Jodi jumped at the chance to do a shoot with me. The day of the shoot turned out to be mildly disastrous for both of us.
I discovered that due to user stupidity, one of my flash heads was dead. I have the Hensel Integra 500 watt heads, which I like very much. They cycle fast enough for my style of shooting, I can trigger them by cord or by flash...and I'm sure I could look for an adapter to trigger them by radio. They're light, they pack away easily, and they aren't very expensive. And, for a traveling photographer, they can shoot at 110 or 220 volts. All you have to do is flip a switch, change a fuse and change a modeling lamp. For most of the past year or so, I've been moderately frustrated, because the modeling lamps have been cycling on and off, and the heads have been tripping the circuit breaker. I blamed it on the electricity, because Greek apartments are notoriously under-served...for example, we can't run two high-wattage items simultaneously - the dryer, the vacuum, the microwave, a hair dryer...pick one. It turns out, I still had my lights set for 110V. Idiot. Luckily, nothing bad happened, and hopefully all that the dead light needs is a new internal fuse. Send it back to Hensel for repair. No big deal.
But that means shooting with just one light for a while. C'est la vie, at least it didn't explode or catch fire or blow out the circuit board.
Jodi's difficult morning is her own story to tell, but frankly, I was impressed that she showed up after the morning she had. She had previously warned me that she doesn't do good non-expression photos, which is what I like to shoot. I like the intensity, the quietness, of a calm stare, a set mouth, a relaxed forehead. I think it makes you look at the eyes more. After a bunch of no-smile portraits, I realized that I had a remarkably self-aware subject, and that she did indeed have challenges with the no-smile look. So I asked her to smile, and BOOM the studio lit up.
There are more of these at www.facebook.com/bhneely, and tomorrow I'm going to put up a Dirty Harriet portrait of Jodi.
