All Rights Reserved

Creativity is a big concept for a photo blog. We spend so much time fighting upgrade fatigue, learning new software, working out new techniques that we often have very little time for creativity. But just taking note that we need to think about creativity isn’t enough. How do we go about it?

Everyone goes about being creative differently. What works for me might not work for you, but I’m going to just share these thoughts on creativity with the hope they will help you concentrate on something other than the next lens you think you want to buy.

For me, creativity is about removing artificial limits. And I think most limits are self-imposed. More precisely, these limits are directly tied to low self-esteem. Now I know you might be thinking, what’s that have to do with creativity? In my experience lots.

We put boxes around ourselves and make decisions that hamper our growth because often, as artists, we don’t really believe in ourselves. How many times have you thought you were just faking it? Or have you ever just assumed that you weren’t good enough? These thoughts murder your creative spirit and you get started on a more creative path when you stop that behavior.

The creative process can start to open up once you just trust yourself. If you empower yourself to try something different and give yourself permission to fail, you become more creative. Don’t make the metrics of success or failure the guidelines by which you proceed. Instead make experimentation, expression and joy the metrics.

The second big point of contact for me is authenticity in my work. If you can start to look at authenticity, rather than originality, you will become more creative. I learned this concept best by listening to John Paul Caponigro. He was talking about other art forms and mentioned that in Asia for instance, artists don’t worry about coming up with something new, they work within an existing form and try to expand it. When I read the photographic forums, the younger photographers seem to beat their chests the loudest and proclaim their creativity simply because they did something “new.” Usually what they did wasn’t new at all, but rather new to them. But it doesn’t matter. Worrying about doing something new ends up stunting creative growth. Being creative does NOT require doing something new. It requires doing something that is authentically your real personal and true vision. If you take away anything from this blog post, I hope it’s that.

Lastly, creativity is about choices. The choices can often be based on a few dynamics like tension, juxtaposition, conflict and resolution. These are good tools in a creative environment. But sometimes, you learn most of your creative ideas from pure experimentation. Free-form music – called jamming often lets musicians come up with their best sounds. Writers use free-association and brainstorming to come up with their best words. Why shouldn’t photographers use their own brand of visual experimentation to find their own visual creativity?

To sum up – if you want to be more creative, start loving yourself enough to give yourself permission to fail. In fact, better yet, don’t even worry about winning or losing. Just DO.

Don’t focus on NEW – focus on authentic. Being original isn’t being new – it’s being you.

And riff. Go out there and jam. Try this and that and then invert it all. Go crazy. Do something you’ve never tried.

I wrote this post as much for myself as I did for you.

Copyright Scott Bourne 2009 - All Rights Reserved

Marketing guru Seth Godin wrote a blog post that really spoke to me. You can read it on Seth’s blog here. What really struck me was this quote.

“If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it. You can’t say, “but I need to make a fortune instead,” because that’s not happening right now. So you might as well join the people who can say, “I love doing this.”

We’re coming out of a recession. And people are working harder and smarter just to stay afloat. So to those of us who have this burning desire to create, why not do the same?

We should be as focused as ever on our passion for photography. If we don’t have time now, when will we have time?

_____
This post sponsored by WHCC. Visit White House Custom Color to receive five free 8×10 prints.

I spent some time with my friend Dane Sanders helping him with a workshop down in Newport Beach, CA a few weeks ago. On a totally spur of the moment basis, with no planning, not much gear and no idea what I was doing, I decided to make a little video of the experience so that others might get just a taste of what it was like to hang out with Dane.

The result is this video. I shot it on a Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 50mm f1.4
lens mounted on a Red Rock Micro Event. I also used a Zacuto Z-Finder and a Lightpanels MicroPro LED light. I forgot my mic so there’s little audio here.

I edited it all in iMovie HD – yeah I know – but hey, I can’t be expected to be good at everything :)

I suck at Final Cut so I used what I knew.

Don’t concentrate too hard on my filmmaking skills – they’re essentially non-existent. But you may enjoy evaluating the 7D which is also responsible for all the stills.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the folks attending this workshop were fantastic and I felt honored to get to hang out with them. They were lovely and amazing people.

If you notice the Lensbaby banner on the bottom right side of our Photofocus.com home page, you will also notice we’re running a monthly contest to giveaway one Lensbaby Composer.

The winner for October is Sandy Redding from http://gazeinwidewonder.blogspot.com/.

Congrats to Sandy.

