i know i’m behind on my shoot updates.. i’ve been sick.

so to pass the time why not look at these pretty pictures.

Beatrix Mae..

For a long time I had this photographer’s crush on this edmonton based model. She’d worked with some photographers I liked, and had modelled some of tasha’s designs along the way. I sent an overly exuberant email off to her way back then professing my photographers love which generally kills any hope of working with someone as you seem a bit too eager, and it did for a while.

Then she moved to Calgary and we began discussing a shoot. Somehow we’d always be out on schedules, or one of us would get sick, or I would be overcome by my normal bouts of massive inadequacy and chicken out. yes, I still have those after all these years with some people. Then we finally set a date.

I’m suffering from a malaise of shooting indoors, in the same location too often and for too long and it’s really soured my eagerness to shoot, which tends to happen this time of year when outdoor shoots are iffy and the daylight is short but while she was getting ready i decided to hang some cloth against the wall to give some extra depth to things and give a sense of space I haven’t been doing in shoots lately. things fall out of habit so easily.

I had my lights in place early for this one and we tripped into beautiful light from the outset. It buoyed my spirits and I felt even if my eye was faltering the light might save me. sometimes the gods are kind in moments of weakness and within about 20 frames we had a publish worthy shot.

I was hoping for some grace and beauty and i found deep wells of it hiding between awkward moments. Like so many young models she hides in girl energy when unsure, but my prediction that she had a beautiful woman lurking unmanaged behind that was founded and it slowly eased out.

I did my best to capture it for you.

on non model models.

when i first started shooting I worked with regular people. Friends, neighbours, girls i was dating and found the results pretty much showed that. while i miss working with continuous light i don’t miss the awkward over modelling most non models do. It’s and odd fact that non models generally model more when they pose for you than more experienced models. the finer the model, the less she relies on dramatics, more on subtle variation.

So I went to see Miss Singer dance the succubus at Conventia De Mentia a few weeks ago, got loaded up on jack daniels and pilsner and acted like a total rockstar asshole sending people off to bring me one of the dancers that caught my eye. Fortunately I had enough jack in me to pull off the swagger, and probably more fortunate I had doug’s (my new assistant :P) iphone to show her my work. I’ve learnt if the work is good enough you can probably get away with more than you should. so we exchanged contact info.

we set up our first shoot and when she got there it was strange to see her not covered in makeup and feathers and tribal dancing in the dark but I still had the sense it would work out. your gut can screw you or save you and without realizing it you refine your eye over time for what sorts of people can pull off your mood. this new girl, nikki, might not be a conventional beauty in the high fashion sense of the term, but she’s got a very open energy and moves with some grace. That often can be far more important than entirely perfect beauty.

we all have oddities in our physical makeup. my lower jaw is way too big for my face, and almost every model I’ve worked with (being mostly amateur models) has something thats not quite there. thats the difference between photos and video work I think. We can shoot around small flaws. light them, frame them, or abstract them out of the way. Video makes that much harder to do.

But, then, really I’ve never been much about perfection or conventional beauty anyways. I think every woman has beauty in her given the patience to wait for her to trust you with it.

so we had our first shoot and surprisingly it took very little time to get into a flow. My intuition about her movement paid off in getting poses from her (Sometimes mid movement) that i’m unable to get from more established models. I’m concerned this success may turn me into creeper guy in the bar handing out cards and “talent” scouting but I will try to keep that under control as best I can. It would be nice to break out of the modelling scene with all it’s politics and dramas and there are so many fantastically beautiful women out there..

if there’s a moral to the story, and i hate morals, it’s to trust your gut and take some chances. sometimes it works out for you, and when it doesn’t.. well, you lose a few hours of your life. big deal.

the everything is love shoot.

marla and aura were having a little love fest for one another in the comments of photos of each other and watching it i had possibly the greatest idea ever. What if we take marla singer, and we take aura and we put them together under the same light?

I suggested it and both were on board. It wasn’t easy to schedule for three busy people and waiting for it was killer. they arrived after a joint shopping trip during which they matched up their underwear, which i thought was a nice touch. We made sure we were amply stocked for wine and foodstuffs and returned to the den of sin.

earlier in the week i picked up my first light meter. I’ve never been much for precision but the idea of measuring light seems so exotic and interesting i couldn’t resist. I spend most of the week measuring the EV differences between one end of my curtains and the other. Fascinating stuff.

So I had this concept, as far as me and concepts go, of having them together and using a red gel on the background to give this brothel/erotic feeling. Given the space constraints of my tiny place thats a task and a half. I spent probably two hours trying to get the lights right while the girls sat around talking and drinking wine. after numerous technical problems with the meter (and my cabling for my pocket wizards) I gave up on the gel and put the meter down. Theres no point in having two amazing women available if you’re going to spend the entire time working out your lights.

