|
To
be honest, I've been wanting to get a model into the shower for
a long time. I wanted to try my new camera in there -- in
particular, I wanted to work with the Pocket Wizards (the
wireless trigger for the strobes). Jolie & I had
planned to getting into the shower, but she had a bit of a cold
when we worked, and I couldn't see letting her sit around
soaking wet. So we found something else to do.
But Arie was
game. Such is the nature of this setting that I use the
lens at its widest angle, and it is these pictures (with the
straight grout lines) that convinces me that this particular
lens has a lot of distortion.
|
I
like the sense of space that wide angle images provide.
But if you can draw your eyes away from Arie, you can see that
the lines are slightly twisted.
This is much
more difficult with the new camera -- it doesn't have a tilting
/ swinging live preview LCD, so it's hard to aim the camera
while making sure it's perfectly horizontal or vertical.
|
|
|
Arie
"gets it". She understands the low angle &
the wide angle; she understands the position of the light &
how to play into it. She is very easy to work with.
We start dry,
but we'll get Arie wet soon enough. |
It's
funny. I
don't ask models to smile for the camera, but I do like
it when I catch them smiling. When you see a model smiling
in one of my images, you should know that it's because of a
genuine moment we are sharing.
|
|
|
Freaky
-- I like it. There's subtle wide angle distortion here,
and I'm often a fan of nudity that doesn't show
everything. I like the light. |
Much of the time, we work on the steam room bench,
but the floor is pretty good, too. So, before we get Arie
wet, we work on the floor.
|
|
|
I'm
a big fan of keeping the camera position low, and here is a good
example -- the camera is lower than Arie's left knee. In
addition, when using a wide angle lens, you can minimize
distortion by keeping the camera axis perfectly
horizontal. Finally, including the area in the foreground
(the lower part of the image) gives a nice sense of space to the
image.
But what
makes this image is Arie's pose. I like the shape of her
torso & the mysterious light on her face. It's
interesting to me that you can't see her right thigh.
Normally, I don't like it when a limb points directly at the
camera -- that makes limbs look short & stubby. But in
this case, her thigh just disappears, so it's semi-okay.
And I do like the shadow of her leg on the floor. |
Here's another favorite image. I like the
light & expression on Arie's face & how her limbs look
extra long. I also like the shape of her torso & how
its shadow perfectly outlines it. This is a keeper.
|
|
|
Freaky angle. I'm standing
on the bench, holding the camera out in front of me, and
guessing at the aim. Works for me. |
|
When
I'm lazy, I call this setting the shower, but it is actually a
steam room that is adjacent to the shower. It has a
picture window (seen here), and the door to the steam room is to
the right (outside of the image).
Heretofore, I
would position the strobe light stand outside the steam room
door, in the shower -- that meant that the steam room door would
always be slightly ajar, to allow me to run the sync cord to the
strobe's power pack. Now, using the Pocket Wizards, there
is no need to run the wire from the camera to the power pack.
The steam
room is designed to capture steam. Close the door, and
that's nearly all you need to do. We didn't even bother
running the steam generator -- we simply ran hot water inside
the steam room for a few minutes, and the steam room gets
steamy.
So, here I'm
looking through the shower to the steam room window. I
like the light, especially the shadow along Arie's chest.
Look at this close up of this same image, below. |
It is wet & steamy in there, and the steam
provides some interesting effects. In this case, the loss
of sharpness is due to the steam -- you can't even see the bench
that's maybe a foot & a half in front of Arie. I like
these images.
|
|
|
Here's
a token color image. (I still prefer the B&W effect,
but it's good to see the occasional color image).
This is a
good illustration of the effect of the steam. The hair on
Arie's left shoulder is sharp, but her face is much
softer. |
For the last few images, we crowd into the shower
proper. Arie is soaking wet, and if she starts to dry off,
we just get her wet again.
|
|
|
Okay,
I'm actually in the steam room, sitting on the bench. The
door to the steam room is open, and Arie is standing in the
shower proper -- the entranceway to the bathroom is that black
space behind Arie.
I have a big
honkin' shower head that pumps roughly four times the volume of
the average shower head. We turn it on, and Arie gets
under it.
The
interesting thing is that we are still using the strobes, and
the strobe duration is only 1/3000th of a second -- you can see
water drops frozen in motion, but you don't get the sense of the
volume of water that's pouring down (unless you look at the
expression on Arie's face).
I'll have to
figure out how to make this image with nice light & a slower
shutter speed. |
One last image. There were tons of very nice
shower images in this sitting, too many to show here.
Check out the Out
Takes for more.
|
|
|
A very good first
sitting. Let's assess the outcome of the changes I adopted:
- I liked having
three concepts setup in different parts of the house, and having
everything ready before the model arrived made the sitting
efficient. It also reduced the stress of the sitting.
- I still made a
hecka lot of exposures, but so many were high quality that I'm not
complaining. Still, at some point, I need to learn to slow
down & be more selective.
- I still have a lot
to learn about how to get the most out of the new camera, but I am
definitely getting there.
- I may need to
replace that cheapo lens with a higher quality one.
At the time of this
writing, Arie is back in California, no doubt finishing up her school
work. I don't know if she intends to come back through town in the
future, but I definitely hope she does.
|