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I
do like using my shower as a setting for nude
photography, but it does present several challenges:
- Safety
is always the first concern. One needs to keep
water far away from the strobes & their power
pack.
- Although
the shower & the attached steam room are much
larger than typical, the space is limited, and the
configuration challenges how one places lights.
- The
steam room is designed to capture & hold
steam. Steam on cameras tends to fog the lens.
Some
models are reluctant to work in the shower. Some
are willing. Desiree was enthusiastic. I
love it when models are enthusiastic.
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I love
using wide angle lenses, especially in tight spaces
(like the steam room). But inability to get the
grout lines straight & lined up drives the anal
retentive part of me crazy. I've got to learn to
stop worrying about stuff like this.
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Here's the
typical progression when I work in the shower (or more
specifically, the attached steam room):
- We
both start in the steam room, with both the model
& I dry.
- Then
the model gets wet (like this image on the right).
- Then
I leave the model in the steam room, and I photograph
her through the window wall between the steam room
& the shower.
The
middle step doesn't last long. For the model's
comfort, we use warm water, but we are in the steam room
retains steam, and pretty soon, the camera lens fogs up.
I like
the soft light we've achieved here. And darn,
Desiree does look sexy.
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Soon
after we get Desiree wet, I leave her in the steam room
& photograph her through the window. This
allows us to close the steam room glass door. I
place a medium soft box up against the steam room door,
flooding that side of the steam room with light. I
like how it lights Desiree's figure while still lighting
the back wall, which provides tonal separation between
Desiree's shadowed right side and the back wall.
We
don't actually turn on the steam:
- It
takes 30-45 minutes to warm up & fill the steam
room.
- It
produces a lot of steam; more than you see here,
- It
gets hot in there -- it can approach 120º in there.
Instead,
we just let the hot water run -- that's more than enough
to get this steamy effect.
There
are challenges here. With the door closed &
the water running, the model has a hard time hearing my
directions. So, I tell her as much as I can before
we close the door. More than most setups, what you
see here is purely from the model's imagination.
(I do
tell the models that pressing up against the window can
have some interesting effects). |
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Working
in the steam room is a good measure of how well a model
moves. Desiree is doing quite well. She has
many different ways of showing off her figure, and she
intuitively understands what works in this setup.
I'm loving these pictures.
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| I
like the "heart" there in the middle of
Desiree's chest. |
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It's
interesting. The closer the model gets to the
inside of that window, the more of her that is in
focus. As you can see, if/when she moves just a
few inches away from the window, and the focus becomes
softer. That's how thick the mist/steam from the
hot water can get in there.
Water
is constantly condensing on the inside of that
window. A sweep of the hand clears the water
droplets off, but they are replaced in seconds.
Most of the time, the wall sculpture on the back wall is
just a white blur -- here, you can barely make out
the sculpture where Desiree's hand has squeegeed off the
water. |
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After a
sweeping arm movement.
Here's
a little something. When I first started working
in the steam room, it was quite frustrating -- the
camera typically had trouble focusing on anything,
especially when the steam room was filled. When
using the strobes, I tend to rely on the modeling lights
to provide enough light for the auto-focus, but in this
setup, the modeling lights just weren't
enough.
I've
learned that the solution was simply to turn on the
light inside the steam room (see it in the upper left
corner of the image?). Nearly all my lights in my
house are on dimmers -- all it takes is about
half-power, and the auto-focus works, and the strobes,
being so much brighter than the steam room lights,
drowns out the focusing light.
Part
of the challenge when working with strobes is that what
you see is often not what you get. I like
the shadow on the right side of Desiree's face, but this
light is definitely not what I saw between exposures.
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| Her
hands, against the glass wall, are more sharply in focus
than the rest of her. I like that. |
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