Keira In The Sunlight

I really like this image:

Keira is remarkably comfortable in her own skin -- in fact, she continued to walk around nude even between setups. I believe that she prefers to be nude all the time. I just love her confidence.

I like how all the elements of this image balance out. I like the composition.

I love the splash of blue of her shorts as they lie in that little patch of sunlight.

The color & the light are perfectly exposed.

There's a little action -- I like it when a model's hands are occupied somehow.

In fact, I like this image so much that I played with it, with alternative cropping & artistic effects. Although I like these variations (see below), I think I prefer this original treatment.

I like this image, too. I've got to admit that when I feature the patch of sunlight, sometimes that's too much. But here, it is only a minor element of the image, and we can focus on Keira's amazing beauty. I just love her muscular definition in her abs, and I love her direct eye contact -- her lovely face looks especially inviting.
The past several years, angel wings have become a glamour photographic cliché, one which I have avoided. But I've got to say that in images like this, the shadow of Keira's head on the wall looks a little like folded dark wings to me. This is especially true with the "paint brush" effect version of this image.

(Roll your mouse cursor over this image to see the artistic effect version -- what do you think about this way of presenting the artistic effect?)

We drop to the floor for some exposures there. I was thinking that I'd like to see some images with the window light sweeping across Keira's figure, and I wanted to get Keira out of the corner, where the lighting on her face was difficult.
Through no fault of Keira's, I don't like these images as much as I thought I would. But since I find my "near misses" more instructive than my successes, I thought I'd include a few of these images here. Here's my problems:

	Because of the room's configuration, I had to set my camera's zoom lens at its widest setting, and I just don't think this ultra wide lens is flattering for Keira. Here, it looks like her head & her shins are a little too large to be right.
	Because of the room's configuration, I'm sitting quite close to Keira, and I feel like I was invading her personal space a bit. Don't get me wrong -- Keira never indicated that she felt crowded or uncomfortable -- that feeling was all mine.
	I've been an advocate of keeping the camera axis low, about the same height as the model's center of mass. Here, in this particular image, I must have been holding the camera up to my eye, and being taller than Keira, I wound up looking down at her.

So, something to mull over for next time. You'll see that we eventually moved around a bit & find some better images.

Things improved a bit when we moved Keira closer to the floor.
Okay, this image is a large part gimmicky, juxtaposing Keira's feminine curves against all the straight lines & angles & diagonals. It's not "high art", but it is a bit of fun.

The geometric nature of this image lends itself well to the "artistic effects" that I've been enjoying lately.

I stand up & get dazzled by the geometry of what I see.
I have a graduate degree in computer science, and during my school years, I took many graduate level math classes. These kind of images make the math parts of my brain work. With a little information, I could tell you stuff like what direction to window faces, what time of day this was, what date this was, how far we were from the equator, and other useless information.

Also from a scientific point of view, it is interesting to me how the light puddles under the window during the summer and how the light stretches all the way across the room during the rare sunny days in the winter months.

From an aesthetic point of view, I like how the floor molding's strong horizontal anchors the image and how the strong diagonals give an interesting pattern to the image. I like how it all makes sense eventually.

No disrespect to Keira, but my math brain makes me wonder what this image would look like if Keira was not in the image at all.

This sweet image is the last we made in the sunlight coming in through the window.
I love models with great (or even exaggerated) posture.

Also, my camera's zoom lens is set at a more normal (as opposed to wide angle) setting. I didn't know it at the session, but after all the time I spent editing these images, I decided to avoid using wide angle settings with Keira. She has such a lovely figure and face that I just didn't want to introduce any wide angle distortions.

After this image, I plan to move on to the next concept (see the next page). This setup would involve closing the shade on this window, putting up the background, bringing in the strobe lights & light stands & soft boxes, setting up my camera to fire the strobes, etc. During this time, Keira wanders over to the other side of the living room & plops herself down in the big comfy chair to wait. The day is warm enough, and she doesn't feel the need to cover her nudity.

After wrestling with all these changes for the setup, I turn around & see the lovely Keira lounging in the big comfy chair, and I decide to snap a few exposures of Keira, relaxing, being herself, in the living room's natural light.

Some models have to be "on" in front of the camera -- they might suck in the tummy or plaster a smile on their faces or exaggerate their posture -- they know what makes them look best. Keira, however, is one of the more relaxed models I've ever met -- she is all natural in her grace. She doesn't have to flex her muscles -- her figure is always defined. She doesn't give the camera a "fine art model" look; she just reacts naturally. She is totally comfortable being nude & showing off. It would be a challenge to make a poor picture of her.

Keira Chair Variations