Phew!! I just got home from a very long hike in the sunshine in the Columbia River Gorge and now it’s time to rest my feet, and my back, and just write out a relaxing blog post. So yeah, ok, I realize this image has nothing at all to do with hiking, or the outdoors, but it does have to do with a lot of sunshine.
I’m not going to deny I was hoping for a bit less contrast and a lot more detail in the shadow areas of this image when I exposed the frame. I think ultimately I underdeveloped the negative a bit too much which in turn kept details out of the shadow areas and makes the image appear to be very contrasty. Just outside the window on the right side of the frame there were a lot of flower bushes which is the shadow patterns you are seeing across the model’s body.
This image is from my second session working with Devi and we lucked out having a lot of very strong natural light in the house we were using as a studio for the day. I’ve said it before on this blog that sometimes when I’m working with strong natural light my brain sort of short circuits a little bit. Being in Oregon, where the light tends to be more subdued and overcast I’m just not used to it and my regular exposure techniques when working with film just no longer apply. Plus I get really excited because the light is just so beautiful! Put those two things together and I sometimes forget to slow down and think about what I’m doing.
Still, so long as I walked away with some frames that I’m happy with then I would say the experience was a positive one. Heck, any day that I have the opportunity to run some film through a camera is a good day as far as I’m concerned.