All images © Eric Boutilier-Brown
except documentary images © Joy Yourcenar

Woods , NS, Canada
October 1, 2006

As the days grow shorter, and the air cooler, it becomes reality that every outdoor session might be the last for the year. In this case, Lisa was especially keen to work in the woods near Halifax, both to create images made in a different space from her other sessions and simply to get outdoors and model. Lisa has a real passion for posing that I've only seen in a couple of models previously.

The day was as perfect as they come for modeling - the light was soft and even, filtering through the trees in a gentle cascade and the air, while definitely on the cool side, was more than warm enough to facilitate working continually, as opposed to forcing us to take time for Lisa to warm up between poses.

The space we chose to work in is a beautiful open forest between two sections of highway; it is unique in that it is easy to get to and almost totally ignored. I have worked in this section of forest off and on for close to a decade, and have never seen another person in the forest. While I try not to work in populated area or near a popular walking spot, it is always a reality that if a model and I can get to the space, so can anyone else.Finding a space as visually rich as this one, with little to no pedestrian traffic is a real gift.

The session predominantly focused on working with Lisa posing in and around the trees; part of the richness of the location is the open spacing of the trees (somewhat unusual in Nova Scotia) which permitted us to focus on specific settings, as opposed to the woods as a whole. From time to time, we changed the approach, and focused more on portraits, taking advantage of the soft light and large apertures to throw the background out of focus.

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Indoors, NB, Canada
October 3 , 2006

In the fall of this year, Kayla moved to Fredericton for school; in early October, I had to head up to Fredericton (about two hours from where I was living, in Moncton, NB) for a meeting, so I got in touch with Kayla, to see if it would be possible to spend some time working together when I was in town. As it turned out, in addition to being keen to get in a session, Kayla offered to put me up for the night, taking some of the rushed quality out of the visit and giving us even more time to work together.

In addition to setting aside some time to work with me, Kayla mentioned my visit to several friends, and let them know I am always interested in working with new models. Several expressed interest, and one, Jenn, ended up modeling, first on her own, and then with Kayla, during the session. The session was in the evening, so I set up my flash equipment in Kayla's small dorm room, bouncing the light off the ceiling to give a soft, diffused light to the entire room.

In the end, as much as this was first session for Jenn, the biggest influence in the session was the small space. I had to work hard to make compositions that worked in the location, and in the end, the best images of the session were the ones of the two models posing together, and those images tended to use closer compositions that focused more on details and the overall view. I am always impressed by how well first sessions often go with new models, but in this case, I was even more impressed, as I was so distracted from the session by location issues (all of which were overcome during the session) that I couldn't provide all the attention, encouragement and support which I usually try to provide to someone working with me for the first time.

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Indoors , NS, Canada
October 10, 2006

While Carol and I had a full studio session ten days earlier, we still managed to fit in one final session before she delivered a healthy baby a week later.

The session was short, as I'd really headed over to Carol's house just to keep her company for the afternoon, but when she said she'd be up for a short photo session, who was I to say no? I quickly put up my white sheets and had Carol sit on some cushions in the middle of them. Fortunately the weather was cooperating, and the sun came through a window onto the sheets, providing a brilliant highlight, and some wonderful contrast to the scene.

It is a very different way of photographing, when all you seek is a single, archetypal image.For the past six months or so, Carol and I have been following a series of poses through her pregnancy, working towards a final image compositing the six months of photographs into a single frame (like this image of Carol's first pregnancy). This session was totally different, with us simply making new images for the celebration of light, beauty and the fruition of Carol's second pregnancy.

After half an hour of photographing, I strongly felt like I'd made a couple of very striking images, and packed up the equipment, and headed off with Carol for a walk (which was actually the original idea behind the visit).

This afternoon's photographs marked my final session of Carol's second pregnancy; as a couple of days later, she went into labor, and delivered her second healthy child!

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