Category: travel

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

Post author By billysheahan
Post date March 2, 2012
6 Comments on 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tags Casa Bentley, fine art, fine art nude, fine art photography, Stephanie Anne, Todos Santos, ZoeFestX

travel

Todos Santos choco Polaraoids

Post author By stevenb
Post date January 22, 2012
2 Comments on Todos Santos choco Polaraoids

Some of the best from my Polaroid fun in Mexico

artnude casa dracula travel

Todos Santos Holgas

I took my Holga with me on most shoots. Here’s what worked. FestX was was a great experience and I am happy to finally meet up with such a wonderful group of artists.

travel

I just can’t help myself

I asked Merrique to give me some pathos…..and managed to get some lovely images, but of course I just can’t help myself….and had to faff with them in photoshop….

Apologies, Merrique! (Bet you didn’t know you were a redhead!)

I even made an iphone cover!

Tags art, art nude, artnude, artnudes, Baja, brackstone, Fest X, festx, fine, fine art, fine art nude, fine art photography, mel, Mexico, nude, nudes, photographer, photography, Santos, St Merrique, todos, Todos Santos, Todos Santos Inn, zoefest, ZoeFestX

artnude fine art nude travel

Part 17 of 50: Tara Translates Our Way Out of a Jam

Post author By billysheahan
Post date January 2, 2012
6 Comments on Part 17 of 50: Tara Translates Our Way Out of a Jam

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

The secluded beach cove at Playas Las Palmas had become quite the popular shooting location as ZoeFest progressed during the week. That was both good and bad. It was good because it’s always fascinating to see what other photographers and models do with the same location. Quite varied and everyone had their own styles they brought to the party. Bad because, as the week went on, we were no longer under the radar.

Todos Santos, Mexico is a very traditional kind of place. It had seen it’s influx of non-natives from all parts of the world in the last couple of decades which had brought about some changes, hopefully not affecting the tranquil beauty or culture in a negative way. But impacting it nonetheless. And when a group of artists sets up camp in an environment such as this as we did during ZoeFest, we were very aware to try not to impact both the environment and culture in a way that would be undesirable to the locals. The old photographers adage of,

“Leave no trace. Leave what you find.”

It probably applies to many other activities that involve exploring anywhere that you’re not a local, but we photographers have adopted it as our own.

Playas Las Palmas presented a tricky dilemma. While the beach itself was not private property, getting to the beach from land did involve crossing through what was private property. Something none of us knew when we arrived. When I had photographed Ella Rose on one of the first days, we were literally the only ones there. Not a person to be seen along the coastline as far as you could see.

But by the time the lovely Tara Tree and I decided to return there, days later, we had started to hear stories from others in the group of, while not exactly what could be termed shakedowns to continue shooting there, but definitely encounters that made it a little uncertain whether it would be possible to continue to shoot there.

We decided to go anyway and see what happened. When we arrived at the end of the dirt road, as close as we could drive to the beach, we spotted Robert and Ella Rose already heading down the path ahead of us. The cove was a fairly large area and I wasn’t concerned we’d be tripping over each other or in each other’s shots.

Tara and I walked through the little tropical forest path before reaching the beach and the glorious late afternoon sun that would be setting in a few hours. I had photographed Ella Rose at the same place in the morning light, completely different from the light now.

This time, as we approached the beach area, Tara and I spotted a couple of official looking men a couple of hundred meters away. It appeared they were inspecting something, pointing and walking a few meters, then pointing away and walking off in that direction. While Robert and Ella were off beginning to shoot in a much more secluded rocky area away from where the men were looking, Tara and I were much more in the open.

We decided to sit and wait and enjoy the ocean view for a while. We talked about our art and our travels and although we were both anxious to begin making photographs, the inspector men continued to do whatever it was they were doing for nearly another hour. Finally they got into their truck and headed off out of sight. And the sun was really getting good by that point. Perfect!

I did really enjoy the brief downtime with Tara. It seemed like I was doing so much rushing around from place to place that even though I was really enjoying myself, it was nice to just stop for a while and relax with such a lovely human as Tara is. She has a wonderful heart. I certainly felt like a better person after our little break.

We began to get ready as Tara laid down in a little stream that had formed over a little sandbar near the mouth of the cove. This time I remembered Ella’s suggestion for me to make sure I didn’t leave any of my own footprints near the delicate sand ripple patterns formed by the waves over the last few hours. It looked like it could be rock with the sun reflecting off of it, but it was definitely sand. Gorgeous with Tara in the middle of it all.

It was really a beautiful time of day. Perfect light.

Tara and I spotted some interesting divots in the sand off to the side of the stream where the tide had been higher earlier in the day and we thought it might be an interesting thing to put Tara in them, her beautiful curves mirroring the curves of the sand. We tried a few different ones until it was difficult to find Tara at all in them, blending in like a chameleon.

I suppose if the Pope was looking to hang one of my nude photographs in his Vatican dining room, one of these would be the least likely of all of my work to raise a holy eyebrow. I’ll have to ask him the next time I see him on Facebook chat.

Meanwhile, back at Playa Las Palmas, the sun was just about ready to hide behind one of the two cliffs that bookended the cove. Tara moved back into the stream and started to pose. She heard some splashing and turned to see me running back and forth in the stream.

“What are you doing?!”, she laughed in her beautiful Irish brogue.

Whah tahr yah doe ehn?!

I stopped in mid gazelle leap and laughed along with her.

“Um… I’m trying to find where the beam of sunlight is best behind you,” I sheepishly said. “You know… because I know you’re holding your pose and I don’t want to have you hold it too long.”

“Alright,” she laughed again, that beautiful laugh. “Just checking.”

