Page created June 1, 2007
Sitting date:  April 24, 2007

 

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To be honest, I've been wanting to get a model into the shower for a long time.  I wanted to try my new camera in there -- in particular, I wanted to work with the Pocket Wizards (the wireless trigger for the strobes).  Jolie & I had planned to getting into the shower, but she had a bit of a cold when we worked, and I couldn't see letting her sit around soaking wet.  So we found something else to do.

But Arie was game.  Such is the nature of this setting that I use the lens at its widest angle, and it is these pictures (with the straight grout lines) that convinces me that this particular lens has a lot of distortion.

 

I like the sense of space that wide angle images provide.  But if you can draw your eyes away from Arie, you can see that the lines are slightly twisted.

This is much more difficult with the new camera -- it doesn't have a tilting / swinging live preview LCD, so it's hard to aim the camera while making sure it's perfectly horizontal or vertical.

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Arie "gets it".  She understands the low angle & the wide angle; she understands the position of the light & how to play into it.  She is very easy to work with.

We start dry, but we'll get Arie wet soon enough. 

 

It's funny.  I don't ask models to smile for the camera, but I do like it when I catch them smiling.  When you see a model smiling in one of my images, you should know that it's because of a genuine moment we are sharing. 

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Freaky -- I like it.  There's subtle wide angle distortion here, and I'm often a fan of nudity that doesn't show everything.  I like the light. 

 

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Much of the time, we work on the steam room bench, but the floor is pretty good, too.  So, before we get Arie wet, we work on the floor. 

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I'm a big fan of keeping the camera position low, and here is a good example -- the camera is lower than Arie's left knee.  In addition, when using a wide angle lens, you can minimize distortion by keeping the camera axis perfectly horizontal.  Finally, including the area in the foreground (the lower part of the image) gives a nice sense of space to the image.

But what makes this image is Arie's pose.  I like the shape of her torso & the mysterious light on her face.  It's interesting to me that you can't see her right thigh.  Normally, I don't like it when a limb points directly at the camera -- that makes limbs look short & stubby.  But in this case, her thigh just disappears, so it's semi-okay.  And I do like the shadow of her leg on the floor. 

 

Here's another favorite image.  I like the light & expression on Arie's face & how her limbs look extra long.  I also like the shape of her torso & how its shadow perfectly outlines it.  This is a keeper. 

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Freaky angle.  I'm standing on the bench, holding the camera out in front of me, and guessing at the aim.  Works for me.

 

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When I'm lazy, I call this setting the shower, but it is actually a steam room that is adjacent to the shower.  It has a picture window (seen here), and the door to the steam room is to the right (outside of the image).

Heretofore, I would position the strobe light stand outside the steam room door, in the shower -- that meant that the steam room door would always be slightly ajar, to allow me to run the sync cord to the strobe's power pack.  Now, using the Pocket Wizards, there is no need to run the wire from the camera to the power pack.

The steam room is designed to capture steam.  Close the door, and that's nearly all you need to do.  We didn't even bother running the steam generator -- we simply ran hot water inside the steam room for a few minutes, and the steam room gets steamy.

So, here I'm looking through the shower to the steam room window.  I like the light, especially the shadow along Arie's chest.  Look at this close up of this same image, below.  

 

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It is wet & steamy in there, and the steam provides some interesting effects.  In this case, the loss of sharpness is due to the steam -- you can't even see the bench that's maybe a foot & a half in front of Arie.  I like these images. 

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Here's a token color image.  (I still prefer the B&W effect, but it's good to see the occasional color image).  

This is a good illustration of the effect of the steam.  The hair on Arie's left shoulder is sharp, but her face is much softer. 

 

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For the last few images, we crowd into the shower proper.  Arie is soaking wet, and if she starts to dry off, we just get her wet again. 

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Okay, I'm actually in the steam room, sitting on the bench.  The door to the steam room is open, and Arie is standing in the shower proper -- the entranceway to the bathroom is that black space behind Arie.

I have a big honkin' shower head that pumps roughly four times the volume of the average shower head.  We turn it on, and Arie gets under it.

The interesting thing is that we are still using the strobes, and the strobe duration is only 1/3000th of a second -- you can see water drops frozen in motion, but you don't get the sense of the volume of water that's pouring down (unless you look at the expression on Arie's face).

I'll have to figure out how to make this image with nice light & a slower shutter speed. 

 

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One last image.  There were tons of very nice shower images in this sitting, too many to show here.  Check out the Out Takes for more. 

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A very good first sitting.  Let's assess the outcome of the changes I adopted:

  • I liked having three concepts setup in different parts of the house, and having everything ready before the model arrived made the sitting efficient.  It also reduced the stress of the sitting.
  • I still made a hecka lot of exposures, but so many were high quality that I'm not complaining.  Still, at some point, I need to learn to slow down & be more selective.
  • I still have a lot to learn about how to get the most out of the new camera, but I am definitely getting there.
  • I may need to replace that cheapo lens with a higher quality one.

At the time of this writing, Arie is back in California, no doubt finishing up her school work.  I don't know if she intends to come back through town in the future, but I definitely hope she does.

 

 

(Remember -- feedback is always appreciated) 

All images (c) 2007 Looknsee Photography

Arie #1 Out Takes

Nearly 120 more images from this sitting are available in the Out Takes Galleries, which are available to those who have made a donation to the upkeep of this web site.  See this FAQ question for more details.

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