Angela's First Sitting -- The Living Room

The living room is coming together. By the large windows that face west is a big comfy chair & a half, and that's where Angela landed. Also by these windows are some hand made rocking chairs that are molded to follow the curve of the sitter's spine, and that's where I sat. That day, the light was wonderful, we were both comfortable in our respective chairs, and we were comfortable with each other. So, we did our best nude portraiture right here, and I must have liked what was going on, because we made most of our exposures with this set up.

I had recently spent a rare performance bonus from work on a new, mild wide angle lens -- it's the rough equivalent of a 28mm lens for 35mm cameras. I like this lens -- it makes the room larger without too much distortion. That's how we started.

I like my new lens. I like how we recorded a sense of the place in these preceding pictures. But since our comfort level with each other was terrific at this point, I replaced the wide angle lens with a normal one & I moved closer.

This last picture is my favorite from the whole sitting -- there's a great sense of connection.

But when you get right down to it, all we photographers do is record light. Light is our medium, and we just capture how it bounces off subjects. When I went into the studio, the whole idea was to attempt to create light, and giving the light shape, hardness or softness, direction, balance, and a dozen other attributes. But look at Angela's face -- simple window light. It's so simple, the light makes her face luminous. In fact, it seemed like Angela's skin did to light what a sponge does to water. We just found great light throughout the house, and it was there all along! I would have been hard pressed to create as nice a lighting set up in the studio.

So, to all you aspiring photographers out there -- if you do one thing, learn how to appreciate light. I can't look at a photograph without figuring out how it was lit & analyzing what I would do different (or what technique I could try to emulate in future settings). Nothing comes close -- light is the most important element in all photographs -- pay attention to it, figure out how to recognize it, figure out how to utilize it. And don't forget, people in particular react to light -- marry the best light to each subject.