My First Nude Model... Disaster

Old Chair 1
Photo by SB

I still remember the first nervous moments of working with Lisa. I was working with a mentor and it was my day to shoot. Nothing quite prepared me to work with a nude model. I am thankful she was patient, supportive, and had great ideas.

We shot for almost two hours. Later that day I developed the film and was heartbroken. Only a few photos from the many medium format rolls I shot were any good. I had two major problems. First, I overexposed most of them. Lisa has very fair skin, so she lit up like a light bulb.

The second problem really sucked. If you have used a Hasselblad, you may know this. When you trip the shutter, actually two shutters are released and the huge mirror is pulled up and then dropped. All of this happens in an aluminum cube in a fraction of a second. The sound from a Hasselblad is instantly recognizable as a loud "kerrrplop." Because of all of this movement, it shakes the whole camera. Here is where I failed. I had put it on a cheap Velbon (under $50) tripod. It shook the whole tripod. So, almost all of the photos had motion blur due to the camera. How stupid was I? I put a $2000 camera on a $50 tripod. I don't blame my mentor. He never used a Hasselblad (he uses an 8X 10 large format camera).

The next weekend I went shopping for a new tripod. I ended up getting a very big, very heavy, slightly-used Bogen Manfrotto tripod with a ball head on it. I tested it with my Hasselblad and observed that it would take an 8.0 magnitude earthquake to move the monster. While it is heavy and big, it does have some great features. Each leg pivots independently so I can shoot as low as 15" off the ground or as high as 7' 6" and know that the thing wont vibrate. Needless to say, this tripod does not go on backpacking trips through Yosemite. I have never had camera-shake again.

A few weeks later I asked Lisa if we could do it again. This time it worked. Above and below are a few photos of her. In another post, I will mention how it was being a nude photography virgin. I am in the process of getting many of my older negatives scanned. Until then, I unfortunately have to use a cheap scanner that does not do justice to the original prints.