statuesque

Planning this shoot in my head was pretty easy to do. Accomplishing it was a different story. Years ago, I found this nipple-mannequin and used it for a couple of photographs of shirts and ties. Putting a tie on a pinpoint shirt with women’s breasts was mildly arresting and interesting. I knew this morning I would use the human shape and light it the same way I approach still-lifes, using multiple exposures and combining them in layers. I was going to use the figure straight on as though this woman was standing directly in front of my camera, but I made a phone call. During the call I saw light glancing off the body from my windows at an angle from the side. That would have to be my photo. I made both versions but still liked this one the best. Putting the figure to the far right was necessary to hide the fact that she has no arms and that would be the give-away that it was not a real person. But also, using the right half for the subject gives a compositional expression that she just might be walking into the scene, suggesting movement across the frame.

I have found that shooting nudes is much harder than it looks. At first blush it seems, how could you go wrong? How can you go right is more like it. It helps to have a beautiful female form to start with…one that is willing to experiment. This image was not very tightly preconceived. I just had access to a studio prop and a willing beautiful woman as I previously mentioned. The resulting image is a co-creation, and it seems as though it refers to creation.

In keeping with Robert’s image, “Different Feather”, I too am playing a different kind of winged creature. The evolution of recent bird images for the game has migrated from eatable – to real – to chrome, this then gave me the freedom to explore other kinds of avians. My contribution launches us on a different flight of fancy, perhaps a mythological or spiritual one, certainly angelic. I used a 4×5 view camera to produce this image and racked the focal plane to make this selective focus still life. This technique creates an other-world quality in the image, freeing it from the literalness of the static statue itself.