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I admit it.
I am a cerebral & analytical person. When faced
with a complex or big decision, I like to create spreadsheets.
I am visually orientated, so I like creating bar charts &
pie charts & graphs. I take pleasure in organizing
a complex system into easy to understand pictures.
Know those UPS commercials with the guy drawing on a whiteboard?
I used to do that for a living, and I was one of the best
around.
Photography
is my main artistic release. As long as I am making
progress, I'm happy. But admittedly, my approach is
cerebral & analytical. I know tons of other photographers,
and many of them (most of them?) enjoy being instinctual
-- they schedule a model, put her in a setting, and just
react to what they see. There's nothing wrong with
that kind of approach, but it's not for me. What I
observe is that these other photographers tend to stagnate
-- the images they make this year look remarkably like the
images they made last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago.
That would drive me crazy.
I want to see
progress. If I recognize images as similar to stuff
I've done before, I am disappointed. But if I make
even a hairbreadth's worth of progress, I am satisfied.
To ensure progress, I look at my images, and I do more than
just schedule a model, a time, and a place. I plan
some concepts -- new ideas to try. I should mention
that I'm happy if I try something & it fails -- if you
never try, you'll never know.
Such is the
case of the previous page --
The World Melts Away.
That page represents a combination of three separate thoughts.
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The first of
the three inspiring ideas actually was inspired by my favorite
model, Jessica.
Sadly, she has moved away, seeking her fame & fortune
in New York City. Although she is now far away, we
often talk. But when we talk, she is always multi-tasking.
She is hustling to the subway, juggling her phone with her
coffee, and reacting to what she sees on the street.
Between you & me, she's not that great of a multi-tasker
-- she is easily distracted, she reacts quickly, and she
just can't focus on the conversation. These are not
bad things, but these are signs of modern times, I think.
Heck, I do it, too -- as I write this, I have five windows
open on my PC, there's a TV playing next to my monitor to
keep me company, and I just got a business e-mail that I
really should get to right away. I seem to remember
that, in my youth, life just didn't feel all that complicated,
but nowadays, it takes a lot of effort to focus on a single
task to the total exclusion of all others. So, modern
life is complicated. Hence, look at Carlotta there
-- she's on the phone, enjoying her tea, looking a pictures
while talking on the phone, etc. That's the modern
world.
I blame cell
phones. Cell phones are terrible ideas.
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(The book Carlotta
is reading is Ruth Bernhard's first book).
I thought of
including some of the color images on the
previous page, at
least to start, but that would have meant that I would have
to make the transition to B&W images somewhere along
the way. I wouldn't have liked doing that all at once,
and I'm too lazy to figure out how to desatuate the images
gradually. So, I just used B&W exclusively on
the previous page; I'll include some color images on this
page.
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The second
of the three inspiring ideas has to do with Carlotta herself.
Look at her! That face! That figure! Those
magnificent, world-class breasts! In addition, Carlotta
is prolific & hard working -- she travels often for
weeks at a time; she works with all levels of photographers,
from leading international magazines to inexperienced fine
art photographers. Pictures of her are all over, in
magazines & on the Internet. She is the Goddess
of Sex. Half the world lusts after her, and the other
half envies her.
Again, there's
nothing wrong with that. But I wondered: Could
a picture of Carlotta be made that doesn't make the viewer
think of sex?
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The third of
the three inspiring ideas has to do with my favorite thing
to do with models at the beginning of our sessions together:
I like doing the "Getting Started" setup, where
the model starts clothed, and I create an extended sequence
of the model removing her clothing, which transforms her
from a person you might see on the street to a beautiful,
timeless fine art model. Given the first two ideas
(the complexity of modern life and the challenge of creating
non-sexual images of the beautifully sexy Carlotta), I thought
why not start with a busy ("clothed") set, and
have the items that complicated the set disappear as the
model's clothing is removed? It's an idea that has
some promise, so I decided to try this with Carlotta.
Who better?
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It should be
obvious: I much prefer B&W images. Requests
for more color is the most popular feedback from visitors,
but sorry, I prefer the B&W. In fact, sometimes
I want to say, "If you want to see more color, why
don't you pick up your own darned camera & create the
images you want to see?" Ha! (I'll discuss
more on the final page from this sitting, the
Carlotta On Canvas).