We’ll be picking a November winner too so please be sure to enter.

Author: David Nightingale

Publisher: Focal Press (Elsevier)

Reviewer: Conrad J. Obregon

A physicist acquaintance who specializes in digital imaging tells me that increasing resolution or reducing noise in digital sensors are much easier problems to solve then extending the range of light of sensors to equal the human eye. In the unlikely event that you are a serious photographer who has been waiting for the dynamic range of digital sensors to increase rather than deal with high dynamic range (HDR) it would be better to get over it. This book is an excellent place to start.

Nightingale’s book, Practical HDR: A complete guide to creating High Dynamic Range images with your Digital SLR is divided into chapters that include understanding dynamic range, shooting for HDR, merging bracketing sequences, creating photo-realistic and hyper-real HDR images, and post-processing.

The author recognizes that there are many HDR software packages on the market and rather than try to describe them all, he only touches on three. They include Photoshop, which at least as far as the CS4 version, he dismisses as not very useful, and the quirky but occasionally useful FDRTools. The lion’s share of the instruction is devoted to Photomatix Pro, which is rapidly becoming the standard for HDR. Unlike several other texts, he explains what each of the sliders and buttons in Photomatix does and what compensating adjustments have to be made if you select one of the more specialized sliders. He also covers post-processing of HDR images in Photoshop at a level of detail sufficient for those familiar with Photoshop to clean up the HDR image, rather than just suggest the tools that might help. He also provides several examples that give detailed step-by-step explanations of how he used the options available in both HDR software and post-processing and the reasons he selected those settings. Sprinkled throughout the book are HDR examples created by several expert photographers.

Nightingale writes concisely and clearly. I particularly liked that he distinguished between images where the range of light was extended but the images remained realistic, and HDR images that seem almost surrealistic and more like illustrations than photographs. The author shows you how to create both types of image, and clarifies which controls lead to which results.

Although this is one of the best books about HDR that I’ve encountered it is not perfect. For example in capturing images, I’ve found that it pays not only to insure that the bracketing images are made by varying the shutter speed rather than aperture to keep the same depth of field, but also to turn off auto-focus and auto-white balance to prevent too much variation from image to image. Moreover, when it comes to processing, other than to refer to FDRTools’ capabilities to deal with motion between bracketed images, there is little other discussion of the motion problem. On the nice-to-have level, it could have been useful to deal with tools like Photomatix Pro’s Lightroom plug-in which extends the utility of the software. Similarly, providing images that were downloadable or on a disk might have made it even easier to follow the examples, especially with available trial versions of the HDR software.

Nevertheless, I still find this one of the best books available on the subject, and I intend to keep it in the small library of books next to my computer to which I regularly refer.
___
This post sponsored by White House Custom Color – Visit WHCC to receive five free 8×10 prints.

I got an email last week from a listener to our podcast who wanted some additional photo learning resources. I’ve covered a few of these over the years but time to update.

This is NOT an exhaustive list, but includes some of my recent favorites.

This list really needs to start with Kelby Media. Anything Scott Kelby does is worth your consideration. If you want to learn Photoshop or Lightroom, join the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and/or Kelby Training. Also don’t forget Scott’s books. He’s got a special deal offering free shipping if you spend $50 right now at http://www.kelbytraining.com/books/index.html – use the code FREESHIPPING.

Another video training company is lynda.com. It’s very valuable at only $25 per month and covers some photo-related information.

Bogen Imaging has a group of free online resources – they’re very helpful and are available in several formats, even audio.

Lastolite has created a free site called the Lastolite School of Photography. Of course they are showing off their lighting accessories, but the information is good and will help newbies in particular who would like to see how light modifiers can help improve photographic situations.

Not to be outdone, Photoflex has the Photoflex Lighting School. It’s another free lighting resource.

If you want to learn Adobe products but can’t afford to join Kelby Training or lynda.com, check out free stuff directly from Adobe.

Most of the professional photo associations like PPA, NAPP and ASMP have some form of online training, but most of it cost money.

Copyright Scott Bourne 2009 - All Rights Reserved

So it’s Saturday and you might be saying to yourself, what should I photograph. How about limiting yourself to just one topic? Shooting just one thing over and over forces you to develop your creative eye. It forces you to see old things as new.

You can pick any topic, but my suggestion is fruit. It’s abundant, affordable, colorful and offers a wide variety of approaches.

You might find fruit at the grocery store, in your fridge, or at the local farm or farmer’s market. You may shoot fruit juxtaposed with something that offers tension or harmony.