I was pretty down at that point. I really wanted to use this shoot to learn more about gelling backgrounds and my recent addition of hair lights with grid spots seemed like it was going to be a deadly combo, but you’ve got to roll with it when its happening and what i learnt is gear gets in the way sometimes. Light meters are for learning on your own, or staged shoots where its pre-planned, and my shoots tend to just grow organically.

i won’t think about how that meter is 1/4 of the cost of the new lens i want.

within moments of shooting, while i was still doing test shots for light they were full into it and giving me more than i could handle.

you never know what you might get when you put two people together. it may seem like it will be amazing but often it fizzles as they try to relate to one another. I’ve watched painfully as it happens wishing for it to be over. this time though, they really interacted together amazingly and there were probably more great shots than i will have time to process. these are the sorts of problems one wants to have.

aside from that, it was just fun to hang with two aweosome people for a night.

i’m not sure i will ever be able to translate the fluid, moving nature of the photos i want to capture into the correct light. the two seem opposed sometimes, and when you catch exactly the right shot it seems like pure chance. i want to lessen that random element and yet keep the open ended nature. its something that will require many more years of work to achieve.

the first shot in the above slideshow seems nearly perfect light wise and it was a real eye opener for me. I saw clearly for the first time flaws in my light when comparing to that image and now the work begins to understand why they are different and how to get to producing that quality of light regularly and predictably.

My first attempt at the long portrait. I’ve wanted to do one forever and it wasn’t easy. video is way more work than photos, but i think it worked out and captures some of the fragile beauty i see when i look at tasha.

the song is Beauty’s Colors by Serena Matthews who is brilliant, and also was kind enough to let me use it for this video.

<a href=”http://www.serenamatthews.com” rel=”nofollow”>www.serenamatthews.com</a>

Another shoot with tasha last weekend. We had this awesome idea we were going to try to pull off but were scared away by the prospect of hiking and outdoors shooting in 30+ weather for hours on end. Okay, i was. heatstroke is not my friend so thats put over till fall for now.

instead we borrrowed her sisters beautiful home in hillhurst for the afternoon. I love new places. so many new options and possible photos. it makes you see things differently. I also love taking something fairly ordinary looking (like those flowers) and bringing it into a larger more interesting feeling.

we lucked out that the fabric she had nearly exactly matched the flowers. and i got to use my octabox outside for the first time which helped produce some great images that i think otherwise might not be possible.

it was a good shoot and yet another step towards what i want to shoot. Higher and higher quality light. better poses, better compositions.

I’m getting a lot of flack lately that my images are getting “pretty” and i’d like to dispel that right off. my images reflect the scene and mood in which they were made not some overall mandate about what i want. If i see pretty, i shoot pretty. if i see dark, emotional grit, i shoot that. If a model will show me her flaws and ugly parts, i will gladly share them with you. if her energy is more traditional i will show you that.

i have no prediliction for grit. though i love it. I will shoot beauty, or fashion, or kittens, or anything else i see that moves me.

I find it midly ironic I hear “try something new” all the time from people, but the moment something changes it ‘not your style’.

beauty is my style, whatever the form.

summer is here and it makes me want to take all the pretty girls out into the woods and.. shoot them? yes.

carla was telling me I would dig this girl, aura, who she said was pure muse material and encouraged me to work with her. Then marla ( the other half of the ‘arlas’ in my world ) mentioned her too and so we started talking about shooting.

I was moderately concerned about things going into the shoot, having had some bad luck lately, and having gear issues as well, but she got to my place and we decided to chance getting caught in the storm that looked about to erupt. it only took a few frames for me to realize we were going to be just fine.

we went down to a park near my place, and played around on stairs (which failed to satisfy my desire for stair shooting) and then went to the river, under an overpass for the transcanada highway which provided some kinda magic light. then off into the woods a bit and then back to my place for some sweet octabox love.

It was one of those shoots where you’re feeling it, the model is working, the light is working and you remember what excites you about shooting. I forget my favorite lens (70mm f2.4) on the bridge for 20 minutes but recovered it, then dropped a flash on concrete and killed it but otherwise.. i was happy with the entire day, and moreso as I find time to work on the photos.

testing out tumblr’s new photoset feature with a few shots from the recent shoot with miss marla singer. We wen’t on an adventure through the heart of bowness (an older neighbourhood here in calgary) and found ourselves shooting fashiony stuff between two buildings trying out my new honl 8” reflector. If you shoot portable with speedlights, i really recommend you pick one of these up. They are about $40 and the light is great.

After the sun set behind the hills (valley’s suck) we made way back to my place for some estate wine she brought and to try out my new 3’ octabox. I had some pretty serious issues getting it put together but the lovely marla assisted and we prevailed over all those metal rods. I’ve decided to leave it assembled as a tribute to our teammanship, and perhaps because im not sure i can ever do it again.

She put on some vintagey like underwear and some white fishnet stockings and I dug out the new wine colored blanked i bought to replace an old red quilt I used to shoot on all the time and we set off into the light.

within a couple shots, I was in love with the new octabox, and with her all over again. The day didn’t go how I hoped. I was a bit sunstroked and not feeling my best, but the softness of the light, and the new falloff of the octabox combined in a heady mixture with her body and all that fell away for a time. I pushed on much longer than i should have, not feeling well, but after a couple of less than stellar shoots I’ve learnt to ride the light when it’s working.

and here is a sampling of what came of that ride.