I am honestly not entirely sure what I was thinking when I made this photograph. The wind was being rather fierce at the time making the whole scene difficult for both the model and for myself. Freya, the woman posing for this image, was being a serious trooper about it, however, she kept having to hold all of her hair from blowing every which way while simultaneously trying to look like she wasn't being swept off the side of a cliff. Meanwhile, I was grappling with the problem of my eyes tearing up when I tried to look down through the waist level finder of my Mamiya TLR. To an outside observer we both probably looked like a couple of idiots who would have been better served just staying home.
Yet we were both very determined to make it work and stayed in good spirits despite good old mother nature making it incredibly obvious she did not want to play nice with us.
The result is something a bit on the abstract side that I am fond of in a strange sort of way. The contrasts in this image seem to be much more about textures then about actual objects in the scene, or tonal values on the negative. On one hand, the model's hair is a big blurry mess and the background looks like someone took a blotch of middle gray watercolor paint only to generously spread it around. On the other hand, the texture of the model's skin is clearly visible and shows up in great details. One could almost say this is a portrait of goose bumps. It kind of serves as an interesting reminder of the difficult conditions present that day and that beautiful results are possible even in the worst of times.
This image was made with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Fomapan 100 speed film. I haven't been using Fomapan as much as I used to, but that is mostly due to the fact that it seems to be getting harder and harder to find locally. I've made it a point this year to buy all of my film locally, which is a bit of a departure from what I've done in the past. I may be paying a little bit more per role, but it feels pretty good to support local businesses even if it is in such a small way.