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Naked In… Baja Mexico

I can’t believe it’s been just over a year since we were all basking in the Mexican sun, eating tacos, drinking margaritas an oh, taking lots of beautiful art nude photographs of course! It took my reminiscing about Mexico and missing everyone at Fest XI in Palm Springs while I was stuck at work back here in Brisbane to prompt me to finally do something serious with all of my art nude images.

So the Naked In…  projects were born and I decided the first in the series should be Naked In… Baja Mexico. Each project will consist of a fine-art limited edition book, an eBook, a limited set of postcards and a series of signed prints. To help raise funds for the design and production of the limited edition book from this first project, I have started a community funding campaign which, much to my amazement, managed to raise the initial funds needed to cover the basic costs in only 3 days. There is also a website / blog to support this and the future Naked In… projects so make sure you check it out and keep visiting to see the latest updates – www.naked-in.com

Of course it would be great to see the support for this project continue so if you are interested in supporting it, click on the photo and head to the Pozible campaign and have a look at what’s on offer.

 

 

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Part 21 of 50: A Brunette, Dos Casas and a Wardrobe: Photographing the Lovely Anne Duffy

This is part twenty-one in a series of blogs on my photographic adventures in Todos Santos, Mexico.

It was almost exactly a year ago as I write this that my ZoeFest X adventure began. You’ll recall I received several emails from the incredibly talented photographer, Zoe Wiseman, about her annual artists retreat that would be taking place in Todos Santos, Mexico in the Fall.. After agreeing to her invitation, I clicked over to one of Zoe’s websites, ARTnudes network and began to investigate the portfolios of some of the international models who were also invited. I had some research to do and names to learn.

Anne Duffy at Casa Bentley
Anne Duffy at Casa Bentley

One of the first portfolios that jumped out at me was the work of Australian model Anne Duffy. It’s not exactly that I have a type of model I prefer to work with, but one look at my own portfolio reveals that I do have a penchant for photographing brunettes. Something about the contrast of hair and skin that rings my bells. And Anne is the brunette-iest of brunettes. With lovely porcelain skin. She immediately went to the top of my wish list months before I would arrive at ZoeFest.

When we all arrived in Baja six months later, I’ve mentioned that we all got a chance to meet and re-meet for those ZoeFest veterans, but the Aussies were delayed a bit coming from the other side of the planet. So late in fact that I was walking out of the party, just as they were all walking in. But a flood of mental snapshots flooded to the front of my brain as soon as I picked Anne out from within her group. Every bit as lovely as I imagined. Even for being jet-lagged.

Anne Duffy at Casa Bentley
Anne Duffy at Casa Bentley

A few days later, we caught up under less noisy circumstances and firmed up our plans to shoot together. Anne and Anoush, who I had photographed a few days earlier, were staying at Casa Bentley, another of the boutique hotels in Todos Santos that our group had taken over for the duration of ZoeFest. It was a lovely paradise, just down the road from where I was staying at Todos Santos Inn.

Driving to meet Anne at her hotel, I realized I had lingered a bit longer than I probably should have with Brooke after our tremendous shoot earlier in the day and arrived a few minutes late for my shoot with Anne. Luckily, she was also running a bit behind and I had a few minutes to catch my breath and collect my thoughts before we would begin. We were all of us, slowly melting into Baja-time. Always a few minutes late, but arriving in a delirious state of peace and relaxation.

Anne invited me into her beautiful little room snuggled under a huge shady tree. When I walked through the door, I had to laugh. After shooting with nude models all week, I was surprised to see what looked like a collision between two wardrobe trucks spread out from wall to wall. Anne caught my amusement and reminded me that she and many of the other models had arrived at ZoeFest, mid-world-tour, and they basically had to bring everything they owned to be ready for anything that might transpire at their gigs before and after ZoeFest.

Ah yes. I stood corrected.

Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula
Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula

And since I was standing ankle deep in some lovely couture, it seemed like a good idea to deviate from the literal meaning of an art nude shoot and consider accessorizing for a something different. So Anne and I started hunting through everything, looking for things that I thought might be interesting to work with. It was difficult only in that Anne has excellent taste and my sorted “good pile” was quickly becoming more of a mountain than we could possibly shoot in one afternoon.

Eventually we narrowed it down to a more reasonable collection. Now, what to start with?

I had planned to take Anne back to Casa Dracula to photograph her there, but since I had barely scratched the surface of Casa Bentley as a location during my shoots, I wanted to find something there before we moved up the road to Casa Dracula.

Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula
Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula

I started to focus in on a vintage black lingerie set that we had put aside. Then I noticed a period lounge sofa near one of her windows. Anne was reading my thoughts as she pulled a string of pearls out of one of her cases. And there it was. Our first set up.

I took a few meter readings and adjusted the blinds a bit to even out the light. I switched to a shorter lens that had been giving me some trouble a few days earlier on the trip, but was the right focal length for the size of the room. I decided to fight through it’s ill-tempered nature and try to make the best of it.

Anne reclined on the lounge and suddenly I was in 1940. She was stunning. I framed up a composition of her looking up and back over her shoulder… and… click…

A quick review of the first frame was perfect except for the fact that it was completely out of focus. I was shooting wide open with a small depth of field, but literally nothing was in focus in the entire frame. Another frame was the same. Hmmmm. It was going to be a battle I could tell. Perhaps it was the sand or the heat from a week of shooting Mexico, but this lens was not cooperating.

However, sometimes you can take a bad situation and turn it into a good one. I flipped off the autofocus, which clearly wasn’t communicating with the focus point I was selecting in the viewfinder and switched to manual.

Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula
Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula

You may be saying, “But Billy, why don’t you shoot in manual focus all the time? Isn’t that a more professional thing to do?”

Well, yes, I guess. But there are a lot of things to delegate in my head when I’m shooting. I’m looking for lines and angles and how they flow together in the composition. I’m watching my model’s face, getting into a rhythm with her as she poses and adjusts and gives me another. I’m absorbing the feeling she is emoting, making sure the photograph I’m making is capturing that essence.

I’m watching to see if the light is changing if I’m relying on the sun for illumination. Has it just gone behind a cloud? Do I need to slow my shutter speed to compensate? In fact, with the exception of focus, my camera is already set for completely manual operation. The ƒstop, shutter speed, ISO, color temperature and other camera settings are all set by me manually before I click the shutter.

Even the exact focus point in my viewfinder is something I’m choosing. When everything is working properly, I usually let the camera and lens do the math and make sure that exact point is in focus for me, so I can concentrate on everything else. Except when it doesn’t.

Years ago, when I was learning how to be a photographer, none of my cameras or lenses had autofocus. Some of those old film friends that I still occasionally use to this day are completely manual cameras. Shooting with them requires a slightly different rhythm. An extra beat to rotate the lens focus ring back and forth between each shot to confirm focus. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a different pace.

So, since I was already standing in the 1940s world that Anne and I had created, I took a breath and slowed down. Anne adjusted to my extra beat and slowed her movement down as well. We were settling in at last. And the images were in focus.

About a dozen shots into the set, I was sure I had the photograph I was imagining and I shot another dozen or so, just to see if I had missed anything, but they really weren’t necessary. Anne was perfect and we had nailed it.

Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula
Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula

We packed up the rest of the couture pile and headed off up the hill to Casa Dracula. I had spent so much time there in the last week that I had already picked out a few places where I wanted to work with Anne. We headed upstairs to the survey the large and small bedrooms. The afternoon light was coming in the windows in a very inspiring way. Bright, but not direct, so the shadows would be subtle.

One of the pieces Anne had brought along was a vintage jacket with beautiful decorative fringe. It had a decidedly Mexican feel. Staying with the accessorizing theme, we decided to have her wear that instead of being completely nude. I could tell she really liked the jacket and I did as well. It just added a little something.

I had her sit on one of the beds in the large room, close to one of the open windows. I really love the flavor of light coming from a window like that. Directional, without being too harsh.

While setting up, I had misjudged my light reading and made a test exposure two ƒstops darker than I had originally wanted. Anne was almost invisible in the frame as I reviewed it, just a suggestion of light here and there to fill in her outline. A happy accident and I decided to keep the underexposed look for this setup, knowing I could most likely open it up a bit later in post if I changed my mind.

After the less than stellar performance of my uncooperative 50mm lens back at Casa Bently, I switched to my go-to lens for making beautiful portraits, a 100mm lens. I had much more space to work with now and could use something longer. Zoom with your feet, is one of my mottoes, and it was quite easy to find just the right composition by simply changing my distance from Anne in the large room.

After only about ten photographs, I once again felt we had the shot, but decided to continue a bit longer, making a dozen or so more photographs to give Anne a little time to explore before abruptly moving on. Always good to leave a little room for creative discovery when collaborating.

Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula
Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula

For the next set up, we continued with the jacket as Anne moved into one of the balcony doorways that overlooked the rear grounds. Still using my longer 100mm lens, I stepped into one of the adjacent bedrooms and photographed Anne through another doorway to give my compositions a little extra natural framing, which I like to do from time to time. I find it can give an image depth and it creates an interesting perspective for the viewer.

