Annaleigh (February 1997)

Annaleigh had the graceful body of a dancer, and she was also brave enough to volunteer to be my first ever figure model.

I was young and naive, and far too inexperienced to be shooting nudes.  I didn’t know how much I was yet to learn, and boy – do these images show it.  When I look at them now, I see missed opportunities to utilise her figure.  I see someone who was out of their depth and didn’t know it.  Most of all, I see barely controlled use of on-camera flash to combat rapidly advancing clouds.

But I also see someone who was reaching for the stars.  Today, I wonder – if I hadn’t taken the massive leap to shoot nudes in the February of 1997, then when would I have?  And how would things be different today?

It was the first step in a long road of learning how to work with the human body.  Thank you Annaleigh.

This series was shot on Ilford XP2 400 – a strange, heavily purple tinted B&W film that could be developed with a colour process.  I always thought it had a very fine grain for a 400 ISO.

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