Ohl-rate. Joost chay-kehn. (or something like that.)

She posed, I scampered and splashed back and forth. The hardest part was focusing looking straight into the sun, but I got it eventually.

Out of breath and a wee bit tired of looking so silly, we moved over to an area of sand I had noticed the last time I was here at the beach. There were these dark dramatic lines of sand that had washed up along a slightly drier area of the beach. Not a footprint to be found and quite striking.

I had Tara lay down in between a few of them and made of few more photographs of her as the shadows grew in the setting sun. If you look closely, you can see one of my errant footprints as I got a bit too close when directing Tara on which way to lay. We’ll call it a bit of a self-portrait, that one.

I moved around her to compose the length of long shadow her curves were now creating in the sand. Beautiful.

Done with that set, I wanted to try to incorporate the beautiful stream carving in the sand again from a slightly different vantage point. I had been shooting with my short 50mm prime lens up to this point and decided to switch to my longer 100mm prime for a different look. It meant Tara was further away from me, but I really loved how it compressed the sunlight shining off of the sand as the stream had carved through it.

Due to the distance, Tara was a bit confused. “What do you want me to do?”, she yelled to me over the sounds of the crashing waves.

“Something like this,” as I pantomimed stretching my arms out one way and the other.

Happily, she understood my silly posing reference and improved upon it greatly. Another model who can take questionable direction and make it into something wonderful.

I was really happy with what we were doing when Tara suddenly stopped and began walking toward me.

“There’s a man coming toward us,” she stage whispered.

“Is he close?”, I said without turning.

“Getting closer.”

With my back toward the unknown man, trying to keep myself between him and Tara who was trying as casually as possible to put her dress wrap back on, we tried to look as normal as possible. I began to take photographs of the rest of beach area, in an effort to look like a pair of normal tourists out for a walk on the beach.

“Where is he now?”, I quietly asked.

“Right behind you.”

Oh. Damn.

I turned to the man, and said the only appropriate thing I could think of at the moment.

“Hola, señor.”

“Hola,” he said back.

He wasn’t very menacing or anything like that. Just standing there within a few feet of us as I snapped a few more tourista photos of the ocean.

In my head, I was asking all the things I wished I could confer with Tara on. Does he want money? Has he called the authorities? Is he the authorities?

Before I could figure out what to do, I heard Tara begin speaking to him in Spanish. A few questions and he began to give a few answers.

I forgot how fluent in Spanish Tara was. After the translation with las tortugas (the turtles) just the day before.

As with my brush with Los Federales with Meghan yesterday morning, I really tried to follow the conversation as best I could with my limited Spanish. The good thing was, this conversation Tara was having with the man sounded casual, not argumentative in any way.

And then I felt this wash of regret start to fill me. Not about perhaps being in some kind of trouble, but forgetting my first rule when traveling abroad. It was rude of me to wait so long to address him. A far too common American thing. I was in his country and now Tara was making it right.

“Yo soy de Chicago,” I offered at one point. It helped.

Tara would speak a few sentences to him and he would respond and Tara would fill in the blanks to me as I nodded.

He was in charge of watching the property we had crossed to get to the beach and he was checking up on us. He waved his arm over the area between the beach and where we had parked our car. All of that land was owned by a man he worked for. It was okay that we were here, but he wanted us to be aware that he was letting us be here for the moment. More than fair enough.

We asked him if we should leave and he told us we didn’t have to this time. He continued to tell us the story of his family and the family he worked for and how sometimes people would pay them to hold lavish weddings here. I could see how that would be an amazing setting.

I could see three dogs waiting on the other side of the ocean stream.

“¿Sus tres perros?”, I asked. Your three dogs? ”

Sí, mis perros,” he smiled. And then he said something about the dogs I didn’t quite understand, but I nodded anyway.

This was better. This is how I should have handled our meeting from the beginning.

We talked a bit more and said our goodbyes. He walked away and I turned to thank Tara for being such an amazing translator. Without her, her warm spirit and excellent communication skills, our interaction wouldn’t have gone nearly as well. I really don’t think he wanted money in the end, just a bit of respect that perhaps other touristas hadn’t given him. Just to let us know we were on someone else’s property when we came here.

We collected our things and started to head back toward the palm forest path, when I saw a sign near the edge of the beach that had been confusing me all week. It basically translated to Private Property. No Entry. What I couldn’t figure out until now was why it was facing the beach. In other words, you wouldn’t see the front of it until you were on the beach, after you had crossed through the private property. Perhaps there needed to be another sign closer to where we parked the cars. Then again, perhaps it really wasn’t a big deal, until people started to take advantage of it.

My shoot with Tara ended up being a bit shorter than some of the others, but it was a great experience and we did collaborate to make some incredible photographs. Plus it was nice to spend a bit of time with her just getting to know her a little better. One of my favorite moments in Todos Santos.

And it reminded me to be a better visitor next time.

More to come.

Tags beach, cove, figure modeling, fine art, fine art nude, fine art photography, Mexico, modeling, Pacific Ocean, Playa Las Palmas, tara, tara tree, Todos Santos

artnude fine art nude travel

Part 16 of 50: Color or Black and White? A Photographers Dilemma

Post author By billysheahan
Post date January 1, 2012
4 Comments on Part 16 of 50: Color or Black and White? A Photographers Dilemma

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

I’ve been writing a lot about how I decide whether the photographs I create are going to end up being in black & white or color. Perhaps it’s time to share my opinions on that further after the last entry about collaborating at ZoeFest with the lovely Keira Grant and the images of her in both B&W and color.

