Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Nekole and Mayer





When this plate did its magical-moment thing, turning from negative to positive, when dipped in the potassium cyanide bath, all three of us gasped "WOW", as if on cue.  It was such a great moment.  And, while many shoots are somewhat laborious in terms of trying to perfect a particular idea, this one came out beautifully on the first crack.  A few more notes about this plate....

We were in a public space, just underneath the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.  The fog kept rolling back-n-forth, putting the bridge in-and-out of the picture, as if God herself was just not sure whether the picture looked better with the bridge in the background, or without.  In this plate, she chose without.  I kinda liked it in, but one doesn't argue with mother nature.

Most readers of this blog will know that I'm a big fan of naked women, and a particularly huge fan of Nekole in her birthday suit.  But we were in a public place, and I wasn't going to propose to her that we do anything too revealing.  (Plus it was cold!)  So imagine my pleasant surprise when she volunteered, "Can we do one with me naked on the back?"   Me: "Uhhh ... OF COURSE we can!!!"  And this shot came out next.  Mayer rocked it too, with a perfect pose.   The other plate that really stood out from the nice collection we made that day was this one....



The technical notes are pretty simple -- Dallmeyer 3B, stopped down to f8, at one second (there was a very surprising amount of available light!).  But I owe a big thanks to Mayer for helping throughout the day with set-up and clean-up and transporting the gear and bike around.  It was truly an all-day effort.  Thanks Mayer! 

9 comments:

  1. You know what makes this story even more interesting is that, yes, i had an idea to ride the motorcycle naked... but I wasn't totally sure how everyone else felt about me being in the buck or how they wanted it executed so I asked mayer what he wanted to do next before mentioning anything about being naked... and to my amazement he blurted out "you should be riding naked on the back". When he said that I thought "holy shit. lets do this" and then we ran off to go ask you. so that day, was what I like to call 'divinely inspired'. We are just small players in a much bigger scheme.

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  2. That is an absolute killer image. Instant classic. Nekole, Ed you are geniuses.

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  3. Hi Ed,

    these are really stunning !!!!

    alex (from holland)
    www.collodion-art.blogspot.com

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  4. Bravo! very interesting, with neerpeniem'll wait for new posts

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  5. Beautiful pics. Just discovered your blog. More, more please.

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  6. Ed, your photography is one of the reasons I started wet plate photography. Amazing work. I love how you abstract your subjects!

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  7. Fantastic work, these are really masterpieces of collodion art!!

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