Living Room Lounge

I invite Savannah to my favorite big comfy chair in the corner of the living room. You can see my collection of photography books there behind her.

Late autumn & winter here in the Pacific Northwest can mean dark days, and on this day, there just wasn't enough ambient light for my tastes. No problem -- I got the strobes in the room already, but placing them can be a challenge. Here's our first exposure, and while Savannah looks particularly yummy, I don't like it, because of the reflections of the soft box in the windows. It's a challenge to craft pleasing lighting while avoiding unwanted reflections.

Lots to say about this image.

I manage to position the camera to avoid the reflection of the soft box, but instead, now I'm seeing the reflection of the bookcase in the window. Better, but not perfect.

I'm using the "auto" setting in my photo editing software to edit this. To my eye, this is a little on the low-contrast side, but I think that's a weakness of my monitor. Often, the "auto" editing is useless, but for these images, it does a good job. I think I'll use it.

While I like the light on Savannah's figure & on the sculpture behind her, it's not all that good for her face. I can fix that.

Better. Cropping removes the annoying window reflection (but I lose the sculpture & its nice light), and a minor adjustment to Savannah's head improves the light on her face.

A favorite.

I like this wider perspective, including more of the room's corner in the image. I'm still fine-tuning this setup -- there are still elements that are not quite right yet.

I try adding a fill light somewhere behind my left shoulder. It eliminates some of the annoying shadows that were popping up on Savannah's face, but I'm not sure I like the light yet. It looks a little too much like a "standard studio setup". If I want to be an artist, I need to be crafting the light for each image & not using a generic setup.

Sometimes, I wonder how long a sitting should last. I usually schedule a model for three hours, and I often use all of it, but by the end, I'm tired. Savannah, on the other hand, still has as much energy as a three-ring circus. She is all over that chair!

When Lucian worked with Suzi here, they worked together for about an hour. Lucian had a lot of energy -- he was on his feet the whole time, holding his camera in his hand while moving all around Suzi, while Suzi got to sit in this chair looking lovely.

I tend to be more sedate during a sitting, and I often use a tripod (so that I can look at the model & not the camera). Still, a three hour sitting can be very tiring, despite it not being overly demanding, physically. Go figure.

I'm including this image because it's kinda nice, but it's the kind of image that I tend not to like: I don't like images of models looking outside the image frame. I always wonder what the model is looking at (here, Savannah is looking at the city street outside my window). In general, I prefer eye contact with the camera, and failing that, I prefer that the model look at something within the image boundaries.

I move around & photograph Savannah from a different angle.

That sculpture in the background is by a local artist, named Todd Kurtzman. He has this thing -- a ball about the size of a basketball; it has a mirrored surface, so he photographs models walking around the ball & uses them as references for his sculptures of distorted figures.

More wide angle distortion fun, which is especially interesting with Todd's sculpture in the background. I have mentioned that I live in an old Victorian house, built in 1890, and that the city has grown up to engulf the house. You can see the office building across the street. I sometimes wonder what those workers think when I host a sitting with the shades open like this. I suppose it enhances my reputation in the neighborhood. (I'm just kidding -- Savannah & I were working together on a Sunday, and that office building was empty -- at least there were no lights on in any of the offices).

Just for fun, I forego the strobes & use the natural window light for one exposure. It is interesting to me that the strobe lights make the images feel like evening images, while these natural light images are more daytime in feel. The camera is facing roughly west, so as the sitting went on, the sun moved more to the front of the house -- at the beginning of the sitting, the living room was quite dark, but here, as you can see, there was enough ambient light. But I think I prefer the strobes, at least this day. Some days, the living room gets marvelous light, but not today.

Here's one of my favorites from this setup:

Got that fun wide angle distortion working.
Cropping includes the nice light on the sculpture behind Savannah.
Cropping avoids unwanted reflections.
Model's hands are occupied.
Good sense of space.

... and this one is just weird. I love it. It was photographed by my robot mouse when Savannah wasn't looking.

Savannah was a joy.