PIrate's Alley, NOPD, and Ozzy

With Sarah covered in a trenchcoat, which later she emailed me and said she left her bra in, our "entourage" moved into the alley next door to the cathedral and set up the next shot. Ozzy, an English bull dog, was going to be our star for this shot. Sarah lost the trench coat and I fired off a few frames. The shots were good but I had a vision in my head as to what we were going to shoot there.

Kenny was preparing Ozzy, because he really didn't like the new spiked collar that I bought him. I guess he was used to harnesses but those don't look good in photos. I had purchased Mardi Gras costume mask with a rose on one side, on that same side a large feather plume extending above her head, and three ribbons that hung down about two feet. Add Mardi gras beads and we were ready to go. Did I forget to mention that we were 20 feet from the Police station. Oh well it is the French Quarter. If they arrested everyone who was naked down there the jails would fill up every weekend.

Kenny's job was to keep Ozzy focused and moving forward. Sarah looked stunning as always and with Ozzy pulling ahead things were looking good. I got low, stopped down and tried to keep both of them in focus but there wasn't enough light available for that. I adjusted the iso on the D3 to 800 and continued to shoot. The composition, dog and model lined up for the perfect shot.

So far our day was going brilliantly, scouting ahead was the key and planning. Now onto Madison Street. I can't post the pirates alley image here because it's just too good and the agreement with blogger is that they can have your image once you post it here. That said if you randomly run across this blog and you want to post a comment or get me an email from the definitionsofwomen site. I will send you a password to take a look at the image.

Sarah Takes the Streets of New Orleans

In a departure from studio work I hit the streets with a crew of six early last Sunday morning. Lots of emails and a fairly comprehensive list of what we were shooting and where. Planning it felt like it was a Heist. Getaway drivers, muscle, the computer guy, the director, the last minute guy all of the players were there.

5:00 am I am up grabbing my coffee so that I can make it to the studio to meet Karl, the videographer, Britney, my assistant and Kenny getaway driver, muscle and animal wrangler. I had another shoot the night before so I packed up the gear last night knowing that I am not a morning person. I look out the window to check the weather. Great news it looks like fog. I look again, damn, it's just humidity on the window.

6:00am I am at the studio getting ready and Britney is there just after me. She is sooo reliable. Karl and Kenny arrive shortly after. We load up softboxes and lights that we need for the shoot.

6:20am I get a call from wardrobe/models assistant who is supposed to pick up the lovely model Sarah from the hotel. The model is at the international hotel, right? Is this the right hotel he asks? No the intercontinental. Damn a snafu first thing in the morning, but wait I hear a female voice and laughter in the background. Jokes, my friend has jokes this morning. I hear Sarah say,"It wasn't my idea!"

6:45 am Jackson square parking lot. behind the canon. You know where the president said he would help out New Orleans. We decide to nix the wedding dress because it too hard to get off. Sorry Sarah for making you lug that all the way from S.F. Trenchcoat ready we get Sarah into Jackson Square in front of the Cathedral. The homeless guys are asking a lot of questions like who are you? What are you shooting? Then Sarah walks up and loses the trenchcoat. Silence. Then applause. One of the homeless guys insists he wants a picture to send to his buddy Howie. Stay away from the the model I say shaking my head, nervously clicking off frames. From behind me I hear a booming authoritative Voice. "Sit down Sir!" It's Kenny the muscle, getaway driver and animal wrangler. I hear it again "SIT DOWN SIR!" then I hear the homeless guy apologizing profusely. I am trying to compose the picture and do something but the cathedral is too big the angle wrong and I decide to move on.

Next post Pirates alley.

Model Sarah-- Vunerable

I guess that I have fallen off of the blog wagon, I had no idea that it has been so long since I posted and image or thoughts or any thing here. This is Sarah Ellis, a wonderful free spirit model. She was professional and willing to do whatever it took to get an amazing image. I pretty much tortured her trying to get a certain bodyscape look that I hadn't been able to get before. After about 3 hours of shooting she asked me for a cushion or something because the wood floor was grinding into her hip. I was so focused on the image capture that I hadn't even thought about it.

This look that she gave me just exuded vulnerability. I remember it because I told her that I felt bad clicking the shutter, I felt like such a voyeur capturing this look.

We are working together again in June. Full guerrilla. Our entourage is going to be shooting nudes in the french quarter and downtown New Orleans. I usually don't travel with that many people but we have lookouts, a videographer/photographer friend of mine, my assistant Brittany, a getaway driver, and an english bulldog named Ozzie, I wanted a Makeup artist but I think it's too eary in the morning to make that happen.

Check back for this one as I know it is going to be great.

Dancer

So my next model arrives From England:

Katy T came dancing into the studio and I had only dynamic images in my vision. She was 100% professional and really wanted to make great images. Her knowledge of her body, hair, hands and where everything was relative to the shot was really great to see.

I had her leaping and jumping through out the studio and despite a lens problem we were able to create some of the most memorable images to date for the definewomen.com website. What a treasure to work with and in the end, we both felt that we had great images for our portfolio.

I can't emphasize how nice it is to work with a professional model again. If these are the outtakes , I can't wait to incorporate the other image for the book.

Manipulation Rev. II

Back on the topic of manipulating photos, in the darkroom days I would burn and dodge the images to emphasize and guide the viewer to the best part of the image or at least my focus of the image.

This image has some Photoshop work but not in the key part of the image(the Flower) where typically two images would be combined to create the final effect. This image was captured with the flower as part of the original picture.

I leave it to the viewer to speculate on how the flower became part of the image. I imagine a contest would be fun but since the current scope of this blog is probably less than 20 viewers that randomly arrive here we will just leave open the comments section to see if speculation will prevail.

Manipulation

Digital manipulation of images is a new problem for a new age. How much can you touch up an image and still be true to the original? At what point do you alter the image so much that it no longer is true to the "capture". This is an image that I posted on Fred Miranda.com a website dedicated to more advanced photographers. A brilliant graphic artist from Argentina named Natalia offered to enhance the image. I sent her a full resolution copy of the image and this is what she did to it. In her subtle way she added what I wanted in the original capture.

I also want to give her full credit for the Main Page on the Dow website. She and I had different ideas on the fonts and how the words follow the lines in the images. This is her Flickr website:

nataliataffarel

She really is gifted.

Stereotypes

In creating the book and website defintionsofwomen I am forced to consider stereotypes. The questions that I am pondering about is should I fall into these stereotypes.

Should stereotypes define women or do women define the stereotypes?

Here is another image of Makeda that could fall into that definition of a stereotypical black woman. On one hand it is a clearly beautiful rendition of her shape and form but is it too stereotypical to use as a fine art piece in the book/website?

Is this a direction that I want to go in with my art or is it too easy to fall into that trap? This is indeed a slippery slope that will need consideration. As much as I like this image I feel forced into excluding it from the group just on these grounds. As this blog is new has not had too much consideration I as for those to post their response as to whether or not this image should be included. Please post your comments, I would like to hear them.