more lost and found

I took this last October as an agency test with a new up-and-coming model named Clara with Ford NYC. She's rapidly going from the woods of West Virginia to some really big fashion spreads in New York and Europe - all before she's graduated high school. It's interesting what this industry sees in girls like her and can pull from them. By that I suppose I mean me, though I don't feel as if I did any engineering - just captured a moment.

For engineered, see her latest work:


For the sake of juxtaposition, this is Clara in the wild:


I had some digital files, but also shot some film with a Hasselblad. For me, it also highlights just how much I like shooting to film when it's warranted. There's a tool for every job - sometimes it's digital, and other times it's film. For portraits such as these, I'm simply addicted to the quality and feel of a piece of 6cm celluloid. It's amazing how many times people - even somewhat experienced models - say they've never been photographed with film before. A really good mentor named Robb taught me what I know of film. He shoots medium and large format and has cases of filters that he uses expertly to give his work the most unique look.

Though I used to have my own darkroom I abandoned it for digital until I started working with him a few years ago (has it been that long?)... Though digital was really good for me - allowing me to shoot my face off for a few years and expedite the process of going from mostly crap images, to honing my eye enough to need fewer frames to get the shot.

I can only imagine how few frames Irving Penn needs - or Avedon needed. I've worked on my own shoots, and assisted others for some big magazines, and seen the moment of chaos when you have fifteen minutes to get it right. I've worked with Jeff Reidel on 4x5 film for GQ and Robyn Twomey on leaf digital for Time, and realize there's a definite place for each depending on your shooting style. Mine - like so many other photographers these days - is somewhere in between. But photos like the one above remind me not to rely too much on the easier of the two.