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Finding her Softer Side

This woman came into my studio and wanted some modelling photos. She was only in Canada for a short time and wanted them before travelling back home to South Africa. I believe I photographed her sister’s wedding.

“I like your work,” she said. Words like that always give me a warm fuzzy feeling and it was a great experience to work with her. She realized that being a little older could have some drawbacks but the experience was worth it for both of us.

Being refined and slight in build made each pose easy to form and illustrate her uniqueness. I loved working with her and went the extra mile in lighting and was engrossed in our conversation. Her homeland has always fascinated me even though I have yet to travel there. South Africa, the land of beauty with wildlife beyond compare and yet a place with a tumultuous history, much poverty, the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS and so on.

Dean Collins popularized this lighting technique with translucent flats and I learned from him when I took his course in San Diego, California. Forty-one by seventy-six inches, the framework is made from PVC pipes with elastic rope. Flats can be snapped together with ease and various nylon materials can then be stretched over the frame. I loved the effect so much that I bought the whole set. I had the opportunity to judge with Dean and we once spoke at the same convention. Over the years we bumped into each other from time to time.

In photographing this woman this lighting method was used; a translucent flat on the left side facing her with power light 600 in a soft box. This added a very soft flavour to the light and complemented her complexion. A flat was also utilized as a reflector on the opposite side to fill in the shadow, wrapping the light around and still keeping the shadow side three stops or so deeper. Finally, a background light was used to add depth to the overall image.

I love to play with the positioning of hands in many of my photographs. I first observed this technique in paintings and then took a course with Don Blair who spent a great deal of time educating us about hands. The woman’s hands not only help support her head but also frame her face to add the feeling of warmth and touching. The design of this photograph is like the shape of a kite, suggesting her ability to fly high in whatever her future holds.

Working with shapes allows me to continually discover more possibilities in my work. There is no end. Look at nature, in the woods, every imaginable and unimaginable shape exists to be discovered over and over again. Why are we satisfied with just a few designs repeated over and over again? Are we so confined due to others or are we too lazy to work at putting more effort into design? My poem “The Driven Man” which appeared in my first book 50 Principles of Composition in Photography reveals that it takes more than just effort; it takes a burning desire to be driven.

May I never be too timid or lazy to go the distance whatever that is perceived to be. There is the story of a Greek runner back many hundreds or thousands of years ago who won the race and kept on running all the way home to his village to tell them of his victory. You can’t just stop when you are finished, we need to go on and tell others, tell the story over and over again. To use the brand “Feeling more deeply about photography,” my natural life’s work is all about photography. It is ingrained, infused, imbibed; breath it in, become a Breatharian!