Keria - Color and B&W — Keria – Color and B&W

It used to be that decision had to be made when choosing what film I was going to load into my film cameras. I used to travel with two camera bodies, one loaded with B&W film and the other with color. It allowed me the flexibility to instantly decide whether the subject matter I was standing in front of would be more pleasing to me if photographed with or without color.

If I happened to be traveling with only one camera body, it was more complicated. If I had color film in the camera and wanted to make a B&W photograph, I would note the frame number on the roll of film that I was currently shooting, carefully rewind the film until I heard it release from the take up reel, but not before the film edge wound back completely into the film canister. Then I would remove the color roll from the camera and load a fresh roll of B&W film.

When I wanted to switch back to color, I would do the same with the partially exposed B&W roll, carefully winding it back, removing it and then loading the previously exposed roll of color film back into the camera. Then, with the lens cap on, I would fire off the number of frames I had previously exposed, plus a couple more to make sure I was past any exposed images, and continue shooting on that film roll.

Yes, it was painful and time consuming. Sometimes the scene I wanted to photograph might be gone before the film swap could be completed. And sure, I could have just shot color all the time and put the color negatives in my darkroom enlarger and made B&W prints from those, and I did on a few occasions. But the results were never pleasing. There was something muddy about the B&W prints from color negative.

This was long before Photoshop and film scanners were readily available to me. Everything was chemical based and analog.

When I began to shoot with early digital cameras, I had to wrap my head around the idea that everything I would shoot would now be acquired in color, no matter whether I was planning to end up with a B&W image or not. In some ways it was freeing to not have to make that decision until I was sitting in front of my computer, but I found myself a bit confused when composing my images in a digital camera format.

Let me explain. As I began learning about composition with my first film cameras, being self taught, I wasn’t even aware of the concept of composition. I just knew if a photograph felt right to me. In my head, I thought of it as balancing the various objects in the frame, so the resulting image didn’t feel too heavy on one side or the other or top or bottom. Almost like the elements in the frame had physical weight to them and once in a frame on the wall, the picture frame would tend to rotate clockwise on the wall if there where too many “heavy” objects on the right side of the photograph.

It sounds a little crazy, but that’s how I looked at composition back in those early days. If there was something “heavy” in the image, it would have to be balanced by what I would later learn was negative space in the rest of the photograph. An area of elements that felt lighter in weight (not necessarily lighter or darker in luminance). A heavy element could be something dark in tone or large or something your eye naturally gravitated to when viewing. A heavy object had, what I liked to call, visual gravity.

So what does all of this have to do with the question of B&W or color?

Everything, it turns out.

B&W is shades of gray and color is… well.. color. When I look at a B&W image, it’s all about shapes and how they balance with each other from a brightness point of view. With color, in addition to the shapes, you have the visual volume of color. Some colors are just louder than others. They are heavier. They have more visual gravity.

Carlotta Champagne, color and B&W comparison

I don’t usually let thousands of people into my digital darkroom at once, but let’s take a look at what I see when I’m deciding B&W or color.

The image on the left is the color version with a little post processing for color temperature, contrast and vibrance. It’s a perfectly fine image. But when I was shooting it, I knew I was going to process it in B&W and so I left a lot of negative space at the bottom, the blue water, that I knew I would filter towards black in post.

In color however, it’s not really negative space. It’s a very loud color. So loud in fact that as lovely as Carlotta is, her loveliness is fighting with the blue for your eye’s attention.

In the B&W version, the blue water becomes dark negative space and now Carlotta really pops! Your eye goes right to her and perhaps the palm leaves to her right which have been filtered to be brighter. It’s all getting your eyes to the top half of the photo, where I want them to be.

Of course, Carlotta has her own sense of visual gravity, so she really didn’t need much help from me!

Additionally, in the B&W version, her skin becomes very bright and in order to make a visually interesting composition, I like to add something in the frame that balances it out. The dark tone of the water does that perfectly. And the palm leaves give me a medium weight. Your eye goes to them, but only after you find Carlotta.

Ella - B&W and Color — Ella – B&W and Color

However, with all of that heavy or light, negative space, color loudness and other creative data swirling around in my head sometimes I really can’t decide whether I’m making a color or B&W image when I click the shutter. That was certainly the case while photographing Ella Rose.

That, and I was very focused on keeping my camera from getting hit by a sneaky wave and ever so slightly less on the composition at hand.

Which is better? The color or the B&W process? To me, they’re both beautiful images (thank you Ella!). But again, the B&W is more about Ella and less about her environment, as incredible as it is. The color image is a little bit flatter to me. But that’s my subjective opinion. Some viewers will prefer the color and some will prefer the B&W. Which is fine. Ella is lovely with or without chrominance.

Most of the time with subject matter such as art nudes, I’m 90% sure I’m going to end up with a B&W image.

We can program our digital cameras to shoot in a sort of B&W mode, but it’s still acquiring the image in RGB color. But if you really care about your B&W conversions, you won’t have your camera doing them on the fly with it’s limited processing ability. Much better to do them in post later where you can control how the various colors in the image are converted to B&W.

If you’re shooting RAW images, it’s a moot point anyway. Even with your camera set to display the thumbnail image in your camera’s display in B&W (which I sometimes do to keep my head in B&W space when chimping* during a shoot), it’s still recording the data in color. It’s only when you shoot JPGs that the B&W version is what is permanently recorded to the camera file.

In my early forays into digital, my B&W conversions were pretty bland. I did what most digital newbies did and simply turned off the color information in Photoshop if I wanted a B&W image. Blech.

Just like learning my chemical darkroom, it took me years to learn to manipulate the individual RGB channels of color. Like putting a colored red or yellow lens filter on a camera when shooting B&W or using contrast filters in the chemical darkroom, I learned through trial and error that, just like in the film days, composing and properly exposing an image in camera was only half of the process. Dodging and burning while making prints, using different kinds of chemical developer and even the different types of film stock I was using in the camera as well as the photographic paper I was using in the darkroom all contributed to the final look of my images.