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I wonder whether
some of the transitions are too subtle? Like these
images with the table sliding across the image frame to
exit, image left? I don't know. I guess it's
a pixilation idea that was left over from my stop action
motion picture photography days.
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I thought about
including "transition" images like this one in
the original sequence. I kinda felt that I shouldn't,
but in the end, there were some on the previous page.
In retrospect, I should have been a little more decisive
when making the pictures, so that I had plenty of images
to choose from for the sequence.
These images
remind me of some puzzles I saw as a child, where you were
presented with two similar images, and you were challenged
to spot the 23 things that were different between the two
images.
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It takes me
a long time to edit the photographs & pull together
these web site pages, but after working with a model, I
put up a private page of some of the best images right away
-- I share these privately with the model (and with the "patrons"
who have made a donation towards the upkeep of this site).
I really liked this image, so it made the short list.
Carlotta identified this image as her favorite from the
sitting, saying "There
is something about the head being cropped out that I really
like-the movement is good too". She put this
image on one of her online portfolios, and it garnered a
wonderful comment: "Anticipation,
takes me back to my first love and the first time she took
her clothes off.
All
I can remember thinking is "OH MY GOD" and the
feeling that "life is good". Thanks".
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Here's a different
cropping of an image that appears on the original sequence.
The duration of the strobes last just 1/3000th of a second,
which is fast enough to freeze most actions. We just
had Carlotta toss her jeans, and I pressed the shutter release
as it moves through the image frame. It's hit or miss,
but fortunately, with editing & reviewing the image
on the camera's LCD screen, you don't have to see the misses.
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Because of
my anal-retentive, control-freak nature, I had to set up
the camera & the lens so that each image was from the
same perspective. We were careful to keep the big
comfy chair in the same place for each exposure. I
thought about putting this sequence together into an animated
GIF, but the resulting image file would have been huge.
I figure that an animated GIF would make it easy to see
the differences between two adjacent images, but that would
be cheating. I might do that at a later date, but
not now.
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Another recropping
of a strobe frozen image. I think the timing is off
slightly on this one.
One additional
advantage to this kind of image: it gives the model
something to do with her hands.
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I really like
this image, but it just didn't fit in with the original
sequence: it has a different cropping, and it is a "transition"
image.
Still,
you'll find some variations of this image and others from
this sitting on the last page,
Carlotta On Canvas.
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Here's one
of my favorites: I like the movement in the pose &
the animated expression on Carlotta's face. Normally,
I hate seeing images of models staring out of the image
frame, but that's usually because there typically is an
empty expression on their faces, and I wind up wondering
exactly what they are staring at. In this picture,
the lack of eye contact doesn't bother me quite so much,
because there is a real expression on Carlotta's face.
... and
in a way, it's kinda spooky that you can only see the whites
of her eyes.
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Somehow, after
we swapped the ottoman for the big comfy chair, one of Carlotta's
socks snuck into the image (there on the floor to camera
left). Because I am so anal retentive about such things,
this bugs me a lot, but I'm too lazy to try to photo-edit
the sock out (which shouldn't have been too difficult).
Again, I might go back & do that, but for now, I'll
show everyone my shame at not catching this problem quicker.
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I would be
remiss if I didn't mention that I'm really satisfied with
the deep rich tones in these images. For once, I got
the exposure pretty close to perfect. That's gratifying.
I should
also mention that Carlotta was looking especially yummy
this day. She had recently curled her hair, and I
like the effect, and of course, she was looking particularly
curvy & shapely this day.
I like
that one shoulder is higher than the other and that there
is a little jog in her spine -- I also like that she has
great posture.
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I also like
the lighting setup, with my biggest soft box off camera
left and a strobe head with a grid behind the model throwing
the hot spot on the wall; there also is a fill light high
off frame, camera right. It's about a simple as it
gets, but it works well.
Of course the
anal retentive in me is bugged by the wire on the floor,
leading to the light behind Carlotta. I should have
hidden that wire under the puddled backdrop.
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I couldn't
think of a better way to end the sequence. |
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