Stella Dean in Appalachia

 The East Coast doesn't get a lot of love from other photographers, and I'm guilty of ignoring it for the better part of my photography career as well.  I grew up here, so it took I'm pretty used to the geography of the land, and with that familiarity I suppose came a slight disenchantment.  I could never see this part of the country with the same eyes as one of my favorite photographers Ryan McGinley, but I've been trying to change that.  Trying to find new places, and a reason to be excited, and  I think its working.

Shooting landscapes and nudes out west is easy, and its even easier in the Pacific North West.  The often cloudy skies make for perfect soft boxes, and you can take amazing photos all day nearly every day.  Back home its harder.  We get harsh winters, and hot and humid summers, both of which can pack their fair share of incredibly sunny days, so it makes planning these outdoor shoots hard.  Nearly a crap shoot if you are planning on going for an extended trip.  I've been trying to figure out how to shoot nice photos in the noon day sun for a while now, and with these shoots with Stella I think I finally started to get it.

One of the days we spent hiking we got amazing weather, clouds rolled in as we hit Twin Falls in South Carolina, and we easily shot photos at the base of one of Appalachia's most beautiful waterfalls.  I shot all of these with my 17-40mm F4L lens.  What I love about this lens is how much more beautifully you can use the human subject to show the scale of the wilderness that surrounds them.  

The second day of our shooting adventure we got what I'm much more familiar with...sunny skies and dappled light.  I consider this light to basically be enemy number 1.  In order to get good photos I switched to my 85mm F1.4.  I decided to use this lens because I felt the more out of focus I could throw the blow outs in the foreground and background of the photo the better my images would be.  It takes them from distracting elements to a much more pleasing bokeh.  The next thing I did was move my subject a lot.  We basically jumped all around the creek finding shady spots where we could to keep the dappled light off of her, and back lighting when we couldn't.  I love back lighting on sunny days.  Putting the sun directly behind my subject usually means that they are beautifully and evenly lit from the front, and the sun will act as a rim light that also blows out most of the background.  Its effective as long as you aren't using an evaluative meter setting on your camera.  I don't want a silhouette when I open up my photos later, so I always use a spot metering right off of my subjects face.

I'm very excited to have had some success on a day that otherwise I might have previously opted just not to shoot.  I hope you enjoy the photos Stella and I produced.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qlifsdnuz2g0qom/AACfTaqKcQZIsyJ0BcjXS0Cra?dl=0