Now, I’m not going to get all, “Back in my day, you spent hours in the darkroom breathing toxic chemicals and your fingers always smelled like fixer,” on you here. There is a lot about the darkroom I don’t miss, but it did teach me a lot about processing my images, which after years of practice on my computer, I was able to duplicate in a way that reminded me of my film prints. And I do mean years of practice. I sucked at it for a long time. And I’m still learning.

And there’s another reason I usually prefer my fine art nude images to be in B&W. The human form is a wondrous shape. B&W tends to be more about the very basic shape and form of a subject. It does feel more artistic because it’s not really based in reality. Very few people see the world in B&W (I mean that literally, not figuratively!). Without color, the image does take on a more removed from the starkness of reality feel to it. To me, it’s removing everything but light and shape. And I really like to compose in that space. It’s a bit more timeless to me that way.

Additionally, removing the color skin tone from of a nude art image, and this is just my personal opinion, separates it from the millions of other more commercial color nude/semi nude images in the world, many less artistic than what we’re talking about here. Now, certainly there are some very ridiculously talented artists out there that do nude color work. Some of the photographers I was lucky enough to spend time with at ZoeFest, do amazing things with color nudes. And of course Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel in monochrome. Plenty of nude skin tones there, ironically.

But we see so much skin in the world these days. Clearly, I’m personally not against that in principle in viewing the photographic work that I create. Since the beginning of human artistic expression, I’m only #4,638,301 in a long line of artists who have decided that the human form is something especially inspiring and compelling. I’m not the first one to look at a body, devoid of any covering and be in awe. For me, women’s bodies are especially artistic.

Here’s another comparison of a color and B&W processed photograph of Keira. She is stunning in both instances, but I definitely prefer the B&W image in this case. It’s more subtle. In the color version the skin color is very prominent. There’s nothing wrong with that and it is still a very artistic image. Lovely and compelling.

The B&W version however, is definitely more about the shapes and movement. It takes the viewer a split second longer to figure out what the subject is without the skin tone instantly giving it away.

Now, that’s certainly an extreme example, but it illustrates what I feel when I’m deciding to go with color or B&W.

Even in my travel photography, I find that B&W does tend to take the sense of time out of the image. Was it taken last year or 60 years ago?

I also think B&W has a better chance of engaging the viewer’s mind. The viewer already has to consider the image without color, filling in the information that is missing and maybe that also puts them in the headspace of imagination a little more than a color image. Maybe they create a story about the subject matter in their head. A story that is unique to them and their own experience.

Oh hell, maybe they just think she’s pretty. I don’t know.

Much more to come!

*Chimping: After taking a photograph with a digital camera, the process of looking at that image in your camera’s digital display. Chimping after every single photograph is regarded negatively by some photographers, especially those who learned to shoot on film cameras and didn’t have the luxury of instantly seeing what an image was going to look like unless they were shooting a test polaroid. They had to know their craft well enough to know if the photograph was properly exposed and what it was going to look like before it came back from the lab.

Chimping can also disrupt the flow of a photo shoot as it can take both photographer and subject out of the creative moment during frequent stops to play back images. I have to remind myself of that on occasion. Make a test exposure and check it once. That’s your polaroid. Then focus exclusively on your subject.

artnude casa dracula fine art nude travel

Part 15 of 50: Keira Pays Attention

Post author By billysheahan
Post date December 31, 2011
2 Comments on Part 15 of 50: Keira Pays Attention

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

Keira Grant pays attention.

There were so many highlights from this year’s ZoeFest in Todos Santos, Mexico. For a first timer like me, getting invited to this exclusive artists retreat meant I had a lot of catching up to do.

One of the brilliant ideas, aside from the incredible photo shoots, was that photographers Zoe Wiseman and Michael Marlborough had planned a series of open air slide shows on several evenings at Casa Dracula where everyone was invited to submit a five-minute presentation of their work, both photographers and models. It was a great way for me, someone never good with names, to get a crash course in who was who.

Plus, seeing all the tremendous work was really a treat.

Days later, when talking with Keira about our upcoming shoot on day five of ZoeFest, she reminded me of a style of photography that I used to experiment with quite a bit, but for no reason in particular, had put away a few years ago. She had seen one of those images in my slide show and suggested we should revisit it.

Very impressive, her recalling a single image of mine during an evening where cerveza, tequila and vodka were in great supply. Here was another model that was doing as much creative thinking about our shoot as I was. Whatever the opposite of phoning-it-in is. I really was getting spoiled with the caliber of models at ZoeFest.

I picked up Keira early the morning of our shoot and we headed off to Casa Dracula. I had photographed Samantha there at the beginning of the week in afternoon light, so I was curious to see what morning light looked like there. It was gorgeous.

While Keira got ready, I climbed over a decaying wall that I had been eyeballing all week to see what was on the other side. Ruins of some kind. I had learned that Casa Dracula was home to one of the town’s sugarcane barons 150 years ago and it looked like not much had been touched since then. A good place to start.

We started with Keira in a very small roofless building. Well, building is probably more grandiose than it really was. It was really just a room of some kind with tall weeds growing inside. I stood a bit outside and used the open doorway as a framing device as Keira found a patch of good light. Good models always find the good light.

We shot for a bit there and then turned our attention to a corner of the decomposing wall.

“That looks pretty crumbly,” I said, as Keira was already half way up. “Careful.”

Another thing to mention is that it’s very easy for a photographer to spot an interesting shooting location before realizing someone is going to be crawling, climbing or laying on it with no clothing to protect them from any number of sharp edges or other skin damaging hazards.

