Sylvia, First Window

I'm a big believer of building a local artistic community. There is nothing but benefits for doing so. One thing I do on occasion is that I let other photographers in to use my house as a setting. I recently received one such request, from a photographer from the other side of the state -- he wanted to spend the day here, inviting two local & one traveling model here to pose for him. (In fact, the cover image on his site, as of this writing, was one of the images he made here).

Sylvia was the traveling model -- she's from Hawaii, and she was staying in town visiting friends. A couple of days after her sitting with the other photographer, she came by to pose for me.

The more observant of my frequent visitors will notice something unusual about this particular sitting. Can you see it? I'll reveal the answer on the final page of this set.

My living quarters are on the second & third floors -- that mirror on the wall facing the door that leads downstairs to the front entrance. Thus, that window off the right side of the image is the first window you get to see once you enter my home.

Sylvia is from Hawaii. Even though it was a fine Spring day, she requested a mug of tea. It looks nice in that patch of sunlight.

Whenever there's a sunny day, I am always tempted to do some photography in along this wall & in the corner. If you are a frequent visitor, you'll see lots of sets here. This time, being close to the longest day of the year, the sun puddles onto the floor; in the winter, the sun is much lower, and the light stretches all along the wall. Of course, in the winter, sunny days were exceedingly rare.

I still love the "Getting Started" setup, where the model poses in the clothes she wears to my door, and I continue to make images as she removes her clothing. I just love it.

So, before I get too involved in talking about Sylvia, here are some images I made along this wall at various times of year:

There's more, but that's just a sampling. We'll leave it as an exercise for the viewer to find them all.

Sylvia is from Hawaii. She's smart, independent, and athletic. In fact, she's a competitive wind surfer.

I've got to admit that, for me, a large part of the joy in doing nude photography comes from the sitting itself. Sylvia is just so easy to be around. She's mellow, intelligent, and willing. She suits my laid back style of photography. (In fact, she mentioned that our sitting together was one of the most mellow in her experience.

As soon as Sylvia's dress came off, I knew right away we'd try a little fun with tossing her clothing around. I love blurred images.

I really like this picture. I don't photograph model's backs a lot, because we are usually facing each other, having a conversation, but Sylvia's back is exceptional. Must be those wind surfing muscles. You can look forward to seeing more muscular back photographs throughout this sitting.

I also like that there's a lot going on -- the mug on the floor, the discarded dress, and Sylvia's struggle with her tight jeans. I like that the image isn't totally anonymous -- you still get a glimpse of Sylvia's lovely face.

It really takes Sylvia some time to peel off those tight jeans. I don't mind -- most models get out of their clothes too quickly for my tastes.

Sylvia has a strong, athletic, and graceful body. She's a joy to look at. I'm just glad I remembered to release the shutter every once in a while.

Yay! Jeans are off!

I like this picture because it shows off Sylvia's natural grace. Nice legs.

This is a digital image that I've "colorized". I know that a few of you prefer color images, but the real color here is from a limited palette anyhow: Sylvia's skin sports a Hawaiian tan, the floor is brown, the wall is tan, the mirror is gold -- there isn't a lot of color here in the first place.

But sometimes, I like to play around. My editing software, Paint Shop Pro, allows you to apply artistic effects, and one of my favorites is the one that makes your photograph look like an oil painting. Below is an example, based on the "colorized" version of this image.

Now that she's nude, Sylvia takes a moment to sip her tea, and I don't stop making exposures. I guess that's my sitting style. I rarely have a specific pose / body-shape in mind. I'd rather set up the environment, then the lighting, and just let matters take their natural course. I want to photograph the model reacting to whatever is happening at the moment.

So far, I've been keeping my distance. I went to include a sense of space for these initial images. Don't worry -- I'll get closer before we are done.

I first started making photographs with a rangefinder camera. When you use that kind of camera, you are never sure where the edges of the images will fall, so you typically include a little more than you need & crop down to the image you want. I got in the habit of cropping my images, and sometimes a more radical crop produces a more interesting image. So, below is a closer crop of this same image:

I'm a big fan of muscular abs. I'm also a big fan of nude images like this where all the "naughty bits" are covered -- it's exciting that Sylvia is clearly nude, but you can't see everything.

