Victoria, Shirt Dance, August, 2004

Who wouldn't want to photograph Victoria A.?

As I noted during her first sitting with me, Victoria is the perfect model. She is stunning, enthusiastic, energetic, creative, and the stuff of dreams. When she told me that she was coming through town on a car tour of the West Coast, I jumped at the chance to work with her again.

I've been prolific this year -- by July, I had completed more sittings this year than I completed in all of the previous year. Normally, I would prefer to "process" a sitting completely before undertaking the next sitting. By "process", I mean not only developing the film, making the prints, and putting together the web pages, I also mean internalizing the lessons learned from the sitting. But with so many sittings happening so often, I've not been able to complete a sitting before the next sitting is scheduled. In this case, I had "completed the processing" of Jennifer's first sitting before this one, and I incorporated my thoughts from that sitting in this one. (Conversely, I hadn't "completed" Jennifer's sitting when I worked with Brooke during her second sitting, and I hadn't "completed" Brooke's second sitting before this visit of Victoria's).

(If I was a better writer, I probably could have expressed that more clearly).

When I worked with Jennifer, she was most engaged when I got her moving -- she is a dancer, after all. When Victoria was first here during the Model Marathon, I tried to get some movement in a skirt, but those images didn't quite work. I liked the concept, however. So, for the first setup of the Victoria's second sitting, we tried some movement, using a different prop (my favorite shirt), a lighter backdrop (the actual wall of my living room, with its paint effect), and different lighting.

The thing that strikes me about this set of pictures is how much Victoria appears to be enjoying herself. Well, that & Victoria's lean & fit figure. She manages to look lean & fit without looking skinny, and she certainly is energetic.
We had fun with these images.

I've got to say that I really enjoy pictures like this, for a few reasons:

	This kind of posing is more engaging for the model and a lot more fun for them, and it shows.
	As a photographer, you have to relinquish a good deal of control. You can't choose the exact pose -- you just have to be ready when the right pose just happens.

Do you prefer the original color digital image or the "colorized" sepia toned version?
(And more importantly, doesn't Victoria look lovely?!?)

I've got to admit that I've been using this favorite shirt for photography for many years -- in fact, I use it exclusively for photography nowadays -- I don't wear it anymore (if I did, I'm sure I'd be constantly distracted by memory & imagination). I'll leave it as an exercise for the viewer to find other examples of beautiful models wearing this shirt, but I will tell you that this shirt has been used by Leona, Michelle, Karina, and many others. Go find them -- good luck hunting.

Regardless -- we try a few images with this lighting setup without the shirt. What do you think?

Kapow! We are off to a rousing start -- these were great fun, and I believe that Victoria really enjoyed letting go. Interesting enough, this setup set the tone for the entire sitting.
A note of interest: while my living room is a good sized room, it's a bit small for a studio. Ideally, one would set up lights at some distance from the model, but I can't do that here -- there simply isn't that much room. With the lights being close, small changes in Victoria's position on the floor result in significant changes to the lighting, and with all the moving about being done, such changes in positioning are inevitable. Ah, well -- part of the object of this particular exercise is letting go of a bit of the control. The deviations are interesting, aren't they?

Like many other "fine art" photographers, my sittings can tend to be very serious, and for this setup, I fought that trend. I like the results. I let go of a lot of control, the model had a good time, and we produced some images that are interesting & wild, and I just love the natural smile on Victoria's face. Admittedly, I could wish for better technical results with maybe some better lighting, but I do believe I'm onto something here. Look for more variations & improvements for this setup in future sittings.

This sitting continues with Curves & Angles.