“That looks like might hurt,” I grimaced, as Keira neared the top and began to find a way to balance for her first pose.

“No, it’s okay. I’m distributing my weight.”

And there she was. Perfect. All I could do was to make sure I composed quickly as she shifted through a series of poses I knew I would have been in a great deal of pain trying myself. But she was lovely and made it all look effortless.

We moved on, with Keira swinging from a tree branch against a beautifully chipped wall. Her fun and enthusiastic energy was really making for a wonderfully creative morning and we had barely started.

We headed back over the crumbly wall and inside the house, stopping for a moment at one of the many doorways that made the ground floor as much outside as in. Rather than working too close to Keira, I decided to use a longer lens and step back into another room, again shooting through one doorway toward the doorway Keira was standing in. I like working with negative space. I knew there would be a lot of darkness in the frame, but I was in the mood to compose something that was just the opposite of what we had been previously been doing in the bright daylight.

At one point Keira grabbed an old cowboy hat from nearby (there were always an odd selection of things nearby to grab as a bit of an accent at Casa Dracula), and before I could wonder aloud whether the hat might be a bit cheesy, she somehow made it anything but. In an instant, she was emoting another kind of character. Where there was strength and beauty before, now there was strength and a simmering coolness. Wonderful.

We headed upstairs to explore the rooms there and decided to start in the white room. Stark and almost devoid of anything except a bed with a large mosquito net hanging over it.

If you’re asking yourself, Hey Billy, you were going on and on at the top talking about how Keira had paid attention to something. When are we going to get to that?

Well, it was here in the white room that Keira reminded me again how she had liked one of my images where I was using long exposures to create wisps and blurs. It was true. When I was shooting in Paris a few years earlier I created a series of images with long exposures that created a very minimalist and soft white impressionistic photographs. Lots of negative white space that created almost brush-like strokes of a model I was traveling with at the time.

The light was different in the room we were working in now than the apartment I was living in back in Paris, but I thought it might be interesting to see what we could come up with here. And much like my Paris shoot, there was a lot of finding the rhythm of Keira’s movement and my camera movement to create those brush strokes again. Eventually we began to find the groove.

I was happy that I wasn’t copying exactly what I did before. These would be different. Not as pure white as my previous series, but with very pleasing tones all the same.

We decided to move to another room and continue, when Keira spotted a red mosquito net near one of the arched doorways leading to a small balcony on the front of the house.

I was still taking light readings when I looked up to see that Keira had draped the netting over the doorway creating a red filter of sorts that moved with the breeze passing through. Excellent. Another instance of my model getting me halfway there before I had a chance to put my eye to the viewfinder.

And these would be color photographs. It was just too amazing, although of course I knew I would later play with B&W conversions just to see. I can’t help myself. But as I was composing, I was thinking, color all the way. Compose for the red.

I moved to the back of the room, opposite the doorway as Keira moved and danced while I moved and danced with my camera. We were completely in sync by now. Beautiful wisps of movement, parts of her form disappearing in the strong backlighting as she moved through the long exposures.

After a bit of it, I moved just to the side of the doorway and continued to shoot as she moved, this time with the light reflecting off of the netting as Keira twisted and turned and used the breeze to let the random movement of netting between us make her appear and disappear in my frame as the long exposures softened the movement in another wonderful way. Really stunning.

We finished off in yet another room, with Keira on a bed near an open window. But by that time, I knew we already had some incredible images. If we got anything here, it would just be gravy.

Keira was amazing to work with. She’s one of those models that can hang with the boys until you forget she’s a woman and then when she gets in front of your camera, she reminds you in short order that she indeed, is.

And of course, she pays attention.

More to come.

Tags casa dracula, figure modeling, fine art, fine art nude, fine art photography, Keira Grant, long exposure, Mexico, Michael Marlborough, modeling, photography, Todos Santos, zoefest

travel

Part 14 of 50: ¡Las Tortugas! The Very Nearly True Story of Henderson the Sea Turtle

Post author By billysheahan
Post date December 28, 2011
1 Comment on Part 14 of 50: ¡Las Tortugas! The Very Nearly True Story of Henderson the Sea Turtle

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

After safety returning Meghan to the Hotelito with no major incidents with los Federales, my next shoot was scheduled with the ever inspiring Brooke Lynne in a few hours.

I found Brooke curled up on one of the comfy large chairs in the main room, relaxing.

“I know we have a shoot scheduled later this afternoon, but I was thinking we might want to reschedule,” I offered.

Billy sporting his headdress of choice while in Todos Santos

You see, while I was really looking forward to photographing Brooke and had scheduled time with her a few days earlier, something else had been planned for the ZoeFest group at the same time as our shoot. I was thinking we both wouldn’t postpone a shoot without discussing it first, but I could tell by Brooke’s smile that she was thinking the same thing.

“Yes,” she softly said, “Let’s find another time to shoot.”

We both had time open in three days and we agreed to have our photoshoot then.

So what could cause a model and her photographer to postpone a perfectly good shoot, you ask?

¡Las tortugas!

The turtles!

Todos Santos, with it’s Pacific Ocean coastline is a favorite spot for sea turtles to nest… well maybe not a favorite spot as turtles don’t leave comments on Yelp! and so we can’t know for sure, but Todos Santos seems to be a perfectly reasonable spot, nonetheless.

We loaded up our cars with as many bodies as we could fit and drove from the Hotelito down to the beach where there was a sea turtle preservation site called, Tortugueros Las Playitas.

We all walked down the beach toward a large fenced in area. The sun was beginning to set and soon it would be turtle time.

