The Derelict

The Derelict could either be a reference to the grounded boat in the image below, or it could be to the roommate who punched in the chest the woman who was supposed to model for me yesterday.  Seriously, the model had to cancel on me because her housemate, while drunk and high on mushrooms, punched her in the chest hard enough to give her a big nasty bruise.  What a derelict!

Anyway, without a model I decided to head out to the coast with camera and darkbox.  This spot is just up the road, in Inverness, CA, from the "Launch for Hire" spot where I shot previously.  It was a bright fall day.  I don't like bright images, however.  I prefer moody images, which is one of the reasons I think I'm drawn to collodion -- it seems to render moody images very well.  Anyway, I exposed this one for the highlights, such that the foreground went virtually black.  More importantly, it rendered the sky dark (which under a longer exposure would have gone basically bright white).

The Performer

I've been excited to shoot with Babette for some time, and today it finally came to pass.  And I couldn't be more thrilled with this shot -- I love it.  Babette is a circus performer, and I just knew we'd be able to come up with some cool shots.  She brought some great attire, a super limber body, and a fantastic attitude.  It was an overcast day, but I was still holding the exposures to 8 seconds, for fear of losing too much visual impact to movement, and extending the development times to nearly double normal.  I don't like to do that, but as you can see here the resultant images didn't suffer too much for it.  Not much more to say, other than I can't wait to shoot with Babette again -- she's a bundle of photographic possibility!

The Sheltering Sky

This image evokes for me Paul Bowles' classic novel, The Sheltering Sky.  I love women in confident poses, and this shot hits the mark with its north-african-meets-bohemia look.  The woman, originaly from Bulgaria, is a lovely model, wife, and mother.  I very much enjoyed our shoot.  She had more of what I might call a classic vision for the shoot, and I always like the slightly different.  We settled in the happy medium you see below.  The dynamic with a model is always unique, and I always enjoy shooting with confident and collaborative women. 

From the technical side, there isn't much unique to report from today's shoot (and I think that is a good thing!). 

Madam Wushu

This gal is, among many other things, an accomplished practitioner of wu shu:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushu_(sport)

The presumption of her ability to kick my butt with two arms tied behind her back is a sound one.  Anyway, she was a delight to be around, let alone photograph.  I have a mongolian sword (or maybe machete) and it seemed to fit her very well.  All in all, it was a great day of shooting wet plate.

On a technical note, I should add that about midday I tried adding a few drops of nitric acid to the developer, which is supposed to add a bit of "brightness" to the silver.  And, by golly, I think it worked great!  I'm going to use it going forward.

The Joker

I've been looking forward to this shoot for weeks!  Melissa Jean had a harlequin top, and she MADE the collar piece and hat to go along with it!  Wow.  She is a master of wardrobe.  So, she and her beau, Matthew, drove up from LA for a shoot.  And shoot we did.  We got some great shots.  And Mattew is a photogenic lad himself!  So, I include one of him too....

Matthew....

V's New Look

I've wanted to shoot with V for quite some time now.  She's got a great figure and her portfolio had lots of cool artsy shots.  So when she made it to the area and said she wanted to shoot with me, I was stoked.  And, lo and behold, she'd just shaved her head!  Wow.  Opportunity Knocking!  The top one below vaguely reminds me of the famous Avedon shot of the (Davis) guy with bees, but mostly because I just saw his show at the SF-MOMA (mixed bag in my view, great shots but too much of the same -- American West shots by far the best of the bunch). 

The Flyer

The Flyer is named Melissa.  It was the end of a rather hot fall day, and the developer was beading up, having lost a good portion of its (190 proof) alcohol to evaporation.  But I was starting to like the blotchy effect.  I mean, who wants a totally clean plate?  Might as well shoot film!  So, we have the blothcy foxy Flyer....