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This
is the little area around the back stairs -- the stairs start at
the left, goes up four steps to a landing & turns right
(that little back wall behind Kira), goes up four steps to
another landing & turns right again, and goes up nine steps
to the upstairs guest room.
Before, I've
lined the three walls you see here with the Studio Cloth, the
gauze material. This creates the "Close Canyon"
that I've used before: (I've photographed Natalia
& Arie
there). This time, we start without the draped backdrop.
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I
am using artificial light here. There's a medium sized
soft box on a boom arm suspended directly over Kira. This
is one of those circumstances where the light is very good for
the figure but not so good for the face. Like before, when
we were working under the upstairs skylights, we need to
find poses where Kira can "cheat" her face up towards
the light.
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Kira
came up with this pose. I don't have that kind of flexibility,
so I would never come up with it myself.
I usually
like tonal separation between the subject & the
background. By that I mean that I like light colored
subjects in front of dark backgrounds or dark subjects against
lighter backgrounds. Here, we don't quite get that.
Kira's lovely shaped butt is light against a light background,
but there is just enough tonal separation to see which pixels
belong to Kira & which belong to the wall. If the
exposure was even a little bit off, you wouldn't have been able
to see where Kira ends (ha!) and the wall begins. |
Right after this picture, we made some
adjustments, yet this is one of my favorites. The position
of Kira's arms show how tight the space is. Her head is
tilted up a little bit, so her face looks lovely.
This image also illustrates the advantage of the low camera
angle -- it contributes to the sense of space. Also note
that I've set the camera at it's widest angle, but because the
lens is pointed perfectly horizontally, the wide angle
distortion is minimized.
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Okay,
honesty time. On occasion, I let other photographers use
my house for their sessions. When Natalia last visited
town, she asked if she could use my house for a studio space, so
that she could pose for a photographer who came to town to work
with her. We put a little table & a table lamp in this
space, and he used the lamp light & natural light to make
some interesting pictures of Natalia. He just used the
white walls.
So, I thought
I'd use the white walls, too. But I just don't like these
images -- again, there wasn't much tonal separation and not
enough interest to the sitting -- it was just too
"empty". And the light was bouncing off the
walls, creating a flat light.
So, the
Studio Cloth gauze was already upstairs, so I broke out my
favorite canvas backdrop & wrapped it around the
walls. The light setup is still the same as before -- a
soft box with a strobe suspended above Kira.
Look at the
difference! Without the light bouncing off the white
walls, there's a lot more shadows, and I like the effect.
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See how important it was to find poses where Kira
can tilt her face up towards the light?
I like the mysterious feel for this image.
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I
like this image, too. We've changed levels. There's
a weird & interesting twist to Kira's shape. I also
like the sense of space. I also like the light on Kira's
face. |
I
don't know where we came up with these "messing up her
hair" poses, but I'm glad we did. I'm enjoying the
tonality of these pictures. I'm a big fan of shadows --
they define shapes & help lend a three-dimensional feel to
the image. I like that there is just enough light for us
to enjoy Kira's lovely abs. Finally, I'm a big fan of
poses where the model has a twist to her spine.
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We
are running out of energy, so we try just a few more
ideas. I ask Kira to move around a bit more, trying out
different spots in this confined space. |
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It was such a
pleasure to catch up with Kira!
She's off on her
life's sojourn now. Maybe she'll model again, maybe not.
Maybe she'll come back through town (and accompany me to our favorite
sushi restaurant), and maybe not. But I'm certainly glad she posed
for me one last time.
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