A few of the volunteers entered the fenced in area as we gathered on the outside awaiting instructions. The instructions were in Spanish, but luckily one of our own, the lovely Tara Tree, originally from Ireland, but now from Spain, provided the translation. (You’ll see more of Tara in an upcoming blog. She really is lovely.)

Sea Turtles only leave the water during the summer to lay their eggs at beaches and lower dunes. A female turtle will lay around 100 eggs in a nest and sometimes will create as many as five nests in a season. That’s a lot of potential turtle hatchlings, but as we all learned, very few manage to survive a ridiculous list of natures obstacles. Nature really can be a cruel mistress sometimes. The turtles can grow to over two meters in length, weigh 2000 pounds and live for 80 years.

Tara translates in her little black dress

The nests are buried deep in the sand, about 1 meter down, to protect the eggs for the 70 days it will take for the hatchlings to be ready to dig themselves out and head to the ocean.

But how do the turtles know to nest in the protected fenced in area? Well, that’s just silly. Again, sea turtles rarely have reliable internet access and Google Maps is simply out of the question. So the nice conservation volunteers locate fresh turtle nests soon after they are made and relocate them to the protected area. Each nest is marked with a hatching date to make sure the baby hatchlings aren’t disturbed until they’re ready.

We were also instructed on how we would be helping the little guys make it to the ocean. First, never handle a hatchling without first “washing” your hands with sand. Apparently the scent of the sand at a particular beach helps the turtles return to the same beach when they are old enough to make their own nests years from now.

Second, once the turtles were helped by volunteers to dig their way to the sand surface after hatching below, they would be collected in containers and carried toward the ocean. We would then all form a straight release line a few meters from the ocean before receiving our turtles to insure none of the little guys would get stepped on after the release.

With all the instructions out of the way, the volunteers located a nest where some of the turtles were beginning to climb out. Apparently it can take days for the turtles to dig their way up after breaking free of their shells.

Okay little turtle, break out of your egg shell. Done that? Great. Now in complete darkness and buried under a meter of sand, figure out which way is up and start digging… for days. Like I said, nature can be a bit cruel.

Luckily for these hatchlings, they were going to get a lot of help. One volunteer began to delicately reach down into the sand, carefully digging and pulling several turtles to the surface, bypassing the last bit of the climb out. Another gentle reach and another handful of tiny, tiny turtles. And another, and another. I could only stand there in wonder at the climbing chaos that must have been going on down there in the darkness.

The turtles were placed in shallow containers big enough to accomodate dozens at the time without them being piled on by the ever emerging number hatchings that were now flapping around, free from the sand. They were clearly exhausted but most of them continued to try to move to the edges of the containers and toward the setting sun.

Which brings us to the next insane turtle hatchling challenge.

Okay, everyone here? Great. That was some climb to the surface wasn’t it? Okay. Now, you all see that giant glowing orb over that way? Yes? Good. That’s the sun. It’s setting over the ocean, as we speak. What’s the ocean? Well that’s home everyone. Yes! I’m as excited as you are. All you have to do is crawl about a hundred meters toward that…. what?… What’s a meter? Well, remember how deep your egg was in the sand? Yeah, that’s about a meter. So all you have to do now is crawl a hundred times that distance and… Hey! What’s with the whiny attitudes here? Your ancestors have been doing this for 150 million years. I know! Right? Yes, Henderson, longer than the dinosaurs, you show off.

Happily, Henderson and the others would get to skip most of that hundred meter dash to the ocean, thanks to our group and the volunteers that had gathered several containers full of hatchlings and were now walking them closer to the water with us in tow.

I, again, was filled with wonder knowing that without the conservation area, the turtles scrambling toward the giant glowing orb would probably be scooped up by the birds circling nearby. At least we were giving them a fighting chance to make it to the water.

We lined up as instructed, washed our hands in the sand and waited for the volunteers to come by and hand a turtle or two to each of us. They were so tiny! I was easily able to hold two in my palm. Well easily is a bit of an exaggeration as they continued to flip their flippers, making it difficult to avoid dropping them. And so fragile. And cute. Did I mention how adorable they were?!

Luckily we didn’t have to hold them for too long as we were all told to get ready to release.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand…. release!

And like the silly humans we were, it turned into a bit of a competition, each of us yelling for our turtles to win the race to the water. They must have loved that. (sarcasm)

There they go… almost there and….

WAVE

Oh no! As we watched our turtles tumbling head over flippers back toward us. Again with the unfair nature thing.

Okay, they’re back on their flippers and heading back toward the water again! Hurry little turtles! Here comes another….

WAVE

Ooh, that one had to hurt. Okay, shake it off guys. Rub some sand on it and get going again! There you go! C’mon! You can get there this time.

A few more waves and incredible turtle will power and the first ones were in. The others continued to get closer. It was amazing to witness.

Finally, they were all in the ocean, heading off to new unforeseen dangers around every corner. But at least they had some help. Perhaps not having to dig quite as much and scramble down the beach quite as much without becoming dinner for the birds. Perhaps they had a bit of extra energy to avoid a dozen other deadly things that awaited Henderson and the rest of them. At least that’s what we told ourselves as we slowly walked back to the cars.

It was an emotional experience. Some of us had misty eyes as we walked along the sand. We had all seen something really incredible. We had held the turtles in our hands before sending them on their way. We were told some of them might return again to the same beach decades from now to begin the cycle again.

Up next, ZoeFest X 2011 continues with the incredible Keira Grant.

More to come.

Tags conservation, hatchlings, Mexico, Pacific Ocean, sea turtles, Todos Santos, Tortugueros Las Playitas, turtle eggs, turtles

artnude fine art nude travel

Part 13 of 50: Prohibido el Paso with Meghan Claire

Post author By billysheahan
Post date December 22, 2011
4 Comments on Part 13 of 50: Prohibido el Paso with Meghan Claire

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

On the fourth day of ZoeFest, my true love gave to me….

