Brooke, On The Couch

I hate to say it, but I miss having a dedicated studio, like I did in California. Without the dedicated studio, I have to do a lot to get ready for a sitting:

I have to make room in the living room, the largest room with a tall ceiling (9½ feet tall). To do that, I have to push a large chair & ottoman to the wall, same with two rocking chairs & a matching table. I also have to move a granite coffee table & a matching console table around the corner (both are heavy). Then, there are a couple of bookcases to move out of the way. Finally, I push the sofa off into the adjacent living room.
Then, I have to bring the studio lighting equipment down from upstairs. This includes the lighting power pack, three or four lights on stands, a couple of low stands, a boom arm, a few bags of backdrops, light modifiers (e.g. grids & snoots), and 3-5 soft boxes. This takes a few trips up & down.
Then, I've got to close the various shades in the living room, to block out the ambient light. That is harder than it sounds -- the largest shade in particular is too heavy & often breaks.
Finally, I set everything up -- hanging the backdrop, positioning the lights, plugging them into the power pack, setting up the light modifiers, bringing in the posing table, figuring out the props, etc.

All this can take up to an hour, and then once the sitting is complete, I've got to put everything away. It's a lot of work. With a dedicated studio, you can just leave things basically set up for the next sitting, and you can organize your equipment so that everything is within easy reach.

Having a surprise sitting with Brooke -- well, while she got ready, I had to get the living room all set up. She was ready before I was. For our first setup, I just left the couch in the living room & used it for posing.

While I was shuffling furniture around & wrestling with lighting equipment, Brooke got ready, and she wore this white top while she did so. I can only set up the lights about 80% without the actual model, so she sat on the couch while I fine tuned the lighting. (Pay attention to the light on the backdrop -- that's where I had to fine-tune the lighting). Once again, the digital camera (this is a digital image) was a great help. With it, I can check the lighting carefully. This was a late afternoon sitting, and plenty of light was coming into the dining room around the closed blinds & from the adjacent dining room -- what my eye saw was quite different than what the cameras "saw", so the instant gratification offered from the digital camera was invaluable.

Once I got happy with the lighting, I ask Brooke to get nude.

Man! Brooke has a fine figure.

Note the fine tuning of the lighting -- less light on the backdrop. I like the composition of these images -- I've been noticing that a lot of my images lately have been cropped to "golden rectangle" proportions. But these two, above, are more panoramic in nature.

We switch to the film camera. During Brooke's first sitting, we produced a digital image that I liked a great lot. Ever since then, I've been happy to make more digital images (and you'll note that the "colorized" digital images presented here are more "coppery" than the film images). In fact, for this sitting, we actually made more digital exposures than film. I still think that when in comes to B&W photography, digital images can't approach the quality of film images:

Advantages & Disadvantages of Digital vs Film Photography
Advantage - Digital Immediate feedback Can use it to fine tune lighting Can show model & make posing adjustments Doesn't require darkroom work Cheaper Faster	Advantage - Film Better quality Better latitude (can recover from slight exposure errors)
Disadvantage - Digital Quality	Disadvantage - Film Expensive - Sitting consumables ~$100 or so. Requires 3-4 days of darkroom work No previewing
Bottom Line: Film still wins; quality all important.

So, if the target display for a photograph is this web site, I suppose I could move to digital, since all photographs here are digitized. But I still want to be able to produce good prints for hanging onto the wall (despite the fact that I rarely do that). Thus, for me, the digital camera is still a tool that aids my film photography. And even here on this site -- I think I prefer the film images appearance.

Enough -- more images:

I have to admit that I like second & third sittings with a model more than the first sitting. For a first sitting, all I'm trying to do is get acquainted. I want to see how the model moves, how we get along, and of course, what the resulting pictures look like. My experience is that even with popular models, even when I've seen lots of pictures of a model, our first time produces images that are different than the ones I've seen of her by other photographers. But for the second sitting, we have the first sitting results to build upon.

I had a great time with Brooke during her first sitting (and I had a great time with her during this second sitting, too), but there were a few things I wanted to work on. One of these was looking for a more engaged expression on Brooke's face. So, you tell me -- did we make improvements?

During our first sitting, I noticed (and appreciated) Brooke's small waist when she was lying down on her back. I ask Brooke to lounge on her belly, and there it is -- her wonderful waist & that sexy curve along the small of her back.

(I have to admit that this sofa is nice to sit on but lousy to lie on. It is curved slightly, so people sitting at opposite ends can look at each other without straining their neck, but that makes it awkward to lie on. However, Brooke pulls it off -- she looks graceful & comfortable.)

You know, all the "naughty bits" are covered in these pictures, yet it is certainly clear that Brooke is nude. Somehow, at least to me, that gives these pictures an intimate feel, which in turn makes these pictures sexy. And, next time with Brooke, we are definitely going to have to explore the small of her back more.

There's quite a few things I like about these images. First, there's Brooke! Also, I like the exaggerated horizontal cropping of some of these images. I think that Brooke did a great job with engaged expressions on her face, despite the chaos & distractions that started this sitting. Finally, I should definitely consider adding "real" furniture & settings into my pictures more often -- something for future sittings.

This sitting continues with Standing Variations.