Back Stairs Canyon

Okay, I've admittedly done this setup before, but not yet with the new camera. And the new camera does make a difference. The old digital camera had a tilting / pivoting live preview LCD screen that makes unusual angles easy. The logistics of positioning the new camera (although invisible to you) can be challenging.

I like the texture overload in this setup, and I'm a big fan of soft light coming down from above.

My thinking was the Arie, with her slim & angular figure, would be terrific in this setup. So, I pulled out the studio cloth, pinned it up, and positioned the strobe light & soft box on a boom arm above.

I like how this looks.

This space is tight. You viewers kind of lose all perspective because the lens is set wide and because all straight lines & corners are obscured. But to give you an idea, this space is not much wider than Arie's knees in this pose. The back stairs wrap around this little dead space -- they start at the left of the image, and that wall there is perhaps six or seven feet tall. The stairs take a jog to the right, going up the wall behind Arie. The stairs take another jog, coming back towards the camera position. The wall to the right side of the image is perhaps fourteen feet tall.

I also like the feeling of being tucked inside a cozy tent.

I had an idea to try something different: the walls are painted white, and the studio cloth is translucent. Since the walls are featureless, you can't really tell that the cloth is translucent, but if you look at the back wall, you can see that the white is bleeding through.

I had thought to first hang my black velvet backgrounds on the wall before pinning up the studio cloth. I didn't do that this time. Maybe someday.

But it's difficult to devise setups for new-to-me models. I don't get a sense of our chemistry or how the model moves until we've worked together. That's why I claim that the third sitting with a model is the one where we get to the good stuff.

Often when photographing the figure, you will come across lighting that is great for the figure but not-so-good for the face, and this lighting is like that. When you look at the images on this page, you'll see that Arie's face is best lit when she tilts her face up towards the light source. Still, there is plenty of face detail in the shadow, as in this image. The new camera is good at capturing tones, and there's enough face exposed for me.

Of course, if you are photographing a model's back, you don't really have to worry about the light on her face.

I don't photograph model's back often enough. During the sitting, we are talking, and that typically means eye contact.

Speaking of improved tonality -- I think this set of images is the first I edited using my new monitor. I think it's an improvement.

Arie is an energetic poser. She is all over that little confined space.

We photographers like models who move.

See? Face tilted up = good light for the face.

I like almost everything about this picture, except Arie's right knee.

I like this picture a lot because it's so freaky. Arie's head has totally disappeared, and the positioning of her arms is so unusual.

This really is a confined space -- it's actually much more confined than it appears in these wide-angle pictures. But the light is nice, the studio cloth looks great, and the directional light on Arie's figure works well.

But, as a confined space, there is a limit to how much one can do here. Now, I do have ideas of different things we can do here, and someday, I'll get to them, but I didn't try any of these variations at this time. Remember, I was trying a shorter sitting (2 hours, versus 3 hours), and I did want to get Arie into the shower. (Actually, I had wanted to get Jolie into the shower, but she had a cold when we worked together, and I just couldn't bring myself to get a coughing model soaking wet).

This sitting concludes with Hit The Shower.