Winter Shade


I frequently go home for the Holidays. As Shade happens to live rather conveniently
close to said home, photographic opportunities exists and little side trips to go
visit her and take some photos are quite a good idea. As our previous shoot had gone
so well we were eager to repeat the experience.

(These are a bit large so please be patient ;) )

So in late 2010, I made such a visit. We didn't have time to plan as much as we had
for the previous shoot, so we did something a bit impromptu in the snow. I knew that
latex and snow is challenging to shoot, but that it can also work really well. I've
recently been working on improving my technical skills (ie understanding how my camera
works), and it paid off in spade as it allowed me to have good contrast etc.




We headed to the Centennial Park in Moncton, which has a small pond and island and
other such things, so we figured it would be a good place to shoot. What we didn't
anticipate was the sheer throng of people. There was 50-100 people there easily,
mostly parents and their kids who were there to slide down a few small hills present
on the park. So instead we just walked away a bit and took photos in a lightly wooded
area that was devoid of people. We still had to cross the fairly busy parking lot.




The weather was cold, but not crazily so - 4C. She had a long jacket, but even that
wasn't great. We took a good 5-10 minutes to shine her up - it meant more time exposed
to the cold, but it was totally worth it.




My hands (operating the camera) quickly froze. Strangely enough, Shade was mostly
unafected by the cold, besides her hands too. She was quite the trooper, we were outside
for about 40 minutes.





One challenge we didn't foresee was the heels sinking in the snow - I didn't include
photos of that, but it really doesn't look so good! So some of these required careful
balancing on her part.










The photos were shot in the end of the afternoon, when the sun was a bit low and the
shadows growing, but it worked quite well. Had we waited later we would have had
more privacy, but would have lost the light.




Again balancing on the snow. Incidentally, Shade is wearing a Rubber55 hood, a corset
by Polymorphe, an Israeli gaskmask, and not quite sure about the rest.




We started using this table as a prop, and it ended up working quite well... but
because these photos are a bit big, you will have to go to part two to see the rest! :D