Maybe you just end up shooting fruity colors?

It’s up to you. It’s an exercise. There’s no prize. It’s intended to get you away from Saturday morning cartoons and outside with your camera.

If you do want to share your efforts with the rest of our audience, feel free to join our Flickr group and post your images there – http://www.flickr.com/groups/photofocus/.

Remember, focus on one thing. To make the challenge even more rewarding, try using only one lens! Change your angle, your approach and your eye by trying different looks at the same thing.

Nicole Young shows you how to fix your color in the latest installment of
FIX MY PHOTO!

PLEASE BE PATIENT – OUR SERVERS SEE LARGE LOADS ON PUBLISHING DAYS. THE DOWNLOADS MAY GO SLOWLY BUT THEY WILL FINISH.

Special guest host – David DuChemin, author of Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision.

Photofocus Episode #20 is now in the feed. If for some reason it doesn’t show up in your copy of iTunes, please refresh your feeds.

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http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=313790661

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Direct download – Listen to this episode here.

Photofocus Episode 20

Hosts: Scott Bourne (www.scottbourne.com or www.twitter.com/scottbourne) and special guest David duChemin (www.pixelatedimage.com or www.twitter.com/pixelatedimage).

Show notes by Bruce Clarke (www.momentsindigital.com or www.twitter.com/bruceclarke)

Welcome to Episode Number 20 of Photofocus with Scott Bourne and special guest host David duChemin – author of “Within the Frame: A Journey of Photographic Vision“. The show devoted to your photography questions about anything photography related including gear, technique, locations, etc. Your questions will shape the direction of this show so be sure to send your questions to photofocus@me.com. You can also send your questions via Twitter to Scott. Use the hashtag #photoqa to make sure that we can find them. We will try to answer as many as we can but we get a lot of questions so we’ll try to take a collection of questions that represent a particular topic and present them together.

This week we are starting off with a question about the ratio of keepers to rejects as your experience increases.

Question One – Keepers Ratio in Relation to Experience

Raoul Sevier asks: As you approach 10,000 hours of experience in photography, do you find the percentage of ‘keepers’ grows? Feel free to elaborate.

David: I’ve actually found that the more I shoot and the more experience I gain, the pickier I’ve become and the ratio of keepers to rejects has actually decreased. When you first start out, everything is new and exciting so many shots wind up as keepers. For myself, I feel sometimes like I’ve shot a particular image already so I find it hard to pick the keepers that live up to my artistic vision.

Scott: I’d agree with you. In my experience, I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, I pick up my camera less and I’m more deliberate when I go out shooting so in that sense my keeper ratio is probably higher but that is a result of me being more selective with when I actually press the shutter.

Question Two – Conditioning Batteries

Tad Freeman from Montreal writes: Should I worry about conditioning my camera battery? I’ve heard that you should sometimes let the battery run all the way down before recharging once in a while to give it longer life?

Scott: I’m old and don’t trust the battery conditioners in the camera so I generally like to run my batteries all the way down at least once every six weeks and then let them charge back up. I seem to get better results than others but I’m not entirely sure whether it’s my technique or just luck.

David: 3rd party batteries are so inexpensive these days that I don’t worry too much about conditioning my batteries to get more life out of them. I typically just buy a few spares each year and recycle the old ones once they start to lose their ability to hold a charge.

Question Three – Batch Re-sizing

Lee Brown in North East England writes: As a semi armature photographer for a year or so, I am looking into getting some of my images online, but re-sizing every photo will take forever. Is there a program out there that can batch resize and keep the quality of the images? Thanks and keep up the good work.

David: I use Lightroom and you can resize your photos easily when you export them. You could also do it in Photoshop using a resizing action.

Scott: Any programs such as Photoshop, Aperture or Lightroom have batch processing capabilities built into them so I would recommend taking a look at one of those programs. Even iPhoto will allow you to batch re-size your images.

Question Four – RAW Conversion Programs

denniswright on Twitter asks: Is one RAW converter program as good as another, image quality wise? I’m hearing that DxO works better at high ISO than Aperture/LR.

David: I’ve never tried Aperture or DxO so I can’t comment on those. I’m very pragmatic and I think a lot of working professionals find that they don’t have the time for pixel peeping. I just use Lightroom and I’ve never had any instances where something didn’t turn out where I wondered if there was a tool that could do a better job.