I ask Sylvia to slide over to the corner, under the window.

I really, really, really like this picture -- in fact, it might be my favorite of the whole sitting. There's a lot of things working here:

There's a great sense of space since much of the corner is included in the image.
I love the wide angle, and it's helped by the camera being low (level with Sylvia's face); distortion is minimized because the lens axis is parallel to the floor.
I'm glad that the edge of the window is included & parallel to the side of the image.
It's exciting that Sylvia is clearly nude, but you can't see everything.
It's always a good idea to give models something to do with their hands.
That band of sunlight on the floor & wall provides a nice balance.
The tonality of the image is very good -- I especially like the sheen on the floor.

Definitely, a "keeper".

Admittedly, before we moved into this corner, the light just wasn't that great for Sylvia's face, but here you get a glimpse at her beauty. Before sittings, models always ask me what I want for makeup, and I usually say the minimum amount that makes them comfortable. I'm sure we've all seen models wearing so much makeup that you can't get a sense of what they look like -- chances are you wouldn't recognize such a model if you saw her on the street. That's fine for heavy glamour photography, but that's just not my style. To me, this look above is the true beauty. Good eye contact, a real smile, and nice light all combine well here. (Although it is kinda funny that there's a spotlight on her nose.)

I might be moving slowly, but I'm hyperactive during a sitting. I'm watching the technical details, I'm keeping an eye on the clock, I'm watching the light (especially important when you are using natural light), and I'm interacting with the model. You'll have to forgive me for not remembering everything that was discussed, but I kinda wish I could remember what I said to inspire such a lovely smile.

I adjust the camera position slightly & ask Sylvia to lie down. You can get a sense for how tight this little alcove is -- Sylvia's foot is on the doorframe of the door that leads downstairs. I'll make the following observation: between getting more comfortable with the new camera and with editing the images on my new monitor, I'm starting to get better tonality in these images. I like this light.

A lot of what I do is to start somewhere & then make incremental changes (that hopefully are improvements). Here's a good example: compare this image with the one preceding it. In the first image, I didn't like the slight flair along the bottom window sill, so I simply cropped it out. I asked Sylvia to raise her hands over her head, and that creates a lovely tension throughout her torso.

Continuing that thought -- using the principle, "if some is good, more is better", I ask Sylvia to increase the tension in her torso by raising her butt off the floor. Well, in this case, "more" isn't "better": to keep her leg in the image, I had to include the lower window sill & its attendant flair; also in the previous image, I liked how her torso was outlined by the board along the bottom of the wall, and we lose that here; finally, for some reason, that mug looks more out of place in this image. But if we didn't try it, we wouldn't know.

We try to get that "butt off the floor" idea to work, but we don't succeed. Then, Sylvia rolls over & I think she looks especially lovely here. I like to experiment with cropping, so I thought to include more floor...

Again, I think, "If some is good, more is better", and again, I'm wrong. The problem here is that I'm still not quite familiar enough with the new camera to control its autofocus. So, instead of focusing on Sylvia, it focuses on the floor in the middle of the view finder.

Mid-sitting is not the time to learn how to work the camera. For me, it's enough to figure out stuff that I've got to study later on.

Still, I make some exposures like this, and the focus is wrong, like this. However, if I whip out the "oil painting" artistic effect of my photo editing software, the resulting pictures are interesting. See below. (These "oil paintings" are based on the color versions of these images).

One last image for this page. When we were rolling around on the floor, and as I was having focus problems, we got into this position, with Sylvia lying on her back along the wall, in the patch of sunlight hitting the floor.

I don't know -- although the focus is fine here, I don't think I got this to work, and somewhere along the way, I got tired of working with the light from this window. So, we move on.

So far, we are having an excellent time. We are having a particularly mellow sitting, which is fine by me. I'm enjoying getting to know Sylvia, I like the light we are seeing, and I think the images are going to be fine. Sylvia is particularly comfortable in her skin -- for her, it's so natural that I think she might be a nudist.

This sitting continues with Miscellaneous.