Friday, May 20, 2011



Today I watched over 12 students taking pictures of four models (two women, two men in the morning and a different pair in the afternoon) at Focal Point. The studio session which involved a first time experience for many in taking pictures of the undraped human figure went without a hitch. One of the reasons for the relaxed mood (one of my students even said, “It seems as almost time is slowing down for us.”) is that we had four excellent models who are real pros. One in particular I want to point out and this is our male model Anthony whose picture you see here. He is the right combination of masculinity with an easy demeanor that means that women will love to photograph him and the men will not be intimidated. Anthony is a designer and map maker. He is intelligent and soft-spoken. With the money that he gets from his modeling he is saving up for a good camera. He listens to what teachers say in the classes for which he models so on the side he is getting a lot of photographic theory. I wonder how many other models take advantage of this. I often introduce Anthony as the perfect German high fashion underwear model. A model who might have been photographed by Bruce Webber. But Anthony smiles and corrects me, "Perhaps Dutch, but not German."

One of our other models was a beautiful 39 year-old-woman. I expressly chose her as I wanted my students to figure out how to light a woman who is not a perfect (and usually quite boring) 20 year-year-old. The other two were also a couple out of the studio which some of my students began to suspect. All in all the afternoon went by pleasantly and I was able to squeeze a few pictures with my Nikon FM-2 with Kodak Tri-X pushed to 800 IS0) what you see here is an iPhone snap in which I let my Photoshop automatically colour correct. The result is off but I believe striking nonetheless. The flair in the bottom left is caused when the iPhone accidentally manages to get a bit of the flash that one of my students fired. I like the effect.