Sometimes one finds the strangest things while out exploring during a photoshoot. Like say on this particular occasion when I came across a nearly complete cow skeleton. The entire carcass was actually quite disgusting and gross and there was no way I was going to ask the model to get anywhere near it but this one particular piece of the spine was more or less clean and picked dry by birds and other creepy crawly creatures of the great outdoors.
Photographing this scene was actually a lot more difficult than it looked. First, it was nearly impossible to get the bony spine to balance along the model’s back. It wanted to slide off and the model had to hold nearly impossibly still long enough for me to capture a few frames. Second, even with a fairly wide angle lens (28mm on a Minolta SRT-101) I had to find something to stand on to get enough elevation above the model to capture her entire body. I ended up dragging over a broken and moldy log to get just a few inches of extra elevation and even then it was just barely enough.
The entire scene was less than graceful on both of our ends to say the least. Still, we managed to make it work and I’m very pleased with the final photograph. I bracketed five frames of this particular scene hoping not to wash out the bright wight of the bone against the much darker skin tone of the model. Fortunately one of the five frames came out just right.