Scott: I have not tried DxO. I do know that those who approach photography as more of a science than an art seem to like it. If you examined your photos with an electron microscope I have no doubt that you could find something that does a better job than Aperture or Lightroom but at what cost? Generally if you are using the programs that the camera manufactures supply there will be some feature that they contain that you can’t find in a program light Lightroom or Aperture but most of these programs may not be as widely supported, are more difficult to learn and may have a clunky interface so there is always a trade-off.

Sponsor – Scan Cafe

We’d like to thank our sponsor Scan Cafe for making this show possible. They have now scanned more than 25 million images and it’s all done by hand. If you have slides and negatives that you’ve been meaning to scan – Scan Cafe is the answer for you. They hand scan your images, perform color corrections, remove scratches, etc. They can also do B&W negatives. Fees start at around $0.29 and they have complete tracking so you always know where your scans are. Head on over to www.scancafe.com and if you are a new customer you’ll get 20% off your first order by using the code ‘focus‘. Ask for the hi-res upgrade if you’re a serious photographer and looking for the very best quality scans.

Question Five – Is there Still a Need for Filters?

Remko Westrik From The Netherlands writes: As a landscape photographer I always carry a Polarizer, 3 stop ND, and an ND grad filter with me. However with the great results that are nowadays possible with tools like Lightroom and the Grad Filter in Post I tend to use the post processing filter more than the real filter. With the RAW files from my DSLR this works great with good results. Where do you guys stand on this: A real ND grad filter or (Lightroom) Post?

David: When I switched to digital I sold off all of my filters which was a big mistake so I’m actually in the process of reacquiring filters. While you can replicate some of the effects of a neutral density filter in programs light Lightroom and Photoshop, it’s difficult to replicate the effect of a polarizing filter. A polarizing filter actually reduces or eliminates reflections off of things like water and glass. You could spend hours in Photoshop trying to remove the reflection but why would you when you could spend $100 and solve the issue in camera.

Scott: I agree 90% with you David. I don’t find a use for the grad ND filters as I can usually address those issues with HDR or other methods. However I agree that you cannot replicate the effect of a polarizing filter in post production so that would be the one filter you should always carry with you. I also use the Singh Ray Vari ND Filters which are a bit spendy but well worth it. Also, if you’re talking about video, it’s a lot more complicated to fix things in post production so using something like a Vari grad becomes your iris.

Sponsor – Outdoor Photo Gear

Our good friend Chris from Outdoor Photo Gear has just signed on with us. If you need anything from a walking stool to, camo gear, to a beamer they are the guys to visit. When they came on board I asked Chris to take special care of our Photofocus listeners and he promised he would so head on over and send him some love and thank them for supporting Photofocus. Together with Chris, we’ll be giving away a Canon 5D Mark II so be sure to follow @scottbourne on Twitter for your chance to win or search for contests on Photofocus.com.

Question Six – Monitor Calibration Tools

Batt57 on Twitter writes: Is it better to use software or hardware to calibrate a laptop screen?

David: I use an EyeOne display calibrator. I don’t do anything critical color related on my laptop. I always work on a color corrected large display for color critical work.

Scott: Hardware calibration is always the recommended way to get the best results.

Question Seven – E-TTL/I-TTL and Diffusers

GI_Vantage asks: Does eTTL/iTTL also control flash output when using diffuser and/or multiple flashes, even if mixed with “dumb” flashes?

Scott: Yes, it does. The automatic TTL controls the flash output. All the diffuser does is diffuse the light unless somehow it blocks the sensor. The I-TTL or E-TTL will not control a flash that is set on manual.

Correction

Last show when I was talking about the Canon 5D Mark II firmware update, I mispoke and said it didn’t have manual video control without using the Magic Lantern. It does so I stand corrected.

Question Eight – Wireless Flash Triggers. Optical or Radio? Brand Name or 3rd Party?

PegaPPP on Twitter asks: Nikon (but also Canon) brand/builtin optical or the radio (cheap version but manual) wireless flash trigger?

David: In my opinion you always want to go with the name brand optical or radio triggers like the PocketWizards. You don’t want to be shooting a wedding out out shooting in some exotic location and have the cheap brands fail on you. Spend the extra money and get a name brand flash trigger.

Scott: Agreed. Avoid the cheap wireless flash triggers and spend the extra money on a good name brand like PocketWizard. If you are shooting outdoors in the bright sunlight or if there are line of sight issues, you’ll want to go with a radio trigger over the optical trigger because in bright sunlight or situations where there isn’t a direct line of sight between you and the camera, the optical triggers may not work reliably.

