Merry Burqa Christmas
December 24th, 2009
‘Tis the season for cheesy Christmas photos. Why should I be any different? Kelsey stopped by the studio earlier this week…and she had those stockings with her. How could I resist?
Kelsey and I also did some other, perhaps a bit more artistic, photos that you will get to see in the near future. But, for now I’ll leave you with this and with a wish for happy times in the coming few days of holidays. Now I have to go put lights on the tree that I finally found yesterday thanks to help from _G_ who spotted a place that still had a few trees left and called to tell me while I was driving from empty tree lot to empty tree lot. That’s the problem with spending the two weeks before Christmas in Florida.
Up A Tree
December 22nd, 2009
Another shot from my recent visit to Florida. This is Lisa Renee, a great model who I worked with for several days while I was there. I seemed to be on a “tree” kick on this trip and found myself always looking for great trees to shoot with a model. We found this one in a park near Sarasota. We saw wild boars running around not that far from where we shot this, so being able to climb a tree quickly was a good skill to practice.
I’m pretty much swamped with Christmas stuff right now, but I have something else shot special for the season to post soon. I’ll probably get it up here Thursday or Friday. And there’s lots more to come from Florida.
Hope you are all enjoying the season.
Tree Huggers
December 17th, 2009
I’ve been having fun and staying very busy down here in sunny Florida. It’s been a little more sunny than I would have liked for the days I was shooting, but I managed to deal with the challenging light pretty well.
I got to work with JoJo Suicide again. She is one of my all time favorite models and a great person to be around. That’s her on the lower branch in this photo. And on the upper branch is Rachel Haberhern, a “new” model who I just met and worked with for the first time on this trip. Rachel is a great model, so it was wonderful to have both her and JoJo to work with. I also worked with another new Florida model this trip, but more about her later when I post one of her photos.
This is the last photo I took on my last day of shooting. We had been out in the swamps and forests all day looking for good locations and had been having a good bit of success, despite the bright sunlight that was pushing the limits of the dynamic range of my camera. We had been shooting with a number of great trees, but were still looking for the “perfect” tree when Rachel spotted this one just a little way from the trail we were on. It was far enough away that JoJo and I didn’t see it…maybe Rachel spotted it because she is six feet tall. Or maybe she was just paying more attention. Anyway, I’m very glad she found this tree because it gave us the shot we had been looking for all day. Thanks Rachel.
Tomorrow morning I load up the truck and head for home. I hear it’s cold up there in Ohio. Not looking forward to getting back to winter. I’ve been wearing shorts and sandals. Guess I’ll need to adjust the wardrobe for the return trip.
On the road again
December 12th, 2009
Sorry I haven’t posted this past week. I’m on the road. Right now I’m in a motel in Tampa. This afternoon I’ll be attending the wedding of an old friend. Then I’ll hang around for most of next week in Kissimmee, then pick up my daughter from college and bring her home for the holidays.
But, part of why I’ve been too busy to post is that I’ve been shooting. I stopped near Atlanta on the drive down here and did a shoot with Susi, who I’ve known on line for some time, but had never met. It was a real treat to get to work with her. That’s her in the photo above.
More shooting to do in the coming week with some favorite models and some new people too. If time and internet connections allow I’ll try to post more as the week goes by.
Oh, and for my friends up in the frozen north, it’s been very cold here in Florida. Yesterday my model was complaining about the cold. It’s all the way down into the mid-60s. Burrrrr! Everyone here is wearing their coats and talking about how cold it is.
What’s wrong with people?
December 5th, 2009
It Aint Gonna Happen
November 29th, 2009
Well, that “fall into winter” photo that I wanted to shoot isn’t going to happen. I have a model scheduled for tomorrow, and the weather is supposed to be cooperative, so I thought I might still be able to pull it off, despite the wind and rain we’ve had causing things to progress beyond the ideal point for the photo.
Then I realized that tomorrow is the first day of deer gun season here in Ohio. Shit! I don’t go in the woods during deer gun season. Way too many “Pumpkin People” as Dave Swanson likes to call them, wandering around out there with a shotgun and a six-pack. Someone gets killed every year because a drunken idiot hunter thinks they look like a deer. And, the location I had in mind…and the one where I shot Angie earlier when the sun was against me…is a public hunting area. I ran into a bow hunter there when I was scouting the place.
Bow hunters don’t worry me. They tend to know what they are doing, and they wait to be sure of their target before the let fly with an arrow. There could well have been one or more of them watching while Angie and I did our photos because they wear camoflage and stay hidden waiting for a deer to come along. If they were there, we’d never know unless we happened to walk right up on one of their blinds.
I tried to contact a local model to make a quick run out to the woods this afternoon before it was too late, but couldn’t connect before the light was fading and a little rain had started. So it goes.
