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<p class="gutenify-section-a0266910-8814-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">I was a chaplain in a psychiatric hospital for a few months, many years ago, replacing someone on sick leave. It was very challenging work. What it helped me to see, however, is that many of the psychological problems that put people in hospital are found outside it. The difference is a matter of degree: if you can cope, you don't end up in hospital. One of those is bipolar disorder. The diagnosis is pretty common these days -- even of artists and musicians of the past. (Frank Sinatra was the last person I read about who was diagnosed by someone as tending to alternating mania and depression.)<br><br>What does this have to do with photography? A lot, actually. I'm not bipolar, but I tend towards periods of intense creativity and other periods of low energy. This is much less the case in my older years, but it remains. So I was off on a vacation in the Caribbean, and shot everything in sight that caught my eye. Then I processed the images in Lightroom and selected some for this website. On the Saturday I got back, I found out Sheldon Parnick could model for me Monday, that is, two days away. We had been looking for an opportunity for quite a while. Sunday was busy with church and the church's annual business meeting. I didn't have time to vacuum the studio (or the rest of the second and third floors), but I could set up the studio, and so I did. I had several creative ideas I wanted to try. High-key images with white on white, and black on white.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-a0266910-8814-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">So I had Sheldon wear a pair of my white pants and a white shirt. She had black pants, and I had a black shirt, so we tried the other combinations: black top and bottom; black top and white bottom; white top and black bottom.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-a0266910-8814-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">I also had a Derby hat, and she brought a cowboy hat, so we had props. She also had black suspenders, that worked well over a white shirt, and I had round novelty glasses that worked for some shots. </p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-a0266910-8814-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">We mixed and matched, tried different poses, clowned around a bit, and I fired away. I also had Sheldon drape shiny red fabric, shiny silver fabric, blue cloth, and a white bedsheet over her front, baring her back, and captured the results. Finally, I shot her in my corner window with different lenses and controlled natural light. Some images were</p>
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<p>I made 768 digital captures (shots). That's a lot. I was so pleased with the results, however, that I couldn't distinguish easily between ones I should put in an online gallery, and ones I should just leave on my hard disk, or erase as redundant. Some of them will generate in my imagination a treatment of one kind or another (black and white? toned? textured image? composite image? run through Filter Forge?). So there are 232 images in the gallery.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-fb144db0-8814-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">Lauren is an accomplished athlete (javelin, shot put, something else that I have forgotten), a state champion. Her specialty now is volleyball. She is lean. Her athletic activities have given her lots of pleasing curves, for example, in her upper arms and shoulders.  Most of us don't have those curves, because we don't use those muscles much. When she came to the studio, I had in mind some low-contrast figure studies in her dark bathing suit, against a gray background, so that the tonal values of her skin would be close to those of the background. I might get close-up body shots, I thought, so that the viewer would not know exactly what he was looking at. I would apply a lot of grain to the image as well, so that the image might look even more like a landscape. We didn't get around to that, but maybe we will in future.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-cdd16e40-8815-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">She told me almost immediately that she had roughly circular marks all over her back and on part of her front, the result of <a href="https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/16554-cupping">cupping</a> therapy. So we worked around that when possible, and I used Photoshop to get rid of the marks where it was easy to do and they were obvious. She said she will avoid that before the next session, and I'm grateful. :-) I did a fair amount of natural-light shooting in the window of the studio, using a series of lenses: RF 24-70, Lensbaby Spark, Lensbaby Velvet 56, 50mm prime, and the 85mm f 1.8 portrait lens. The Spark is a great lens, but you have to manipulate the front of the lens with two fingers to put what you want in focus: usually it's the eyes and the mouth. So I took a lot of photos with the Spark, knowing there would be a lot of shots that weren't focused as I wanted. The selective focus of the lens gives me as a viewer a sense of intimacy; I think it's because the viewer feels he is up close to the subject, while the blurred background is far away, unimportant.</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-d76f0fa0-8817-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">We got some shots with the volleyball and the kettlebell weight against a white background, images that show off her athletic frame again. </p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-4163c3d0-8816-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">It was a successful shoot, and I look forward to repeating it, perhaps using my optical spotlight and all three of my flashes, for some subtle, low-key work. Thank you, Lauren!</p>
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<p class="gutenify-section-868a4950-8822-11ef-bb32-e30e16e7ef99">Here's <a href="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/christopher-humphrey-photography/client-other-galleries/gallery-lauren-l-in-the-studio/">the link to some of the results from this photo session</a>. Enjoy!</p>
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