Nude in Tree

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Maris
Posts: 882
Joined: 27 Jul 2012, 16:02
Location: Noosa

Nude in Tree

Postby Maris » 01 Aug 2019, 12:47

Image
Nude in Tree
Gelatin-silver photograph on Agfa Classic MCC III VC FB photographic paper, image size 24.6cm X 19.5cm, from a 8x10 Kodak Tri-X negative exposed in a Nagaoka double extension field view camera fitted with a Commercial Congo 360mm f6.8
What is it about trees that makes models want to climb them? Maybe it's just an extension of the "look at me" thrill (?) of being photographed by a big camera.

Walter Glover
Posts: 1270
Joined: 31 Jul 2012, 22:31
Location: Leichhardt, NSW

Re: Nude in Tree

Postby Walter Glover » 02 Aug 2019, 04:38

Maris,

Perhaps they are kind and getting into a more facile position for facilitating waist-level shooting on cameras that often don't have waist-level finders. Having said that, with my mewly acquired Sinar I do have a reflex finder that will be handy for a bloke with dodgy legs don't don't crouch all that well any more.
Curiously, the thpought brought back memories from the 60s of the TLR aparatus for the Linhof Technika (I wonder if the ever actually sold one!) and the infamous GowlandFlex. As teenager I actually met Peter Gowland and his wife when they appeared on a TV show I was working on. To a yoing fella with his heart set on 'figure' photography Gowland was a good source of tutorial publishing back in the day. Along with Andre de Diennes, of course, who 'discovered' Norma Jean.
Walter Glover

"We see things not as they are. We see them as we are."
Emanuel Kant

User avatar
Maris
Posts: 882
Joined: 27 Jul 2012, 16:02
Location: Noosa

Re: Nude in Tree

Postby Maris » 04 Aug 2019, 12:50

Walter, reminiscing about the Linhof Mirror Reflex TLR Attachment hints at your seniority. I bet no one in Australia bought one. I've only seen a picture of it on Google. I did use the Linhof Rapid Change Sliding Adapter for people photography ages ago. It had a little ground glass on one end and a roll film back on the other end. Focus and compose on the GG and then quickly slide the RF back across .... click! Of course sliding the back across told the portrait sitter exactly when to flinch.
Gowland and de Dienes were good but my hero at the time for pictures of pretty girls was Sam Haskins. Much later Sam retired and lived out his days in Bowral, NSW.

Mick Fagan
Posts: 412
Joined: 24 Sep 2015, 21:20
Location: Melbourne

Re: Nude in Tree

Postby Mick Fagan » 05 Aug 2019, 14:22

The best way I've found to photograph people is when they are relaxed, this model looks very relaxed up that tree. I think you are right about models and trees Maris, but I would also include rocks. If you go into a landscape with some boulders, say granite tors, then almost invariably the model will scarper up and over the rocks. If the lighting is right, as it is in this case, it invariably works.

Really well done Maris.

With regard to the Winkelspiegel for Linhof cameras, I have looked through one, as opposed to using one. We had Sinar system 4x5 and 8x10 monorails. The 8x10 was almost exclusively used for product photography, but the 4x5 was sometimes taken out of general production photography for super duper transparency portraits. The idea was that the resolution of the system meant there was only a need for one exposure of the whole. Closeups of the material the model was dressed in were to be taken from the original. To that end we ended up with a winkelspiegel, we all loved that name. Far better than the pedestrian English translation, "right angle reflex viewer".

I looked through a Linhof winkelspiegel when the Linhof rep called and tried to tell us the Linhof was a great camera system, which it is. We also had Toyo 45G and 810G units, so anything else was not going to happen. Nice cameras, I really would think about moving my lovely Shen Hao on for a Technikarden; maybe.............................

Mick.


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