Kimberly
March 30th, 2007
Here is Kimberly Boenker posing in a stream northeast of Houston earlier this week. This was my first shoot with Kimberly and she really impressed me as a great model with a great attitude. And she is a real beauty. I have hopes that I’ll be working with her again this year.
I was impressed with the beauty of the Texas woodlands area as well. Not the sort of thing I think of when I think of Texas. I’ll have more to post from there over the next few days.
Of course, now I’m in the kind of country that Texas is known for, the desert of Big Bend. Dan and Niecy just arrived and we’ll be heading into the park soon just to look around today.
You can find Kimberly on Model Mayhem here: http://modelmayhem.com/member.php?id=294684
Reflected Mo
March 29th, 2007
Today was a wonderful day. A great drive. I left Houston at about 8:30 this morning and headed west. It was rainy for the first half of the trip. Then I headed out into the desert and the rain stopped, the sky cleared. While I listened Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys on the stereo, I watched the rolling hills and scrub pine turn to mesas and prickly pears. The rain had enlivened the desert. The ground was covered with yellow flowers and the Joshua Trees were in full bloom. I made great time. I love the 80 mph speed limit in this part of the country.
I was heading to one of the most remote areas of the lower 48, Big Bend. Even the GPS wasn’t sure what was out there. It didn’t seem to know about the left turn I needed to make in Alpine. And it was saying I had 18 miles to go when the road signs said 50 miles. (Magellan really should get some of these kinks worked out. I probably should have gotten a Garmin.) After I left I-10 the road got more interesting. The speed limit was still 70 mph, but the yellow diamond signs indicated a more sensible 30 mph for the climb into the mountains. Because of the road I decided to let Willie Nelson, Waylon, and friends repeat the Outlaws CD instead of hunting for something else. The radio searched the entire FM band without finding a station. The mesas began to look like misshapen beasts lurking in the distance.
Eventually the road straightened out and I picked up the pace again. I put on Warren Zevon’s final album for the last leg of the trip.
So now I’m in Study Butte (pronounced Stewdy Beaute) just outside the Big Bend National Park. The rock formations I’ve already seen look like they will make great settings for my figure work. The rock is dark brown, almost black. The contrast with skin tones should work very well.
Niecy Moss and her husband, Dan, will arrive tomorrow. Rose will get here Saturday night to model for several days. Study Butte seems to have everything we will need for a comfortable stay. Much to my surprise, here in this remote corner of the country I have excellent cell phone reception and the motel has wireless internet access. So I’m finally able to make some new posts to the blog. For some reason blogger would not let me post from Niecy’s computer in Houston.
I had a great two days of shooting in Houston. Two models on a ranch, a few special things for Niecy, then a day with two models in a beautiful wooded area with a great stream, then on to a bayou that also worked very well. I’ll have things to post from those shoots soon, if I get time for editing.
For now, here is another shot of Echoed Light during our grueling hike in the Ozarks. This is her edit of a shot she chose. I think she chose well. I did just a little tweaking of the file in photoshop. I haven’t had time to look at the photos from this shoot yet, since I’ve been shooting so much, so I just swiped this one from her deviantart page. Thanks, Mo.
Mo in the Ozarks
March 25th, 2007
Niecy
March 23rd, 2007
Temptation
March 22nd, 2007
Naked Again At Last
March 21st, 2007
Tomorrow I hit the road for a couple weeks of shooting. Heading south this time. A few days in the Ozarks, then down to Texas. I have some great models scheduled to work with me. It should be a fun and productive trip. And it will certainly be warmer than Ohio. Of course, as is usually the case when I head south, the forecast is for temperatures in the upper 60s here now that I’m leaving. But maybe my sinuses will clear up down on the Rio Grande.
Today’s naked photo is Beth naked at an old movie set in the desert in Northern Arizona. I should be making some new desert photos soon.
Studio Ballet
March 19th, 2007
This is an early digital photo. I had just rented my current studio space and spent several months fixing it up and painting to get it to where I wanted it. When the painting was all done I looked at it and said to myself, “This room needs a ballerina.” So I went and found one, brought her to the space and just asked her to dance. This is the result.
This was shot with a 3 mp digicam. Back then it had cost me more than $1,000. It was about as good as you could get at the time without spending many times more than that much money. It prints fine at 16×20. Later I used that camera when I convinced a magazine I was shooting for to try digital. They were skeptical. When the job was done they used all the digital shots and soon didn’t want to see film, only digital. They ran photos taken with this 3 mp camera double truck, across two pages, on a regular basis. Soon I had packed all my film cameras away and was shooting only digital.
Ginny
March 17th, 2007
My friend, Dave Rudin, has been posting some of his older photos on his blog. I was going through a file drawer at my studio yesterday and came across an old print. It was, and still is, one of my favorite photos of one of my favorite models. The print has held up well since it was made. The photo was taken sometime around 1974 and the print made at about that time, or within a year or two, anyway. The camera was either a Nikon Ftn or a Nikkormat Ftn. The lens was my wonderful 85mm f/1.8. Film Tri-X developed in 1-1 D-76. I think the paper was Agfa Brovira…but can’t really be sure now.
I hope this isn’t too much of a shock to my photographer friends who have never seen anything from me except digital color. I worked in black and white for many years. My move to color was a decision about my direction as an artist. That happened long before I switched from film to digital. The move to digital was motivated at first by the desire to take full control of the process. Now, of course, digital quality has surpassed film.
The model, Ginny, was someone I photographed a lot when we were in college. She was beautiful and fun and up for just about anything to get a photo. I haven’t had any contact with her since we left school way back then.
It got me thinking about what a great time machine photography is. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) it only goes one direction. But here is beautiful Ginny. I’m pleased with how well this has held up as an image after all these years. She’s still as beautiful as ever and I don’t think there is anything about fashions or styles that really date the photo. Ginny is about 50 years old now. I wonder what she looks like today. I wonder what her life has been like and where she is today. I tried googling her with no success. I tried contacting her through our alma mater but the e-mail address they have for her isn’t working.
But, thank you Ginny for a fine photo. I hope you are well, wherever you are.
Catherine
March 16th, 2007
I don’t do much photography that isn’t nudes. But there are exceptions. Catherine is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. She is also a very talented professional model and an excellent makeup artist. And she’s a very nice person who I like. But she doesn’t shoot nudes. So I use her for the beauty magazine jobs that I shoot now and then to help pay the rent on the studio. We’ve been talking about some other possible shoots that we may be doing in the next month or so, so you may see more of her. This photo is just one of those moments that happen during a good shoot and can’t be posed or faked.
I actually have several projects that I’ll be working on over the next few years that do not involve nude models. My background is photojournalism and I’ve always been interested in documentary work. I also did quite a bit of dance photography “back in the day.” I’m looking for a good dance company that would like to have me shoot for them. I have a long-term documentary project that I’ll be starting this spring. I expect that project to take anywhere from two to ten years to complete. I plan to post these other projects on this blog as they happen. So I hope you won’t all be too disappointed if you don’t always see naked women when you visit. I have no plans to stop doing figure work, but these other forms of photography are drawing my attention.
Into the woods
March 14th, 2007
