Kaitlynn, First Visit, Small Mirror

We now move on to my first planned setup. I have this lovely small mirror, and I've been wanting to incorporate it in a setup for a while.

Okay -- let me be honest. This was a big mistake!

I didn't think the setup through enough. I originally tried to put the mirror on a pedestal I have, but I couldn't get the angles right. The dining room chair was a poor substitute -- I should have covered the chair with something, at least.
It took forever to get the angles & lighting just right. Don't get me wrong, Kaitlynn was very patient & supportive, but because of the time it took to get this right, we just didn't make that many exposures during this sitting. That's not a bad thing -- I've been meaning to slow down & be more selective during these sittings, but that's an acceptable concept if and only if the fewer number of exposures had a higher ratio of "keepers".
More comments at the bottom of this page.

Here's the basic setup, looking around Kaitlynn to look at the mirror. The challenge is to create meaningful lighting that works well both in front of and behind the model.

And below is a test image made with the digital camera.

You know, I like to wander through the local art galleries about once a month. I've seen a lot of art, and much of it is bad. Much of the art I see is unoriginal, but sometimes I see something with an original concept. But even then, much of the original stuff is sloppily done -- it's like only the original concept is important and the craft isn't. For example, many of the paintings I see look like they were knocked out in one sitting, lasting maybe 15 minutes. That's just not right. Art requires devotion. Original ideas requires commitment. Execution is in the details.

Sadly, when I look at these images, I feel that the execution was horrible. (That's ignoring for the moment the fact that the basic premise of these images wasn't all that original.) The chair is just wrong, the depth of field wasn't quite deep enough, the lighting wasn't as balanced as I would like, blah, blah, blah. I just don't like these images, and these images required most of our time.

On all fairness, none of these problems had anything to do with Kaitlynn -- these were all my fault. She was patient & supportive throughout.

So, the lesson: for complicated setups, like this one, do more preplanning. Live & learn.

This sitting concludes on the Final Images page.