Anne continued to be wonderful. She gave me a series of natural poses that enhanced her smoldering beauty. I was having a difficult time deciding whether I preferred her looking directly at the camera or averting her gaze to something outside of the frame. Both options were gorgeous. Looking directly is always a more intimate relationship with the viewer, sometimes more than what I’m looking for, but her stare is so arresting that it just pulls you into the image in a very powerful way. I decided to shoot both and decide later.

We moved to another of the bedrooms where I had mentally reserved a smallish round chair near one of Casa Dracula’s front arched balcony doorways near a very plain wall. Beautiful soft light was entering the room once again and I told Anne I wanted her to try coming up with something acrobatic on this particular chair.

She looked at the chair, thought for a moment and figured it out in short order. As she inverted herself, carefully balancing on the none to stable chair, she beautifully arranged her limbs in a complementary direction that only a model of Anne’s caliber can do without looking, and upside down to boot. Making it all feel effortless.

After a few minutes of the blood rushing to her head, I had her return to vertical again and she found more lovely subtle poses as I made another dozen or so photographs. Another success.

Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula
Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula

We moved into yet another of the second floor bedrooms near where I had photographed Keira in the red mosquito netting. One of the beds in that room was against a slightly distressed wall painted in a very dark green. I thought Anne’s beautiful pale skin would be a strong contrast for the dark wall and she continued to find exquisite positions to stand and lean as I balanced my compositions with her inspiring movement.

I was feeling very satisfied with what we had done and asked Anne if she was ready to call it a day. It was a hot afternoon as usual and I try to avoid melting the models whenever possible.

“Really?”, she asked, surprised that I was considering stopping. “I have this other piece you might find interesting.”

She pulled out what I can only describe as a inventively knitted spiderweb and held it up in front of her. No, we were suddenly definitely not done shooting for the day.

“Ooh. Let’s head back outside for this one,” I suggested.

We returned to a location I had now photographed several times already on the grounds of Casa Dracula, but as is the case in Todos Santos at these magnificent locations, the light at different times of day reveal entirely different looks depending on where the sun is in the sky. Now nearing late afternoon, the wall was completely in the shade and where Anne was beginning to get set up, a sublime soft overhead light was doing wonders for the glow of her skin. Splendid soft illumination.

Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula
Anne Duffy at Casa Dracula

Anne against the gray wall was almost already monochromatic in its look even with my own eyes. Where some of the photographs of Anne in the bedroom I definitely knew would be color images, these I knew would be B&W.

Anne continued to find lovely poses in the empty environment. Sometimes balancing on one leg in the same effortless way I had grown used to seeing. We continued to work as I changed my distance from her a few times, experimenting by adding some natural elements into the composition besides the wall. But it was clear Anne needed nothing else to create a compelling image. Once more, beauty in simplicity.

Finally, we did call it a day and I was thrilled that I finally had a chance to collaborate with the first model whose portfolio had jumped out at me six months earlier. Anne was incredible to work with. A captivating beauty with a strong sense of who she is. I was very pleased we had decided to explore her traveling wardrobe. Something different for one of my final shoots at ZoeFest.

Thank you Anne for dragging so many suitcases so many miles. It was worth it.

Next, a slight detour from shooting as I accidentally damage the rental car.

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Part 18 of 50: Stephanie Anne Bucks Up A Little Camper

This is part eighteen in a series of blogs on my recent artistic adventures in Mexico.

Sorry it’s been a while since the last ZoeFest update. I bet some of you thought I gave up after 17 entries. Not so!

I’m used to being busy but the last few months have been even moreso here at Billy Sheahan Photography. Finding a few hours to compose new ZoeFest entries has been a rare occurrence.

So where were we? Ah yes. Stephanie Anne!

It was Saturday morning in Todos Santos, Mexico. Not that Saturday really feels much different than any other day in paradise. Hell, even Monday feels like Saturday here.

I had two photoshoots scheduled that day, first with the lovely Stephanie Anne and later with the beautiful Anoush Anou.

I was looking forward to yet another day of working with incredibly creative humans. Unfortunately I was a bit distracted at the same time. You see, a couple of days earlier, I had gotten a call from my sister back in the States that my mom suffered what seemed to be a small stroke. A few years earlier she had a major stroke and it severely incapacitated her, taking over a year for her to get back a fair amount of mobility and that was only after which we could breathe a sigh of relief that she was going to live through it at all.

Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley
Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley

News was slow in getting to me in my cocoon of paradise and I had been weighing whether I should even stay or cut my adventure short and fly back to see my mom. We had decided to wait a few days to see how serious it was. There was a lot of family looking in on her, so while my mom was constantly on my mind, my absence was less noticeable than it might have been otherwise. But I was still unsure that staying thousands of miles away was the correct decision.