Question Nine – Perspective

Could you define perspective for me and how it applies to photography? I once read that a person can only change perspective in a scene by moving closer to it or farther away, not by zooming. Is this correct? Thanks. Jerry Nyberg Kalamazoo, MI.

David: The simple answer is that perspective can only be changed by changing your position relative to the subject. However, there is also the appearance of perspective which can change or the apparent space will also change if you change lenses. The bigger question is what do you want the final image to look like.

Question Ten – The Blinkies

Ron Richins Recently I purchased a 5D MKII. One feature of the camera is that blown highlights, aka “blinkies” are displayed on every screen on the back of the camera. There are several instances, however, when a bright area blinks for blown highlights. However, after looking at the histogram, it shows that highlights aren’t clipped. So, what should be believe? The histogram or the blinkies?

Scott: When you look at these histograms they are representative of a JPEG image and may not represent all of the RAW data. If are looking at the greyscale histogram that does not tell the full story. You should look at the RGB histogram and it could be the reds that are blowing out as they are generally the first thing that blows out.

David: Also, if you have any specular hilites in your scene such as the sun or a metal object those will likely be blown out but you don’t have to worry about those. I think that craft is important and the look of the image is more important. For example, there is a lot of lifestyle photography out there right now shot outdoors that has that blown out, ghosty look and I’m okay with that if that’s the look you’re going for.

Sponsor – Lens Baby

We’d like to thank another one of our sponsors – Lens Baby. We are giving away another Lens Baby so visit Photofocus.com and look for the banner ad on the right-hand side to enter. Be sure to visit www.lensbaby.com to check out their creative lens system and the new Composer which works with their optic swap system. You can even use them when shooting video with one of those new hybrid DSLR cameras. With one lens and 25 different accessories you can shoot many different types of images. Major motion pictures are even been made now with the Lens Baby.

Question Eleven – Digital Zoom vs. Cropping

shakesmonkey on Twitter writes: Does it make a difference whether I use the digital zoom in camera or crop in post?

Scott: Never, ever, ever use the digital zoom. I’d actually like legislators to pass a law making it illegal to put a digital zoom feature in any cameras.

David: Yes, it makes a big difference. Don’t use the digital zoom. You are better off to capture as much of the scene as you can and then crop it in camera. If you use the digital zoom you are essentially throwing away information.

Question Twelve – Shooting Modes

Kevin writes: What shooting mode(s) should I use when using my Nikon D90 with Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (SB800 and SB600)? The manuals are not really clear on this. Do you select the shooting mode just as you would when shooting without flash (e.g., Aperture priority to control depth-of-field, or Shutter priority to control motion)?

Scott: If you are going to use the CLS, the way most people use it is to balance the ambient light. We used to call it dragging the shutter but essentially you are saving the ambient light and then using the flash to fill in the subject. In that situation you would shoot in aperture priority mode (Av). The camera will lock in the exposure for the ambient light and then let in enough flash to expose the subject. If you wanted to do something creative and make the background really dark, then you would shoot in shutter priority mode (Tv). Set the highest sync shutter speed to darken the background.

Question Thirteen – Travel Insurance and Paying Subjects you Photograph

Coventry Bob in the UK writes: With your travels overseas do you take out (extra) insurance for your camera gear and secondly do you pay the subjects you photograph or not? What is your stance?

David: If you do this as a working photographer, you should already have a policy that covers international travel, loss from vehicle or studio, errors and omissions, etc. If you are a hobbyist or enthusiast, check with your home insurance. You may have to add a rider to cover your camera gear since it can be quite expensive. If I go out and I’m photographing in a place and I really want to get an image and I know I’m going to have to work with someone to create that image as if they were a model, then I am going to compensate them somehow. However if I’m on the street and I’m photographing people with their consent and they pull their hand out to ask for money, I try to find a way out of it and it’s not because I’m cheap. I’m very generous with my money when I travel but I don’t want to create a precedent where people see photographers as a source of money rather than another traveler with whom they can interact and relate. I carry around a portable printer – the Polariod Pogo. I smile with them and laugh and then try to give them an image. I think with photography there should be a giving and not only just a taking. If you don’t have a printer, get an email address from them and offer to send them a picture.

Scott: Make sure you have an Inland Marine policy with international coverage. That gets you replacement value and not equity value.

