“I said, that’s good! Lean forward like that again!”
“What?!”
I held my index finger up to Jessamyne in the international gesture of, “Hold on a sec.”
You see, she was outside on the deck of our Hawaiian oceanfront villa and I was inside, photographing her through a window. And that pesky relentless ocean roar, was making communication beyond hand signals more or less impossible. Such are the hazards of beach living.
We had a quick conference out on the desk and I ran back inside. This was our 12th setup of the day. We needed few words anymore at that point to communicate. We were in a groove.
A few days earlier we had gone through her luggage and picked out several beautiful things to photograph her in. Beautiful lace, sheer and vintage fabrics, so even though Jessa is gorgeous in nothing at all, it would have been a missed opportunity to not photograph her wearing a few of these one of a kind designs.
This day was my first time photographing Jessa, although I had been an admirer of her work for some time. She’s originally from Perth, Australia, but happily, we have both ended up in Los Angeles at the present time. And we’re already planning more collaborations, which I couldn’t be more excited about. Thank you, Jessamyne!
“Aw, we lost the sun,” Meluxine said, as she noticed the gorgeous shafts of sunlight that until very recently had been beautifully falling on her through the window, had faded away. I pulled the camera away from my eye and walked over to the window. I had noticed it too, but I was wondering if the sun had dipped behind the clouds for a few seconds or whether it was going to be gone for a bit longer.
That’s the thing about Kauai. It can be sunny one minute, cloudy the next, and then rainy-sunny somehow, or any combination in a period of 20 minutes. But even the cloudiness or the rain is quite lovely. By the end of our 10 days on our island paradise, even we were starting to say, “Look. Another rainbow,” more matter of factly and with a slightly lower amount of surprised enthusiasm than when we first arrived. Funny how you can begin to take even double rainbows for granted on this island. There are just so many! Every day!
Anyway, it was Meluxine who suggested maybe we head out to the beach and just see what we could make in the overcast for a bit. “Just until the sun comes back.”
But as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, even the, this probably won’t work but let’s try it anyway, setups, were turning into magic. And we hadn’t been down there on the beach shooting for more than a few minutes when we both started to feel like the overcast was working like crazy. Beautiful non-directional light. The sky was a giant softbox above.
I had turned the color off on the display of my camera, so we were looking at B&W images when we stopped to review. And what we were seeing was reminding me of images you might see in those great British mod fashion shoots from the 60s. I don’t know if it was the light or what. More likely Meluxine channeling something wonderful in that lovely striped dress we had been shooting inside with a few minutes earlier. She was so on.
And as it always did, after about 20 minutes, the sun began to peek out from the clouds again. But since the clouds were moving in a direction from over my head towards Meluxine, we started to get some great light on her, but with the still brooding clouds behind her along the beach.
And so we had a dilemma. A good dilemma. As we began to review the photos weeks later remotely, me back on the mainland in Los Angeles and she in Sydney, Australia, I had processed this particular image two ways. First in b&w as we had originally intended, but also in color. And there were good qualities about both of them. We really couldn’t decide.
But for me, even though I’m really an artist who loves b&w, I think the color one edges out the b&w in this case. But only very slightly. I think the photos from a few minutes earlier than this one will still look best in b&w. But this particular image, with the sun juuuuuuust starting to peek out, color wins.
What do you think, Gentle Readers? Color or b&w? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Anne has one of the most beautiful faces I have ever come to know. I’ve felt that way since before I actually got to work with her years ago. Her portfolio is full of some of the most striking images I’ve ever seen.
All week we’d been talking about shooting her in a specific lingerie set she had brought to Kauai with her. The mood of the shoot. Where it would be. How it would look. And sadly we just ran out of time to do it the way we imagined. But I did have a lighting setup in place for the equally lovely Meluxine who I had just finished shooting, when Anne and I realized we both had a free hour. I made a few adjustments and Anne and I decided to use the small time we had. Better something than not, you know?
But the glorious part of it is, we created some beautiful images, regardless of our original idea. Anne knows light so well that without even looking she was able to create wonderful shadows with her body and limbs. She always looks so effortless with her poses, even though there’s nothing effortless about them.
The lingerie she’s wearing is actually Victoria’s Secret, which came as a surprise to me, because I haven’t been wowed by anything from that brand in over ten years. But this piece was beautiful. Something I’d expect to see from La Perla or Agent Provocateur, honestly. And it worked so well with Anne’s porcelain skin and dark brunette hair.
Sometimes an hour with Anne is all you need to make something incredible.
