Photoshoot with Clover - 12th December 2011

Last week I had another shoot with Clover who those who are regular readers of my blog will know is much more than a model to me but also a great friend of Karenza and myself.  When setting up this shoot we had discussed various ideas but all of them themed around artistic nude in dereliction. I have always been very keen on this theme, but was further encouraged to do more of this style of work due to getting some images published in a book titled ‘Derelict Nudes’ which is available to purchase via this Link.

We planned to go with this theme even though it was the middle of December and planned to do it whatever the weather on the day and I can’t thank Clover enough for agreeing to this. As it happens we were very lucky with the weather and while cold the sun was shining.

We went to my normal location and on parking the car at the entrance to the field we had to walk across to get to the old buildings we were confronted by four dead birds hanging from the trees around the entrance. It made us wonder if this was a warning not to enter or meant something else? as we have at previous times seen the odd dead bird hanging in various places around the location. If anyone knows why farmers do this I would be very interested to hear from you.
Ignoring the birds we went through the gate and across the field to the location containing various derelict building. Rather than use the buildings we had both shot in before we decided to try a new one which is an old massive barn, which was full of old farm machinery. In this building was an old flat bed truck so started with Clover nude posing on the back this. 
The sun was coming through a doorway throwing light in various patterns onto Clover’s body and we arranged the poses to work with this natural light and used a single flash as a fill in, to avoid dark shadows on Clover. During this session all the time I was looking for how the natural light was falling onto Clover and as the Sun was moving so Clover had to move to take full advantage of this light and where possible getting it to fall in such a way as to highlight the curves of Clovers body.

Once we had exhausted our pose book for the truck we moved onto another piece of machinery, which was in front of the truck. As soon as I started shooting I was not happy with the light I was getting, so turned off the flash and just went with the natural light flooding through the doorway.

After this we tried various other locations in the barn including laying Clover on some large blue bags of fertilizer. All through the shoot I was trying to use the highlights of the location from the skylights in the building to the beautiful texture of the back wall of the barn presumably caused by water damage.

After a few hours of shooting we decided that it was time to finish as I was very aware of how cold it was and while Clover was a complete trooper I didn’t want Clover to get to cold. Saying that though Clover and I have worked together so many times and are able to capture the right images very quickly as Clover knows the sort of thing I am looking for and how I work, with the same being true of myself knowing what works with Clover and was doesn’t.

Currently discussing with Clover plans for returning to this same building in the New Year together and do more images along this same theme.