A small group of family members finally convinced me that considering my penchant for overworking myself during the year, it might be a good idea for me to stay put in paradise and try to enjoy myself unless things took a turn for the worse.

Still, since telephone service was spotty, I was spending a lot of time looking for signal bars on my phone so as not to miss an urgent call. It was tricky to fully relax and concentrate on shooting.

By the time I met Stephanie Anne at another of our artist hotels, the lush Casa Bentley, I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I wanted to be for her. I wandered around the grounds looking for inspiration. Some unusual spot to allow her to find something special and inspire her as well. By the time she was ready to go, I had found very little that spoke to me. Or perhaps it actually was speaking to me, but I was having difficulty hearing it over all of my mental chatter.

Luckily, Stephanie is a joyful soul. Her energy and spirit can lift the volume of any gathering, and I mean that in a good way. I apologized for my being a bit distracted and Stephanie immediately took over the load of creating the inspiration. She carried me that morning. No question about it.

Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley
Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley

I remember starting at the base of a beautiful wide Hule tree that anchored the grounds of Casa Bentley. I was still trying to decide which lens I was going to start with and when I looked up for a moment, I could see that she had already found a place among the intertwined roots and vines and was handing it to me on a platter. I really hadn’t imagined that. But she did and that was enough to kick start our shoot.

I stepped behind a low branch, putting a series of long slender leaves between Stephanie and myself, defocused enough so that it created an almost there set of diagonal lines across the frame that played with her poses and the strong lines of the tree’s root structure. My head was beginning to find some focus at last.

It was wonderful to feed off of Stephanie’s energy. I was still struggling more than usual. But I knew the pictures were beginning to work. She was brilliant and beautiful and as I sometimes have to do when my mind is preoccupied with events away from the photo shoot, I just tried to not over think anything. I’ve found that emptying my head in these situations is the best way for me to go. It results in less direction to my subject as to what vision I’m seeing, which is a bit more challenging for my model, most of whom are accustomed to more feedback from me. Instead I find myself switching to a more documentary photographic style where I’m just looking through the viewfinder and composing what feels right at the moment.

Just letting go.

Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley
Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley

We walked along the grounds of the lovely Casa Bentley, the design inspired by the castles of Portugal. The owner, Bob Bentley is a geologist and used his collection of rocks and gemstones, acquired during years of world travels, to adorn the walls and surfaces of the lavish grounds when he designed and built the hotel beginning in 1985.

Stephanie and I stopped along the garden path and I began to compose photographs of her along the walls and ledges of our idyllic environment. She stretched and curved and evoked and I began to see a character emerge. I was watching a story unfold. Sometimes joyful, sometimes somber. A fitting mirror to my own thoughts at the moment.

I was enjoying the dapples of light cascading down through the leaves creating additional patterns to compose with in addition to the decorative rocks and gemstones. As hard as the surfaces were that we were creating in, Stephanie managed to add a softness that made the rocky nature feel more like a living organism rather than a immovable force.

Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley
Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley

We continued through to the back of the hotel grounds and found a shady, more natural area. Again, she played among the trees and a large stump in the center of it all. At this point I was simply happy to observe her explore and play. Creating human shapes among the existing elements of nature.

Nearby, we noticed a small little canal perhaps for water runoff from the rest of the grounds. In a rare bit of direction on this shoot, I had Stephanie pose near one end of the small waterway while I planked across the other end, trying to line up her reflection in an interesting manner.

While water is something I always enjoy working with as an element in  photograph, since we didn’t know exactly where the water was coming from, we decided it would probably be best to be close to the water without actually touching the water. I felt a bit like a human teeter-totter balancing precariously above while trying to focus and compose. But it worked.

The day was getting hot by this point and I thought we might try to find something interesting in the Casa Bentley pool. Whenever possible, I like to compose pool images without any of the obvious pool tile decorations and as Stephanie and I got our bearings, I found an interesting look when I stood right at the pool’s edge, leaning as far over the water as possible without falling in and shooting straight down into the water with a wide lens.

Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley
Stephanie Anne at Casa Bentley

I told Stephanie to submerge a few feet below the surface and try to pose as she would out of the water. It’s actually a challenging thing to do because bodies tend to want to float to the surface, but Stephanie did an amazing job of swim posing as I followed her along the edge.

The resulting photographs are very unusual for me with their bold color and loveliness. The combination of the intense sunlight overhead created interesting patterns and water reflections and gave Stephanie a nice glow. her hair picked up the highlights from the sun resulting an an unearthly splash of red color. Something unexpected when I got back to my studio to review everything. A very happy surprise.

