In the Heat of the Day
October 18th, 2006
Here’s Lani in a mountain stream in North Carolina. This was another of those very hot summer days. 110 degrees. Not what you expect up in the mountains. We hiked to some waterfalls and it was all downhill to reach them. I kept thinking, “This is going to be ugly on the way out.” I was right. We shot for quite a while and Lani got to cool off in the water. But the uphill hike out came pretty close to giving me heat stroke. I think I was suffering from heat exhaustion by the time we got out. I drank at least a quart of water, but I was sweating it out faster than I could take it in. My clothes were totally soaked with sweat. (That’s the sexy, glamorous vision of doing nude photos that you had in mind, isn’t it?) I was getting light headed and had to stop every few feet to rest. Lani ended up helping carry the camera gear. When we got to the truck I was disoriented. We stopped at a gas station right away and bought a bunch of gatoraide and drank it down.
But the photos were worth it all.
Lani is a great model and a wonderful person. I don’t know if she is still modeling now or not. I haven’t heard from her for a while. She may have started medical school and not have time for modeling or e-mail these days. She’s a very intelligent, accomplished woman who helped me make some of my favorite photographs, including the cover photo on my book, The Figure In Nature.
About cropping photos. I started out in newspaper photography. Everything got cropped to fit. Not always the way I would have wanted them cropped. But I don’t really understand the idea that photos should be displayed “full frame.” Every composition doesn’t fit in the standard rectangle of the camera frame. I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with cropping an image to make the composition stronger. That’s part of the job of the artist with a camera. This photo was cropped from the top and the bottom. I couldn’t do that in the camera. With the heat exhaustion and the sweat pouring down in my eyes while I was working I probably wouldn’t have cropped it in the camera even if I could have…but back home in my chair in front of the computer it is obvious that this is the right way for this photo to be displayed, so that’s how you see it.
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