Sam and Marcus at a Crombie McNeill Workshop at the Mill of Kintail

I attended my third Crombie McNeill workshop at a heritage building and conservation area called the Mill of Kintail. This is a nice setting, lots of nature and a few interesting buildings, a river and a long set of trails. Very nice place to shoot models. As usual, the models were from Barrett Palmer Models.

I am not going to relate the shoot in chronological order this time, as I chose instead to focus on one pair of models at a time. I continued to work with couples (not real ones, two models pretending) and I was able to get time with Sam (Samantha), whom I shot extensively at the Cumberland workshop with great success. I also asked Marcus to join us. I liked his Latin looks as they were similar to the swarthy look of Nils from last time. Note that Nils was not at this shoot.

I shot them first in the heritage building. There was a nice dark corner that seemed welcoming but in fact was far too dark for the 70-300VR, which is a consumer lens and is thus quite slow, even at 70mm (f4.5) ... this left the D70s with the 50mm f1.8 to try for some images there.

This one image is all I could salvage from that corner. It's ok, but there is much better later on.


Across from this corner was a large window with lovely soft light coming in (it was yet another cloudy day.) I positioned them on the wide bench under the window and got these two very nice shots.



This is all I did in the window (there are several others, but these are the best two) ... and you will note that there are no individual head shots. A professional photographer would have shot them individually as well, especially with such great light. I realized this when I got home and looked at the images for the first time ... Note to self: wake the f*** up!

I then asked Sam to sit at the piano, and after moving all the signs in the background I got this image.


I wish that I had asked her to sit facing outwards in a very prissy and upright pose with hands clasped on top on her knees. The classic pose for stuck up prodigies or something :-) ... I think it might have looked really nice. Another opportunity missed (although to be fair, we were being called to head out to the woods so there was time pressure.)

In the woods, I shot a head shot or two and then reverted to coupledom for a while ...


I'm not sure about the eyes in that shot .... I find it really difficult to handle the colors created by shooting in the woods. I tend to process a lot of black and white for the Kintail shoot just because of that ...

Here's a lovely pose with Sam and Marcus creating some chemistry ... not lust as was the case with Nils, but something closer to caring. Looks nice.


Another really nice shot of them together ...


Note that I am not after specific emotions when I shoot ... just emotion of some kind. Something the viewer of the image can relate to. I think these all work on that level.

At this point, Sam's mother Kim (brilliant name) volunteered to make wind, and I gave her my 4 foot reflector to wave about. A bunch of us shot a dozen images while she patiently waved time after time to make Sam's hair move. I nailed an image to which I react viscerally in about the same way as that wicked image from Petrie Island with Sam and Nils. I am *very* pleased with this one ...


We then asked them to move out a bit into the river and pose on a great big rock. We had Marcus wrap his arms around Sam and I asked her to put her left hand on his neck, recreating the pose that mase such a great image at the last shoot. This turned out nicely ...


By this time we were out of time as the site closes quite early at 4:30pm. We packed up and left to meet again at the stone bridge in Pakenham, ON. This was about a 15 minute ride from the mill, so we got a strong turnout there too. Bot Sam and Marcus turned up and I was able to shoot more images of them.

Sam was the first to go into the rushing water. It was quite cold, but she was a good sport, staying in for a good 15 minutes. I was able to experiment with both fast and slow shutter, and with unusual compositions.

First up is a strange composition with the river at about 45 degrees to the camera plane, but I quite like the effect with the water running over her arms.


She seemed to find it a bit uncomfortable as her hair got wetter and wetter and I caught this cute expression as she wrung it out.


I then switched into experimental mode with slow shutter. Although it is impossible to capture a perfectly sharp image at slow speeds, you get a wonderful effect in the water so it is worth the slight softness ...


This one is even softer so I went for an overall soft presentation ...


Sam then went and sat in the deepest part of the falls and I got this nice image as she focused on my lens for a while.


There were many people shooting and there were always a half dozen people near the pools and rapids while the models were in there, so getting a shot of them looking into the lens was harder than usual.

That's all I have for Sam. She left shortly after she got out of the water to shoot somewhere else ... and I went on to shoot other models. But I saw Marcus at one point about 50 feet away sitting on a rock and posing for another photographer. I was able to snap this image, which I think looks absolutely great.


To be young again ...

Anyway, that's what I have for Sam and Marcus from the Kintail shoot. I'll be posting the other models every day or two over the next week or so.