This little gallery of landscape nudes goes right back into the archives. August 2005 to be exact and it happens to be my very first proper landcape nude shoot.
The model was a local girl called Kendall who did some part-time art nude modelling. From memory she didn’t have a lot of experience in this field either so it was a learning experience for both of us.
Looking back on these images now I instantly see areas where I could have improved. Composition, directing the model into slightly better poses and general camera technique are some of those areas.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I shot most of these images at f16 or f22, which resulted in shutter speeds as low as 1/4 sec in some cases. I guess I was coming from my landscape background where the first thought was to get as much depth-of-field as possible.
I don’t think I used a tripod either, as was evident by how many of these images were a little soft after I went through them again last week. Thankfully I had a much steadier hand back then and I did manage to get some sharp shots.
These images were also all recently re-edited so they’ve had the benefit of better software developments and the editing experience I’ve developed over the last 12 years or so.
Despite their shortcomings however, I’m still really pleased with the results from this shoot. In the months leading up to this shoot I had been researching landscape nude photography and had purchased a book called A Voice Within by Craig Blacklock. This book is full of large format landscape nudes shot around Lake Superior and was definitely an inspiration for not only this shoot but for the countless artistic nude in landscape shoots I’ve done since.