I was so pleased with how the shoot turned out, especially since I was not at my best that day. It proves again what I’ve been saying all along. Stephanie and the other Zoefest models were such intelligent, lovely and creative collaborators. My shoot that morning could have been much less than it turned out to be without Stephanie’s positivity and her love for creating beautiful art.

Thank you Stephanie Anne. You can put me down now.

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FestX Musing

The Ballet of the Lucha Libre

In addition to the shooting around Todos Santos, their were the wonderful moments meeting many new people.  One afternoon I went to the pool at the Casa Bently to appreciate the experience while contemplating the cold and snow I was reading about back home.  There at the pool, I meet world citizen Tara Tree and had a most splendid chat with her.  Later my wife Dee Dee told me of her experience at the turtle release and how much more enriching it was because of Tara’s translations.  Thank you Tara!  Upon my departure from Todos Santos I was taking Brooke Lynne to the Aeropuerto and Samantha Grace rode along as she had a flight later in the day.  To kill some time Samantha and I explored a couple old cemeteries where the locals were preparing loved ones’ grave sites for the day of the dead festival, then a formal catus garden and ending in the downtown of San Jose del Cabo for lunch where she expanded my vocabulary.  Muchas gracias Samantha and loco tacos!!!

The following is a little taste, a sampling, from my time shooting at the Zoe Fest X in Todos Santo, BCS, Mexico.
Meghan
Meghan – Mexico 2011
In the palm oasis that divides Toto Santos.  In addition to her modeling, I also highly recommend checking out Meghan’s photography.
Candace
Where the Cactus Dance
On the bluff overlooking the old port dock.  Worth the bumpy drive up the mountain and worth the full insurance on the rental car.
St. Merrique
St. Merrique – Mexico 2011
A little shoot with big rewards!
Anoush Anou
Fusion
Unlike other shoots, I did not have a lot planned.  I am glad, because what she created was splendid.
Brooke Lynne
Brindled Lagoon
A friend who shares her art with me.  Thank you!
Stephanie Anne
Mi Casa
A day before the Fest I explored this house and it looked like none had set foot in it for years.  It soon was evident how popular it became, I thought a little make over would create something unique.
Keira and Rebecca Lawrence
Luchadoras – From the series: The Ballet of the Lucha Libre.©
I am very grateful for their professionalism working with me shooting this series.
Keira
Charro
In my head I kept hearing music from a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western.
Ella Rose
Garden of Delights
Our schedules did not mesh in Germany, so we met in Mexico.  Such a delight!
Art, that others have created, in it’s many forms is much of my foundation and inspiration for the art I seek to create.
Below is a short video that is both a homage to Rene Magritte and to my experiences with those I created with in Mexico.
Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.
Rene Magritte
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Randoms, Part 4

Two months later, I’m looking at the last roll of film I shot in Todos Santos. Feeling a little sad. The last of its kind, sitting beside my computer patiently waiting to be developed. It’s labeled “ER – one stop overexposed”, so I know it’s the first roll I shot with Ella Rose at Casa Dracula – surprisingly the only roll I knew for sure I’d screwed up.  Tomorrow I’ll have to figure out how to adjust my developing time for the bad exposure, but tonight I’ll just post a few from the past few rolls I’ve worked on (featuring Candace, Ella Rose and Merrique).

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Shoot 6 & 7 Ella Rose and Sara Liz

I posted my images of Ella Rose first here:  My Part 1 would end up at Part 1,253 That was my 6th shoot (October 28) developed and scanned first. 🙂 And I just realized I snuck in shoots between the shoots I scheduled before arriving. So this timeline might be completely and totally WRONG, but who cares? Right? So much has happened since then. I am ready for years end. You know, I am taking suggestions for next year’s get together. Don’t be shy in sending them my way. I’d love to announce it before February so we can all start planning. Throw a dart at the map!

Sara Liz and I started off at Todos Santos Inn for my 7th shoot on October 29. TSI is not really my flavor, which is why I stayed at the Hotelito to start with, but it was an absolutely GORGEOUS hotel. Every little detail you could imagine wanting, they had. Beautiful bathrooms, lovely white linens, gorgeous suites and and and… I just like it modern. I tried forcing the shoot a bit and just decided that we were going to all three hotels in 2 hours! So, that’s what we did. Todos Santos Inn, Casa Bentley and Hotelito all in one. Enjoy. 🙂

© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman - model: Sara Liz
© 2011 Zoe Wiseman – model: Sara Liz