Using & Losing Control of Light

Studio Photography was never something I aspired too. It seemed contrived and lacking in spontaneity and too methodical for my overactive brain. Then I tried it and I've loved it ever since. It opened up a whole new avenue of finding and defining a moment, one in which you can assume a certain amount of control but still need to feel the environment to capture something beyond what is on the surface of the situtation.

Over the past few weeks I have been playing around with lights and natural light trying to find  the look I wanted for a shoot I was booked to do. This is illustrates the diverse nature of lighting, editing and intuition I needed to develop in order to get to where i wanted to be. Or where I wanted the clients images to be. It was a lot of fun and thanks to the models that partook in the journey, the spoils of which will be on this very blog, very soon.

Cemetery Pure

You look into his face and your third eye opens up as if from some latent slumber and a pressure builds as clarity ensues like the moments of an untimely wake up while deep in a dream state. This is a man entrenched, consumed and ensconced in a level of spiritual purity that requires ceremony and offering for every task of the day, washing, eating changing clothes, all is a careful meditation. The imposition of this energy is literally palpable.

On this day the task was something of a finality to the burial process, brought on by a promise made by a relative of the deceased. The promise was fulfilled as the conditions of that contract were upheld and this elaborate ceremony ensued.

The aura of these events has the intensity, festivity and intense reverence of A wedding a Birthday party and a vipissana retreat intertwined in an exceptionally obscure way. Everything runs in  perfect synchronicity, including the mood. A very curious experience indeed.

Waiting for the Light

The day is defined by its light, generating a myriad of moods in its intensity or lack thereof. The light that warms our skin, just five minutes before it splays and refracts into the rigidity of our atmosphere, was created in the intensity of fission and its raucous ferocity. Something born of such violence casting shadow and light on our moments, our lives, capable of creating clarity and confusion simultaneously is nothing less than an ongoing phenomenon.

So I straddle my bike and blast my way to an impact zone in hope of documenting something more impossible and intriguing than magic, as it strikes a location, bustling with serenity and takes control of its mood like a hypnotist in a hurry.

In Contrast, in another time in another location and from a variable source, the light did this to my attempt to capture and contain its invasive nature. Linking these micro seconds locked away is the proximity to an ocean and…. Nothing more.

Light, it’s an interesting concept to say the least.