Iris
January 12th, 2007
For me, it’s about the shooting. I could spend all my time with my camera in my hand taking photos and never need to see a print. That’s where the fascination lies for me. It’s the process of the shoot. The energy, the physical and mental activity involved. I don’t get tired or hungry when I’m shooting. I have to make an effort to pay attention to the passage of time. It is play in the fullest sense of play. Everything that comes after is work. I’d much rather be shooting my next photo than editing the last shoot.
If I only had someone to follow me around and take care of all that work that comes after the shutter fires…but that’s not going to happen. So I do the work that is attached to the play of shooting. Sometimes I get to it right away, but more often it takes me quite a while to get to the editing. That’s really a good thing, because I can do a better editing job when I have some distance from the energy of the shoot. I can be more objective and keep the images before me separate from the experience of the shoot, which is totally irrelevant to the viewer of an image.
Of course, this can sometimes be an issue for a model who is anxious to see the results of the shoot. Some deal with my slow work process better than others. Iris has been wonderful in her understanding and acceptance of how I do this part of the process. Iris’s blog is linked to the right here. She’s a fantastic model and a great muse and supporter of the artistic process. I worked with her last summer and I’m just now getting the editing done on that shoot.
This was a difficult shoot. Not because of Iris, but because of the light we were dealing with. I’ve said before that I don’t believe in good light and bad light, only easy light and challenging light. Well, on this day we were experiencing challenging light. That limited what we were able to do with a location along Lake Erie. I plan to return to that location when there’s some easy light and see what I can do with it. But despite the challenge of the light, my edit is turning up some photos that work for me. This is one that I think I like better than Iris does, but that’s because she is concerned about her messy hair while I think the messy hair is one essential element that ties her figure into the environment. But photographers and models often see different things in photos and chose different photos for different reasons. I’m completely ok with that. I like to let everyone find what they find for themselves in my photos.
So here is the lovely and inspiring Iris. I hope you find something here that speaks to you. Thanks Iris.
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