Shelly wading in a lake in North Carolina on a chilly day. The water was still warm, though, so she said it wasn’t really a problem. Another use of “challenging light.” Direct sunlight, but this was later in the day when there was some direction to the light which allowed me to pose Shelly to take advantage of sunlight to show off her lovely body in this great setting.
It’s been a good quiet Thanksgiving at our house. Had our dinner at a restaurant, which was excellent. Just got back from seeing the movie “Bobbie” which brought back a bunch of memories. 1968 was quite a year. I “came clean for Gene” McCarthy…but by the time Bobbie was assassinated in June it had become clear that he was on his way to winning the Democratic nomination and most likely the presidency. Which leads to the first question: How would our world be different if Robert Kennedy had become president in 1969 instead of Nixon? It’s almost impossible to imagine at this point. We lost a lot that year.
And the second question: Where are the leaders like Bobbie today? There’s no one on the political scene who I can even imagine holding Bobbie’s coat, let alone carrying his vision forward. We need leadership. We need someone with a vision that goes beyond just getting elected. It sure would be nice to be able to get excited about a leader again. And the country would be so much better off if we had real leaders.
Ok…enough of that…go see the movie. It’s excellent. If you are much younger than me, you may not know the Bobbie Kennedy story. It’s one worth knowing. The movie isn’t really about Bobbie, but rather about the times and the people whose lives he touched and who were touched by his assassination. The actors are excellent. The script is very well written. It’s a good one.
