Water — Portrait photography
Portrait photography in and by the water: a concept shoot at golden hour. A portrait series made in a lake, shot into the light of the last hour of sun.
A portrait series made in a lake, shot into the light of the last hour of sun. The model stands waist-deep in the water in a wet white shirt, the surface throwing light up into the face — along with the frame in which the hair is flicked back and the arc of droplets stands as a gold line against the sun.
Water here is not scenery, it is the light source. Over a calm lake with the sun low there are two suns: the one in the sky and its reflection, which lights the chin, throat and eye sockets from below. Exactly the places you would set a reflector for on a beach are filled in by themselves. Which is why there is not a single artificial light in this series.
The hair flick is a repeat exercise, not a caught moment. Fifteen to twenty-five attempts, and most fail not on timing but on standpoint: the arc of droplets is only visible when it flies against the sun and separates from the dark line of trees on the far bank. Two steps sideways and the same movement disappears into a bright sky.
Technically the shutter decides it. Below roughly a two-thousandth the droplets become commas and the arc collapses into a veil. The aperture stays wide open so the shoreline becomes a band and nothing in the background asks for attention.
The shirt being white is a decision too, not a matter of taste. Wet white fabric holds backlight instead of turning into a dark mass, and in water it keeps a shape you can actually see.
And the part that never appears in a portfolio: a session like this lasts about twenty-five minutes. After that the sun is below the treeline, the water goes gray, and nobody can book the same evening again. So the order of the frames is settled on the bank, not in the lake.
- Element
- Wasser