I might try taking tomorrow’s model to a state park where hunting is prohibited. Of course, that’s no guarantee that a drunken idiot with a shotgun won’t be hunting there anyway. But the odds are better.
So, it looks like I’ll have to settle for as close as I could get with the sun ruining the shot I had in mind. This one of Angie may be as close as I got. What I was really interested in was the color that had stayed in the underbrush long after the leaves were gone from the trees. It seemed to be much more dramatic and much more colorful than I ever remember before. Bare trees with about a 4-6 foot layer of bright color at the bottom. But it was only really at its most beautiful when a heavy overcast made the colors really come out. The sun just washed them away.
But I still like this composition with Angie being all tree-like and lots of interesting shapes and tones and colors going on. Just not what I had set out to capture. But Mother Nature always has something to offer if you are willing to see it.
Playing Ball on Running Water
November 25th, 2009
That Zen saying is one I think about when it comes to working outdoors and trying to make art. You can plan all you want, but Mother Nature is going to dictate what you can and cannot do and your success will be determined by how well you can adapt to what you find when you are out there trying to make photographs.
I’m pretty good at adapting. And I’m pretty good at planning and adjusting the plan as needed. But today Mother Nature was flat out fucking with me.
I’d seen some things happening with the changing of the seasons that is a little unusual. We’ve had an unusual year as far as weather is concerned and I think it’s resulting in a little different progression of fall into winter. There was a situation that I thought would make a good figure shot. It required an overcast sky, which has been what we’ve had constantly for the past week…and what is forecast for today and the coming week.
So I called Angie and set up a shoot for this morning. Angie has become my “go-to” model for lots of things recently. She’s beautiful, she’s a talented model who is learning and getting better every time we shoot, and she’s often available and willing to put herself through the torture that my models frequently have to endure, especially at this time of year.
When I got up this morning there was a heavy overcast. Perfect. But as I headed to my studio to meet Angie the clouds moved off to the east and clear blue skies appeared. Shit! But Angie and I went on the location I had scouted. And, as I knew would be the case, the photos I had in mind would not work with the harsh sun beating down on us.
Time to adapt the plan. We hiked around and found some spots that worked ok, but in a different way from what I had envisioned. While scouting I had spotted this log out in the lake. On the day I was there the air was still and there was that overcast. There were beautiful reflections in the still water. I didn’t think it would work today, but we went there and Angie crawled out onto the log. This spot on the lake was sheltered enough that there were still reflections, despite a brisk, cold wind. Clouds started moving back in and added a nice element to both the sky and the reflections in the lake. So, we got a photo. Not the one I set out to take today, but still a keeper.
Of course, as we headed back to the studio the clouds moved back in and within an hour there was a full overcast again. We would have waited around, but Angie had to get to work at her day job, so that wasn’t an option.
But, I have another shoot planned for Monday…maybe the clouds will be back…no telling if fall will have progressed into winter too far for the photo to still be there, but I’ll just adapt the plan to what I find then.
2010 Calendars
November 20th, 2009
I’ve finally gotten around to publishing a new calendar for 2010. “The Figure In Nature 2010” has almost all new photos, with one or two oldies thrown it for nostalgia’s sake. There’s a smaller, less expensive version here. You can order the calendars here, or just use the link at the right.
I’ve also republished last year’s calendar from my trip out west with Brooke Lynne for 2010. You can order it at the same place.
Rainy Day
November 16th, 2009
It rained all day Saturday. This is what the farm looked like through the rain and fog.
I’m back home. Drove all day Sunday and half a day today. Lots of work to do at the studio tomorrow to get ready for some dancers coming in for studio photos.
Now that I’m home I’ll have to dig around for some photos of naked ladies to post here. But it might not happen until after I get these next dance photos done. Depends on how well the studio setup goes.
By Dawn’s Early Light
November 13th, 2009
OK…here are two more versions of “my” farmhouse. The one below was shot this morning in the pre-sunrise morning twilight. The one above a bit later just after the sun rose above the Green Mountains.
I guess these photos are another of the many signs that I’m officially old. It seems it’s only old photographers who become fascinated with the changing light on a given scene. I remember that Edward Steichen made a time-lapse movie of a tree outside a window in his house. I think he was in his eighties when he did that. I’m not quite that old, but I’m finding projects like this one increasingly attractive. Maybe I’ll have to start shooting these on large format film. Or not. This was shot with my 18-200 lens at 200mm…so, on my D200 that’s the 35mm equivalent of a 300mm lens. I don’t even know what lens I’d need to match that on a 4×5 view camera. I doubt if I could afford the required lens anyway.
Don’t know if I’ll be posting any more before we return home next week. Depends on what I see up here, I guess. But this is probably it for the farm…or not…have to go and get a shot of it at sunset…