Sorry, my brain is saturated to the point of insanity with holiday music this week.

But yes, it was the fourth day of ZoeFest in Todos Santos, Mexico. With the slightly mad portion of my shooting schedule behind me, there was time to do a bit more thinking. And a bit more exploring.

Everyone had been sharing what they found and where they had been and what amazing spots they had heard might be somewhere. You see, with a group like this, all the photographers knew that even if they had “discovered” an amazing location, there was no need to keep the details to themselves for fear someone would go there and make a better photograph. Someone might go to the same location and make a different photograph, but this group of photographers had the experience and self confidence enough to not fear someone would steal their thunder. And so new locations were shared with little haggling… except maybe for the cost of a cerveza frío o dos in return.

I had heard some of the photographers talking about a dam outside of Todos Santos that might be an interesting location. Like most location finds during our stay in Todos Santos, exactly how to get to the dam was a series of vague directions involving many unmarked dirt roads.

Google Maps to the rescue! (What in the world did we do before Google Maps? As a kid I seem to remember an oversized dog-eared Rand McNally World Atlas. Now the entire universe fits in your iPhone in your pocket.)

Over morning coffee, hudled over a laptop under the veranda at Todos Santos Inn, we knew the dam was north of Todos Santos toward La Paz. Somewhere near the Santa Gertudis mountains perhaps. We began heading down virtual unnamed dirt roads on the satellite imagery until we saw a shape that looked a bit like a flattened grey football… or maybe a Brontosaurus. (My more scientific friends have informed me that the preferred nomenclature for Brontosaurus is now, Apatosaurus. I stand humbly corrected.)

“That could be a dam.”

“Can you zoom in more?”

“It’s getting pretty blurry.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a dam. That’s gotta be it.”

Satisfied that there was at least a 50-50 chance I could find the dam, I drove over to the Hotelito to pick up Meghan Claire for our photographic dam adventure.

Meghan Claire at Baja California Sur Dam

Meghan has a very calming way about her. Completely lovely combined with intelligence that only comes from being extremely well traveled. This may sound a bit crazy, but whenever I spoke with Meghan I felt like I might be speaking to the Earth. She seems to be very in tune with her surroundings. And that’s only a few of the many reasons she’s an excellent artistic collaborator.

Meghan agreed that trying to find the dam might be a creative location idea and so we headed north on Federal Highway 19 toward La Paz, leaving Todos Santos behind us.

I had heard about the police roadblocks that were randomly placed on major roads and I was about to experience my first one. A large thick rope is placed across the road, a wee speed bump, if you will, indicating the need to slow down.

“Sometimes they’ll just wave you through,” Meghan offered as we approached.

Not this time. The militarily dressed man with the machine gun motioned for us to stop as he walked over to Meghan’s door. I was all ready to volunteer, “Tourista… La Paz… vacaciones…,” when Meghan began to have an actual conversation with our well armed interrogator. It was here that I learned how good Meghan’s spanish was. Very good.

“Estoy el vacaciones de Los Ángeles,” she offered.

“Sí… Chicago,” I added, as if I was comprehending more than the few words here and there that I understood.

So I just sat there with a goofy tourist smile on my face as Meghan tried to explain what we were up to without saying exactly what we were up to.

The trick to the roadside questioning is to give them just enough information for them to believe you’re not trafficking anything or coming or going somewhere you shouldn’t be. Anything more only opens the door to suspicion and more pointed questioning.

She was doing a great job and the officer began to lean back from the window to perhaps wave us on when I heard Meghan say, “Vamos al río.”

We’re going to the river.

He leaned back in the window, machine gun ever present, now with a raised eyebrow and slightly confused look.

“¿El río?”

Whoops.

Sure, we’re silly tourists trying to fish in a river bed that hasn’t seen a drop of water in years. Nothing suspicious about that!

Meghan quickly clarified her story to one where we were sightseeing on our way to La Paz.

Then, a pause that seemed like a minute but was probably only a second or two and we were waved through.

“I probably shouldn’t have said we were going to the river,” Meghan laughed as we drove off from the roadblock. “The river with no water in it!”

“Well, better than telling him we were going to shoot photographs at the dam. That would have been even more suspicious!”

We agreed to leave the going to the river part of the story out of our answers if we got stopped on the way back.

As usual, I only sped past the turnoff to the dirt road twice before we managed to make the turn and we headed roughly in the direction I thought the dam might be. We came to many forks in the dirt road and I decided to turn on the crazy-expensive-out-of-the-country-data on my iPhone so we could have some idea if we had made a wrong turn somewhere. That was if we could get service way out away from everything.

Amazingly, I got a few bars and between GPS and Google Maps, we had confirmation we were actually on the correct unmarked dirt road and were half way to the dam. Yay for us!

Finally we arrived at La Presa de Santa Inés, a huge majestic structure in the valley below us. We parked near a observation deck, I grabbed my camera gear out of the trunk and Meghan and I walked over to the edge of observation area to see what we could see.

The first thing we saw was a large sign near a service staircase that led down to the dam itself.

Prohibido el Paso in large lettering. No entry.

So we did what any other photographer and model would do in a situation like this. We took a quick look around to make sure we were alone, ignored the sign and started our descent to the dam.

Now that I could see the dam as an actual dam and less of a blurry dinosaur from 800 miles above in space, it was time to consider how to photograph Meghan on it. Should it be a model on a dam or more of a model on some interesting surface? I opted for the latter.

