Jennifer, Figure Studies

What do you do with a naked woman?

If you are like me, you photograph her. Remember, the objective of a first sitting with a model is to get acquainted, and part of that is seeing how she looks with some classic poses & lighting setups.

In this case, Jennifer looked terrific. And as a dancer & a fellow photographer, she knew how to present herself well.

It's interesting to see these two pictures side by side: the pose is similar, but the lighting is different. One of the key parts of my personal make-up that contributes to my photographic ability is my penchant to analyze photos. I have this tendency to look at photographs to determine how they were lit. As an exercise, take a look at these two images above & try to figure out how the lighting was changed between each of these exposures.

Here's a favorite image from this sitting. You've got to love that toned figure!

(I should disclose something -- normally, I would welcome the chance to work with Jennifer again (and I do), but by the time you read this, she is likely to be halfway around the world, spending a year teaching people how to speak English. I did say she was adventurous, didn't I? She'll be gone 1-3 years, and we'll just have to look forward to seeing her if/when she returns.)

All during a sitting, the model & I are talking. Sometime during this sitting, I asked Jennifer what her favorite body part was. I had asked the model, expecting her to point out a feature on her body, but Jennifer the photographer replied -- she said that she liked hands. Hands are one of the joys of photographing dancers -- they carry their grace in their hands. I like Jennifer's hands on her neck in these images, above.

I ask Jennifer if she thought she could pose on top of this little classical display column, to which she replied, "Yay!". My preconceived idea was to photograph only her legs & the top of the column, but when I saw her torso as she stretched to touch the ceiling, well, I couldn't resist. Can you blame me?

Jennifer came up with these poses -- that's the dancer in her, highlighting her hands. I've got to admit that the lighting here wasn't optimal for these poses. Great job, Jennifer! Sorry I fell a bit short.

Speaking of falling short -- here's a concept that I'm sure I'll come back to in the future, but it didn't quite work as well as I would like here. There's a tendency of models to sit still for still pictures, and me being a slow moving, laid back photographer doesn't help. But Jennifer is energetic, and I figured that anything that let her move would make us both happy (and it did). The short duration of the strobe would freeze motion, so we had Jennifer toss her long black hair. I do like the hair highlight, but in order to pull this idea off, I think I need a bit more tonal contrast -- i.e. we needed a lighter background. Either we could have lit the backdrop more, or we could have used something lighter.

But there is no denying that we had fun! I suspect that I'm going to do more movement photographs. It's a shame that Jennifer isn't going to be available for working on this concept -- she's perfect for it. Maybe she'll return in a year or so, and maybe by then I'll have refined the concept. We'll see!

Another thought that I'm working on -- who said that nude models have to sit still when posing? I like this idea -- the strobes will freeze pretty much any movement, so why not let the model move? This is especially true when you are treated with a model who can move. Note that movement can add more interest & drama to the image; how can you lose?

For me, I successful sitting is one after which both the model & the photographer would be interested in working together again (and I believe by that definition, this sitting was successful). For me, the images are of secondary interest -- the real fun is in the sitting itself. The sitting is a performance, for both the photographer & the model. The photographer sets the scene, the model interprets it, and the images result. That's why photographing a dancer is such a treat.

I can't tell you how much fun I was having! Sure, Jennifer has a terrific figure, but more importantly, we were having such a good time working together. She understood & embraced each concept immediately, even the less "standard" ones, like the hair tossing idea. She had a way of showing me more than I expected.

The challenge, however, with working with a new model is that I rarely know what to expect, and therefore, I can't really plan too many setups, because you have no idea whether each will be appropriate for the model. For today, it's still summer, and the light in the back stairs was beckoning me. I invite Jennifer to come to the back of the house.

This sitting continues on the Back Stairs.