Back Stairs & Back

This sitting was rare -- we started in mid-morning on a Sunday; most of my sittings are either in the afternoon or in the evening. As frequent visitors to this site can attest, I occasionally like to take advantage of the beautiful natural Northern light available on my back stairs. I wanted to see what that morning light looked like on a beautiful figure. I invite Kira to the back of the house.

There are some challenges working on the back stairs:

There really isn't a lot of light back there. All pictures made on the back stairs utilize a shutter speed of 1/30th or slower.
Although there's heat there (there wasn't before the massive remodeling), it always feels cold there, which is fine for summer sittings but lousy for winter ones.
As with any setting that uses natural light, natural light changes rapidly.

Oregon's winter days can be fairly dark when it becomes overcast. Today's sitting -- well, the light just didn't last long. We worked back here briefly.

(This image is a favorite from this setup).

I am constantly in awe of Kira's yummy figure.

But with cloudy skies overhead, the light, although lovely, is marginal at best. It really isn't very bright, and I am forced to use a slow shutter. It is unnatural to ask a model to stand perfectly still, so a lot of the images we made on the back stairs are totally unusable, and many, like this one, are inconsistent in quality. Note that the tonality of the blanket is close to perfect, while the tonality of Kira's torso is okay, and the light falls off from her face. You can see how the light is falling at a downward angle, and models when they stand often put their heads is a slight shadow here.

Semi-same idea, a little wider perspective. The top of the windows to the left side of the image is just a little too low to light Kira's face. If I was made of money, I could replace those windows with taller ones, since that wall goes up several feet to the floor above.

So, I ask Kira to move around a bit, to make sure she is more evenly lit. See below.

Sometimes it's enough just to break a habit. I am aware that I tend to photograph models from a certain distance -- not too close & not too far away. So, for this picture, I move further away than is my habit, set the digital camera at its wide angle setting, set it at a low perspective, and make a few exposures.

I like these images.

For variety, I turn on the light & ask Kira to sit on the window sill (thereby enhancing my reputation in the neighborhood).

Loving the low angle perspective.

But I realize that the light this day was sub-optimal, and we move back to the "studio" (living room). Also, the camera's auto-focus did a sub-optimal job, or more to the point, we needed a wide aperture which resulted in little depth of field.

I'm a big fan of simplicity, especially when it requires skill to pull off. We set up a big honkin' soft box to Kira's right, and since I dislike single-light source images, I set up a second softbox on Kira's left side (and slightly behind her). There is just enough light on the background to give it a little detail.

Add a terrific figure like Kira's, and there you go -- lovely, simple images.

Here I break another habit -- I tend to photograph models as they face me (the better to carry on a conversation), but I ask Kira to turn around so that I can photograph her back.

Call it undiscovered country -- I have never seen anyone photograph Kira's back, and it's beautiful. I love nude images that allow one to think about the architecture of the human form. I like this series of images a lot: I like the muscle where her arm joins her shoulder, I like the glimpse of her breast & the muscle kink in her side. And of course, nice butt!

We do a bunch of variations of these back images.

Although I have made progress in the quality of the digital images, I still feel that the film & paper images are of significantly greater quality.

I've settled on a naming convention for my files -- simply rest your cursor on an image to see the file name. The convention:

mmnnsnum

where "mm" is the model's initials, "nn" is the sitting number, "s" is the format source (f for film; d for digital), and "num" is simply an identification number. If there are additional enhancements, I add them to the end. For example, this image is "km02f0201.jpg", "km" are Kira's initials, "02" means her second sitting, "f" means that this was a film image.

Again, fighting my habits, I move close for this final exposure for this setup.

I've got to say that I just love looking at Kira. In fact, around this time, I took a pause, trying to figure out my next setup, and I realized that I was just standing in front of her & staring at her. "I'm staring at your naked body", I admitted. Kira smiled & shrugged, as if to say, "of course".

This sitting concludes with the Wall Variations.