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When I remodeled my house, I splurged on
the bathroom. There are actually two showers -- one,
a regular shower with a waterfall shower head, a shower
massage on a hose, and three body sprays. And then
there's an inner shower that is a steam room. These
images are made in the steam room. It is tiled with
stone tile on the walls, the bench, and the ceiling; there's
a different stone tile on the floor. There is under-floor
heating on a separate thermostat that regulates just the
bathroom -- I usually turn this thermostat up high when
I'm working here, for the comfort of the model.
The steam room has a water tight glass door and a full
length glass "window". When I work here,
I like to keep the electronics in the regular shower while
we place the model in the steam room. That way, we
can close the glass door & let the model get wet while
keeping the electronics safe & dry.
I like to start this way, with the model dry. I'm
sitting on the "glass window wall" side of the
bench, while Ashlyn is sitting on the "glass door"
side. I'm holding the camera & firing the strobes
by using a radio trigger.
Note that Ashlyn's habitual head tilt (to her left) works
here, because the main light (a medium soft box) is beyond
the glass door, to her left.
I'm using a wide angle lens, which makes the space look
bigger, but the area is pretty cramped. There's also
not a lot of flexibility about where I can put the lights
(assuming of course that I care about my safety & the
model's). If I ever design another bathroom, I'll
probably figure out other alternatives, but for now, I can
get some nice images given the constraints.
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I like changing
perspective, here placing the camera down on the bench.
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As you can see, Ashlyn reveals a lot in some
of these poses. there will be some more of these
images in
The Secret Galleries page from this session. |
I like the
light on Ashlyn's chest & belly -- I usually like exaggerated
posture (with the model's back arched), but Ashlyn's torso
looks perfect to me here.
I also like
the slightly off-center composition of this image.
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Ashlyn stands
on the bench. Here you can see a little more about
the steam room configuration. The ceiling is 8 feet
high (the ceiling in the regular shower is 9.5 feet high).
It's lower because the means there is less volume to fill
with steam. The ceiling is a barrel ceiling -- water,
when it condenses, tends to run to & down the wall,
instead of just dripping all over the floor. You can
see the regular light fixture, which is turned off at the
moment; there's another such fixture behind my head.
It is off now, but when I make exposures from the other
side of the glass wall, it's handy to turn the light on
a bit to aid focusing. |
I've got a
two part comment to make. Something interesting happened
during this sitting.
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Part One:
Take a look at Ashlyn's right thigh. It
is pointing generally at the camera lens, and
because of that, her thigh appears foreshortened.
I often ask models not to point a limb directly
at the lens, because when they do, it makes
that body part look short & stumpy.
This is especially true when you are using a
wide angle lens, which can distort the image.
That's the photographer's job -- give the model
feedback about her posing, making corrections
as we go along.
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I'll make the
second point later.
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The continuation
of the two part observation:
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Part Two:
In the first part, I
commented that I don't like it when a model's
limb is pointing towards the camera lens, because
that limb can look short & stumpy (especially
when using a wide angle lens).
At some point in this sitting, Ashlyn comments
that in some of the images, her nose looks big,
and she asked me if there was anything we can
do about that. I thought about it a moment,
and I realized that the "shortened limb"
issue that worked against us in "Part One"
can work in our favor for this issue.
I encouraged Ashlyn to lift her chin just a
little & to point her nose more directly
at the lens. This foreshortened her nose,
making it appear "short & stumpy".
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I don't know if Ashlyn would appreciate
me sharing this observation; if so, I apologize. But
I have known for a while these two things: how to
avoid short limbs and how to shorten noses -- this was the
first time I actually combined the two thoughts. It's
the same principle, used in two different ways.
So, as an exercise of the student observers,
go take a look at the noses in the various images.
Think about it.
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I've mentioned
that working in the showers is working in a tight space.
You can see how tight the modeling space is, but the space
for the light stand & strobe heads is tight, too.
The glass door to the steam room is narrow and not that
tall. I like to put a medium soft box on the other
side of the glass door, but it doesn't matter how tall I
make the light stand, the light is cropped by the top of
the glass door.
When
the model (and I) are on the bench, the light comes in from
the side. When the model (and I) sit on the floor,
the light comes in from above & to the side. I've
always thought that the floor lighting is nicer, but it's
pretty uncomfortable on the floor, and I don't get up &
down on the floor as easily as I used to. Further,
once we start using water, the floor will be wet, and I
don't like sitting on the wet floor.
So, we
visit the floor for a bit before we get Ashlyn wet.
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Here's a pose
that Ashlyn wanted to try. I think we did better with
the next images, below.
Turning
on the water in the steam room is like lighting a fuse.
In order for the model to be comfortable, we use warm to
hot water. In order to keep us both safe, we close
the glass door. The steam room is designed to retain
steam, so soon after we start using the water, the steam
fogs the camera lens (and gets me a bit wet, too).
So, we
make a few exposures with me in the steam room with Ashlyn
before I leave the steam room & photographer Ashlyn
through the glass wall window (making adjustments to the
lighting, of course).
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This is
the last exposure before I left the steam room. The
lens was beginning to fog up. Someday, I'll figure
out a way to work with a wet model for longer.
In any
case, I leave the steam room, close the glass door, and
let the hot water run. Note: I could have turned
on the steam, but that would have raised the temperature
in the steam room to ~115º, which would have made me uncomfortable.
Further, the steam generator emits a prodigious amount of
steam -- perhaps too much steam for photography.
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