Let's pause for a moment & discuss the image, above.  It is the first digital image I've made that I like aesthetically.  Usually, I'm not overly concerned about the precise pose, and there is a pause between the pressing of the shutter button & the exposure, but I really like this picture!  I like the lighting, the pose, the angle, Brooke's expression -- it all works for me.  It's a tribute to Brooke's innate modeling ability -- she was ready & "on" & looking good, even between exposures. There was a good amount of digital processing done to this image.  See below: This is the original digital images (shrunk, of course).  I liked it as soon as I saw it, but I played with it a little bit, producing the final image that you saw above.  Although it technically is a color photograph, there isn't a wide palette  of color in it. Here, using Paint Shop Pro, I "colorized" the image, applying the "sepia" tone settings that I've used for the other images on these pages.  The settings were Hue=23 & Saturation=75%. (As a note, I do apply the occasional effect on the film/paper images I scan for these pages, but my rule is that I won't apply any effect that I couldn't & haven't duplicated in the darkroom.  Sepia toning is fine, since I've done sepia toning of images in the darkroom.  I love sepia toned images.) I've noticed that the film images I produce look very different from the digital images.  I feel that I've learned to produce film images with optimal brightness & contrast, but the interesting thing is that using the exact same lighting setup, the digital images look different (lower contrast).  Using Paint Shop Pro, I increased the contrast a whopping 25%, and I bumped the brightness up 2, to maintain a little detail in the shadows (i.e. you can still see her right breast, or at least I can). I've wondered why the Paint Shop Pro effect is called "colorize", since applying the effect removes color from the original digital image, replacing it with monochromatic image. Interesting enough, I use the same "colorizing" effect on the black & white film/paper images, and yet the converted digital image looks quite different (more golden) from the "colorized" film images.  I figure it's because I changed the brightness & contrast after applying the colorizing effect.

Okay, one last digital image (below), followed by film images.

Once I made the digital image, above, I moved back to using the film camera.  At the time, I liked the image above (I still do), so our next few exposures were variations on that pose. 

I like seeing muscular abdomens on women.  These pictures show off Brooke nicely. 

Photographing nude figures with contrasty, shadowy, directional light is cliché #1, and frankly, I've seen so many that I rarely like any.  Note some of the differences & variations with these images -- they are instructive:

• I don't use a single light source; for these images, I used two, and I've been known to use three or four.  The light sources are placed such that they do create some interesting shadows, and the "off-side" of the figure is somehow defined, which contributes to the sense of depth in the image.  In this case, the "off-side" is lit directly, in other images (like this one), the background is lit & the "off-side" of the figure is silhouetted.

• The cliché images typically use black background & foreground, but I don't.  Here in these images, the background and the platform on which Brooke sits have some texture.

Stepping back, this is the first time I produced digital images that were "keepers".  I've got to admit that this was mostly by accident -- the digital images were only test exposures; I was just trying to preview the lighting.  But such was Brooke's ability that even the digital images were special.

This could signal a change for me:  the cost of film, paper, and chemistry for a typical sitting can run close to $100.  I've been "laid off" for over a year, and I'm hoping to avoid needing to replace my lost job, but I've gotten to the point that I'm a bit more concerned about finances.  (Have you seen my Voluntary Donation page?)  In addition, the darkroom works requires lots of time -- each 3 hour sitting often implies 16-20 hours of work to get to this place I'm at now, with images printed & scanned and web pages are being drafted.  It's alluring to think that going digital would imply a significant savings in both money & time.  But still I hesitate -- my yardstick has been & still is the quality of the image I can hang on the wall, and I still feel that digital doesn't come close to what a skilled photographer can do with film & paper.  So, perhaps in the future, I'll make more digital exposures, but I won't give up film quite yet.  Let me ask you -- can you see the differences between the digital & film images on this page?  (I know, all the images on this page are digital, but to me they look different -- do they look different to you?)

Anyway, when I work with a new model for the first time, I like to try out a variety of lighting setups, just to see how they look & respond to different lighting situations.  By now, we had perhaps a half hour before Victoria arrived, and we had exposed around seven rolls of film, so for the final few rolls, I invite Brooke to pose on my back stairs.

Brooke's solo pictures conclude on the next page:
The Back Stairs