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I
should mention that I'm using the
digital camera more &
more. For the past few
years, I've planned on making 100
film exposures (10 rolls) per
sitting, basically because I have
a machine that would allow me to
develop 10 rolls all at
once.
One
of the challenges associated with
using studio strobes is that what
you see isn't exactly what you get
-- the power of the strobe will
overpower any ambient light, the
shape of the strobe bulb is
different than the modeling light
bulb, and the duration of the
flash is too fast for us mere
humans to react to. So,
about a year ago, I started using
the digital camera simply to
review the lighting
situation.
The
digital camera has proven to be
valuable in other situations,
too. I love the pivoting LCD
screen, which allows me to
position the camera at angles that
would be near impossible to
achieve with the big honkin' film
camera. It also fits into
some places, like the shower,
where the film camera
doesn't.
Sometime during mid-year, during my
first sitting with Brooke, I
made some digital exposures that I
liked as much as my film based
images. Nowadays, I make
more digital exposures than film. I
still prefer B&W images -- I
use my photo editing software to
convert the digital color images to
B&W, tone them, etc. But
every once in a while, it's fun to
see a color image, and it's even
more fun to play with the artistic
effects. See? |
With
these color images, you can
get a sense of Kira's
wonderful skin tone. But
still, I prefer B&W
images, although I'm happy to
share a color one with you now
& then. For
some reason, I didn't like the
look of the backdrop in the
images above, so I replaced it
with a black backdrop.
In retrospect, I would
probably have preferred that
I'd work with the original
backdrop a bit more -- I could
have changed the position of
the chair & lights,
relative to the backdrop, to
darken the backdrop
more. |
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Here's
a posing issue. As far as I
know, I'm the only one who is
concerned about this, but look at
the image above. Kira's
right thigh is pointing almost
exactly at the camera lens, and I
hate it when a limb is positioned
like that -- it makes the limb
look stubby. So, I ask Kira
to make a minor adjustment to her
leg position. |
The
image above is a transition
image -- I wanted to light
Kira's wonderful figure with
some more shadowy, moody
lighting. We replace the
big comfy chair with a little
bench covered with the
blanket, we move the lights
around, and we make some
low-key images. I've
made this comment several
times before, but I'll repeat
it here -- many photographers
yield to the temptation of
using a single light source
for images like this, but I
don't like seeing a figure's
shadow side disappearing into a
dark background. My
taste is to either light both
sides of the figure, or light
the background so that the
figure's shadow side is
silhouetted against the lit
background. |
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I
think I've made vast strides in
getting improved quality out of
my digital camera, but I still
think that the quality I get
from my film based images is
significantly better. I
think the film camera's lens is
much sharper than the digital
camera's, and my control over
the tonality of the image is
still much better with the film
camera. Look at the two
images above. Can you see
the difference?
If
you look at the filenames of the
picture files (rest your cursor
over the image), you can tell
which images started life as
digital images versus film based
images -- the digital images
have a "d" in them,
while the film based images have
an "f" in them (5th
character of the
filename). Below are film
images. |
I
don't make a lot of exposures
of models' backs, simply
because we are talking during
the sitting & having the
model face away from me
inhibits the
conversation. But I've
got to say that I love looking
at women's backs, so we suffer
for our art. |
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| There
was a picture on Kira's
OneModelPlace profile in which
Kira is lying on her back on a
pool table. She looked
fantastic in that image, and it
was that image more than
anything else that inspired me
to contact her to see if she'd
be interested & willing to
pose for me. Obviously,
she agreed, and I am very happy
that she did. Kira feels
that many of these
lying-on-her-back images are her
best. That being said, I
can't say that I'm really good
at figuring out how to light
someone who is lying down --
something that I look forward to
working on. Do you
mind me presenting some color
images? |
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| A
little sensuous & erotic,
but not too vulgar. I was
a little nervous about asking
Kira to pose with her hand there
-- although she's done some
erotic posing in the past, she
wanted to get away from
that. One of the nice
things about the digital
photography is that I can show
the model the image immediately,
and we both felt that this was
nice & tasteful. Below
is the film version of this
image. |
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Around
this time, we finished exposing the 10
rolls of film, but we still had plenty
of time scheduled. I had in mind
using the digital camera to do some
low angle exposures, like
I did with Ashton. So, the
next & final page was made with
the digital camera.
Kira's
sitting concludes on the next
page: Up
Against The Wall
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