Question Fourteen – Exposure Compensation vs. Flash Compensation

Balliolman on Twitter writes: As a general rule is it better to use exposure compensation or flash compensation and do you have preference? Thanks!

Scott: If you to affect the exposure then you use exposure compensation. If you want to affect the flash then you use flash compensation. If you are trying to reduce the output of the flash but you want the exposure to stay the same, then use flash compensation and vice versa.

David: It sounds like getting a balance between the ambient light and the subject light.

Sponsor – White House Custom Color

Photofocus is sponsored by White House Custom Color. Visit http://www.whcc.com/landing/ScottBourne/Blog/ for your five free prints.

Question Fifteen – Understanding Exposure

Liza Katherine asks: How is it that you can have a correct exposure with different aperture and shutter speed combinations? And how does your camera meter determine proper exposure in situations where the dominate color is black or white?

David: It’s like you have a bucket you need to fill up with water. Instead of filling it up from one hole you have two holes. If you shut one up and open the other one up, both are going to affect the same thing. It’s just a question of which hole. You need to get enough light into your camera. The question is do you that using aperture, shutter speed or to complicate things you can now adjust your ISO on the fly. How do you fill that bucket.

Scott: It’s one of those concept things that you can take 100 tries to explain it and each one will make sense to a different person. I just thought it would be good to have you answer that questions since you’re such a creative person.

Question Sixteen – Slim Filters vs. Regular Filters

Michael Cheung asks: What are the advantages of a slim polarizer vs a “regular” one?

David: Typically a slim polarizer cuts down on the amount of vignetting you get particularly on wide-angle lenses.They also do not have threads on the front so you can’t stack another filter on top of them although you typically would not want to stack filters up if you are using a slim filter.

The Blog

Just a reminder that you can visit the blog at www.photofocus.com for the show notes and plenty of other photography related articles. We are here on the 5th, 15th and 25th of each month. Please email us your questions at photofocus@me.com or you can follow us on Twitter and leave questions with the hashtag #photoqa. If you can tell us where you’re from and how to pronounce your name that would be great too. You can also get tips and keep up with what’s coming up on Photofocus by following Scott’s Boocasts at http://audioboo.fm/profile/ScottBourne and join our Flickr group where you can upload and share your photographs with other members of the Photofocus community.

Wrap Up

We want themes and questions from you. Be sure to visit the blog at PhotoFocus.com for articles, how-to’s, videos and more. You can also subscribe to the blog on a Kindle. Email us at photofocus@me.com follow us on Twitter. Don’t just take pictures – make pictures.

Scott Bourne is at www.scottbourne.com or www.twitter.com/scottbourne

David can be found at www.pixelatedimage.com or www.twitter.com/pixelatedimage

Show notes by Bruce Clarke www.momentsindigital.com or www.twitter.com/bruceclark

Copyright Scott Bourne 2009 - All Rights Reserved

I am speaking at Partnercon, Pictage’s annual conference in New Orleans. While at the event I attended a nude photo workshop with Carlos Baez. I am not a regular nude shooter, but I have probably shot three or four projects in the past.

I realized that as a wildlife photographer, I was going to have to use my imagination to get a shot that counted. I didn’t want to solely rely on the beauty of our lovely professional model. I wanted to contribute to the shot my own imagination.

We worked in an old French Quarter restaurant. There were lots of props and furniture to work with. Red velvet walls and ornate couches dominated the decor.

I wanted to utilize the space as best I could and still think about lighting and mood. I also wanted to create sexy but not SEXUAL photos. I wanted to let the implications of the nude body do the work.

I worked with my new traveling assistant Christy Penn to set up a shot that involved putting one light on the background to create the effect of a stage and another light that was to shoot across the model’s body. We turned her so all you could see was her back and I think the results were pretty good. It reminded me of how I look for backgrounds to use for wildlife portraits. I had to pre-visualize the result which was made easier by Carlos’ decision to light the set with hot lights.

Copyright Scott Bourne 2009 - All Rights Reserved

Next, we moved to a different room and used the couches. This provided a chance to spread the model out across the couch. I wanted to shoot tasteful nudes that didn’t really show anything off.

I am not very experienced at this type of photography, but it reminded me that we all benefit when we try something different. We can usually apply some part of what we learn from new situations in settings that fall more within our traditional work.

Don’t be afraid to let your imagination take flight and try different things once in a while.

I’d like to thank the beautiful Bella who was our model for the shoot. She made the entire experience comfortable for all of us.