I am probably a little compulsive with the camera. I can’t go very long without picking it up. I also like to shoot beauty, whether it’s flowers or pretty young women. And I like to experiment — with lighting in particular. In our recent shoot, I used two lights with gels (colored plastic). For some images I left the strobe light’s modeling light on (constant lighting) and kept the shutter open for 4 seconds. I asked Sheldon to look one way, towards the blue light, and then the other way, towards the red. Some of the images turned out well (while, of course, many were junk :-). It was still very satisfying to capture beauty and to create things that are visually interesting. Cameras can do so much now (exposure, focus), but they can’t frame, and they can’t compose, and they can’t set up lighting that makes the subject dramatic and/or interesting. With a long shoot (a few hours with Sheldon), I look for different moods, depending on location, pose, and how relaxed the model is. The results are often very pleasing, as I think you’ll see with some of these.
