Page created August 5, 2007
Sitting date:  May 24, 2007

 

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This is the little area around the back stairs -- the stairs start at the left, goes up four steps to a landing & turns right (that little back wall behind Kira), goes up four steps to another landing & turns right again, and goes up nine steps to the upstairs guest room.

Before, I've lined the three walls you see here with the Studio Cloth, the gauze material.  This creates the "Close Canyon" that I've used before:  (I've photographed Natalia & Arie there).  This time, we start without the draped backdrop.

 

I am using artificial light here.  There's a medium sized soft box on a boom arm suspended directly over Kira.  This is one of those circumstances where the light is very good for the figure but not so good for the face.  Like before, when we were working under the upstairs skylights, we need to find poses where Kira can "cheat" her face up towards the light.

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Kira came up with this pose.  I don't have that kind of flexibility, so I would never come up with it myself.

I usually like tonal separation between the subject & the background.  By that I mean that I like light colored subjects in front of dark backgrounds or dark subjects against lighter backgrounds.  Here, we don't quite get that.  Kira's lovely shaped butt is light against a light background, but there is just enough tonal separation to see which pixels belong to Kira & which belong to the wall.  If the exposure was even a little bit off, you wouldn't have been able to see where Kira ends (ha!) and the wall begins.

 

Right after this picture, we made some adjustments, yet this is one of my favorites.  The position of Kira's arms show how tight the space is.  Her head is tilted up a little bit, so her face looks lovely.

This image also illustrates the advantage of the low camera angle -- it contributes to the sense of space.  Also note that I've set the camera at it's widest angle, but because the lens is pointed perfectly horizontally, the wide angle distortion is minimized. 

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Okay, honesty time.  On occasion, I let other photographers use my house for their sessions.  When Natalia last visited town, she asked if she could use my house for a studio space, so that she could pose for a photographer who came to town to work with her.  We put a little table & a table lamp in this space, and he used the lamp light & natural light to make some interesting pictures of Natalia.  He just used the white walls.  

So, I thought I'd use the white walls, too.  But I just don't like these images -- again, there wasn't much tonal separation and not enough interest to the sitting -- it was just too "empty".  And the light was bouncing off the walls, creating a flat light.

So, the Studio Cloth gauze was already upstairs, so I broke out my favorite canvas backdrop & wrapped it around the walls.  The light setup is still the same as before -- a soft box with a strobe suspended above Kira.

Look at the difference!  Without the light bouncing off the white walls, there's a lot more shadows, and I like the effect. 

 

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See how important it was to find poses where Kira can tilt her face up towards the light?

I like the mysterious feel for this image. 

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I like this image, too.  We've changed levels.  There's a weird & interesting twist to Kira's shape.  I also like the sense of space.  I also like the light on Kira's face. 

 

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I don't know where we came up with these "messing up her hair" poses, but I'm glad we did.  I'm enjoying the tonality of these pictures.  I'm a big fan of shadows -- they define shapes & help lend a three-dimensional feel to the image.  I like that there is just enough light for us to enjoy Kira's lovely abs.  Finally, I'm a big fan of poses where the model has a twist to her spine. 

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We are running out of energy, so we try just a few more ideas.  I ask Kira to move around a bit more, trying out different spots in this confined space. 

 

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It was such a pleasure to catch up with Kira!

She's off on her life's sojourn now.  Maybe she'll model again, maybe not.  Maybe she'll come back through town (and accompany me to our favorite sushi restaurant), and maybe not.  But I'm certainly glad she posed for me one last time. 

 

(Remember -- feedback is always appreciated) 

All images (c) 2007 Looknsee Photography

Kira #7 Out Takes

Around 70 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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