We climbed down as far as the service walk would go, basically right up to where the water would be pouring down if there had been any water there. It was still mid morning and the sun had not peeked over the top of the dam wall yet, so we could work in the shade for a bit. Always a plus in the Mexican heat!

Meghan reclined against the near vertical wall as I composed the my first frame. I looked through the lens and… wow…

Graceful, softness against a giant, stark, sterile, cold, immovable force. Yet all my eye was drawn to was the curves of her pose as if she were floating on air instead of pressed up against concrete. Two completely opposing concepts, hard and soft. And soft was winning.

As we continued, Meghan found tiny little ledges in the seams of the cement wall to stand on, moving up the side of the wall. One of the amazing things about Meghan was that even though she was supporting herself entirely with only her toes or a very small part of her foot, her expressions were always blissful. It made me forget in the moment that her poses and the shapes she was creating, balancing on a small cement lip, were most likely fairly difficult if not a bit painful. You would never be able to tell from the photographs. A very generous collaborator.

I was very happy with what we had created so far and was thinking about another section of the dam to explore as I began to put my camera in my bag, when once again, I heard the familiar sound of a model who has just noticed some amazing light before I had. It was becoming downright commonplace on this adventure.

“Oh, wait! Look at this!”

I turned to see what she was talking about as the sun had started to make it’s way over the top of the dam wall. (I know, it sounds funny to me too.)

I normally prefer not to shoot with such direct, harsh overhead light, even though my lovely fellow photographer colleague Zoe Wiseman has caused me to reconsider that stance after seeing some of her own noon sunlight work. But what Meghan had spotted was that the sun was almost in perfect alignment with the slant of the wall, amplifying the subtle textures that made every seam and rough surface so much more interesting. It was no longer just a flat cement wall.

Ah, intelligent models and their impeccable eyes for good light. I was getting spoiled by all of this top shelf collaboration.

We switched vantage points as I stayed near the bottom of the dam and Meghan began the climb up the cement stairs that too, had become so much more interesting in the current light.

“Yes, go up a few more. Perfect!”, I yelled, as Meghan moved into a spot high above me.

Once again the dichotomy of such a harsh surface and the opposing curves of Meghan were quite spectacular. As I was shooting, I noticed that there was really no reference point that might indicate which way was up. I made a mental note to remember to look at some of these compositions rotated 90 degrees during post processing. Might be interesting, I thought to myself.

Moving on, Meghan and I decided there might be something if I photographed her from the top of the dam wall with her remaining at the bottom. I find I have to be careful with that extreme point of view, as it can tend to condense a model’s body in unflattering ways if the pose isn’t exactly right. In short order we had something composed that was very pleasing and since there really was no up or down from my shooting straight down at her, again, I made a note to experiment with some post rotation on a few of the frames.

That’s one of my favorite little tricks when shooting nudes. Depending on the environment and the composition, rotating an abstract image can yield a completely different experience of the subject. If the image can sustain rotation, either 90 or 180 degrees without feeling obviously upside down, it pushes any subtle visual movement inherent in the frame in surprising directions. Sometimes I don’t even notice the subject pushing or pulling in one direction or another until I begin to rotate it from its original orientation.

I remember discussing image orientation at one of my gallery openings a few years ago. A would be buyer and I were looking at one of my large prints of a nude figure in water. She was close to buying, but was hesitating about something.

“What are you seeing?”, I asked her.

“I’m just wondering what it would look like… turned on its side,” as she gestured a 90 degrees clockwise motion.

I probably broke gallery protocol as I walked up to the huge mounted print in front of a gallery full of onlookers and pulled it off the wall and set it on the floor on its side.

“Better?”

A smile began to form on her face. “Yes. It’s perfect that way.”

And then she caught herself, “I mean, if that’s okay with you.”

“Absolutely! If you buy it, it’s yours and you can rotate it any way you wish. I think this photograph in particular lens itself to several orientations. It changes the feeling of the image, but not in a bad way. It’s just different. It works either way.”

I’ve always believed that art is a mirror. Every viewer looking at my work sees something different reflected back at themselves. It’s one of the things I love about showing in galleries. Seeing in person what people respond to, good or bad. I’ve always said, if 100 random people are in a gallery of my photography and all of them like my work, I probably haven’t gone far enough.

Meghan and I climbed the stairs out of the valley, walked back to the car, hydrated ourselves with one of the many bottles of water I was now always keeping in inventory back there and congratulated ourselves on a fun creating experience.

We headed back along the dirt roads to the main highway. We laughed about our first check point experience as we were waved through the second time.

“Never tell them you’re going to the river.”

Next up… the turtles!

More to come.

Tags dam, fine art, fine art nude, fine art photography, La Paz, Meghan Claire, model, modeling, photographers, river, riverbed, roadblock, Todos Santos, Todos Santos Inn, Zoe Wiseman, zoefest

artnude fine art nude Hotelito snap shots travel

8

Post author By zoewiseman
Post date December 22, 2011
1 Comment on 8

Unexpected shoots are cool. I had dropped Sara Liz back to her room as she had a shoot with Cam. Claudine was walking back to the Hotelito so she hopped in my car. We grabbed some coffee and took off on the dusty bumpy dirt road that lead to who knows where. I wanted to shoot in all the abandoned buildings we saw but being in a foreign country and not speaking the language, knowing Mexico has issues with nudity and we would technically be trespassing, I opted not to risk my luck and just took some iPhone photos of the area. But man! Oh well. So, itching to shoot something after the drive Claudine and I went back to the house and did a short hours shoot as the sun was setting. What beautiful light. Those days in that magic hour were certainly appreciated. As I sit here in cold December on the shortest day of the year… I’d take that heat back in a second!

Happy Holidays to everyone!