1st Portrait Sitting: Megan

The first portrait sitting for this series was done yesterday, May 9. Sitting for me was Megan, my wife.

Here are the instructions I give each sitter:

Your clothes and/or makeup should be something that you would wear to feel confident, proud, sexy, or any combination of these. I only request that the outfit not be PURE black head to toe with no other color to break it up. Everything else is up to you.

Megan decided she wanted to wear two separate outfits: a silver nightgown in which she feels sexy and comfortable, and a party outfit that she wore with makeup and earrings. She looked gorgeous in both.

We got set up in my studio, where I had Megan sit in front of the camera, while I stood behind it with my head just above it. With this setup, we could have a face-to-face conversation while I occasionally pressed a remote button to release the shutter, while the resulting images would look as though her eye contact is with the camera lens. This will be my approach in all of the sittings. My hope is to capture the ease that comes when the self-consciousness of having one's photo taken goes away.

Megan, who usually gestures a great deal with her hands as she talks, kept her hands almost perfectly still in her lap during the entire shoot, so her body never became 100% at ease. However, over the course of the shoot--as we talked about the plans she's putting together for her sister's bachelorette party, the movie we had just seen (Thor), and other topics--her face became quite relaxed. As a result, there are some really good images amongst all the photos I took last night.

I must have bumped the tripod at some point during this shoot, because in many of them, Megan's face is ever so slightly out-of-focus. Note to self: Always recheck the focus between sittings! Here are a few that I like:

There was a conversation after the shoot--one that I fear may come with the territory of this project. Upon looking at the images on the camera's LCD screen, Megan was unhappy with how her body looked in the images. Her self-consciousness returned and she talked about the weight she has gained over the last couple of years and how recent photographs of her make her feel "ugly". I did my best to assure Megan that I find her absolutely beautiful just the way she is, but I'm afraid it only made her feel slightly better.

It is precisely this kind of thinking that makes me want to do this series. Still, I anticipate that similar conversations may occur with other models, and I will have to prepare myself for that.

I will use these photographs as source material for the drawings/ paintings for this series, but I also tried to shoot them in such a way that they can stand on their own. Any feedback or criticisms on the images, or words of encouragement for Megan, are welcome.

P.S. Tonight I have a sitting with Rebecca.