Monday, April 08, 2013

Alexandra Hill - Soprano

A couple of weeks ago I attended a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion at the Dunbar Heights Anglican Church. I wrote about it here. Today soprano, Alexandra Hill came to my house to pose for my red shawl series. I had tea and cookies waiting for her. When she arrived she was even taller than I imagined and very sweet. The latter was a surprise as I could not discern much about her during her performance at the church even though I was sitting on the front row and the concert was an intimate one. Having the young woman across from me over the living room coffee table made the difference.

She sat down to pose and she was perfect. I normally tell my subjects to lean forward. She sat and did not have to lean forward. She was in complete control. She calls this technique the Alexander Technique named after actor Frederick Matthias Alexander who lost his voice  because of stress but found a solution.

Had I been about to jump off a building in suicidal despair, just looking at the vision through my camera’s viewfinder would have been enough to make me defer my self-immolation to another day.

Why did I contact her to come to pose for me? Because I can. And I as so often say, "Thank God I am a photographer and not a plumber."

Technical Info: I used a Mamiya RB-67 ProSD with a 140mm macro lens. The film is Fuji's Instant b+w FP-3000B. I scanned the instant print. My light was a 3 x 4 ft softbox and because the film is rated at 3200 ISO I did not fire the flash and only used the modeling light. My exposure was f-16 at 1/8 second.