Language Barriers

Interesting shoot today: The model spoke no English and I speak very little Spanish -- about enough to order food in a Mexican restaurant -- and, to make matters worse, Rebecca is from Barcelona, Spain. Why is that worse? Because, if I'm not mistaken, they speak Castilian in Barcelona and Castilian ain't the same Spanish I order my burritos with... so my limited Spanish language skills were even more useless.

I was also not in the best of moods when I arrived at the location. I had just come from my doctor's office where I had a physical. About half-way through it, as he was checking for a hernia, asking me to cough, and I was trying to say something along the lines of, "So, how about those Mets?" the good doctor told me he had some bad news. I said, "Give it to me, Doc." And, with that, he explained he needed to perform a prostrate check as he slipped on the latex gloves and produced a tube of lube from a drawer in the examination room. If you know what prostrate exams are all about you know why I wasn't in the pleasantest of moods.

Back to the shoot.

Since Rebecca spoke no English and there was no one on the set to translate I was forced to resort to sign language and demonstrations.

Usually, when I demonstrate poses I preface them with warnings of how silly I'm about to look and assurances of my hetero-masculinity as I make like Madonna and strike a pose or two or three or more. Maybe I'm being homophobic but, regardless, since Rebecca was mono-lingual in Castilian I couldn't make excuses for how, uhh... un-manly my demonstrations might seem. Bear in mind, I'm in my fifties and I'm only in shape to the extent that round's a shape so you can imagine what I look like demonstrating pretty girl poses for a luscious young lass.

That's two embarassments in one day, albeit I was much more comfortable with this, the second one.

For those interested in how I lit these images, Rebecca is in a very white entryway with French windows-and-doors running down one side of it. There was a large, overhead, transluscent skylight above. We shot these in early afternoon so the sun was high in the sky. I placed a monolight on the other side of the French windows on a stand with a small, silver, umbrella. To Rebecca's left, I set another monolight with a large silver umbrella. She was front-lit with daylight coming in from the skylight and reflecting off the white walls and white stone floor. Reno, my assistant, held a large, round, gold reflector to warm her up a bit. I shot with the white balance set for strobes. I metered for exposure to the ambient daylight and stopped down a little. The strobes were set to fire a bit hotter than my exposure.

BTW, there's not much post-processing to these images. Rebecca might appear as though I liberally applied Gaussian Blur but, in actuality, I applied almost none. The light was incredibly soft in that entryway. Mostly, the post consisted of a little cropping, levels adjust, and clone-stamping out a few stray hairs and a couple of body blemishes.

Credits: Model Rebecca, MUA Melissa, Assistant Reno, Canon 5D w/28-135mm, ISO 100, f/9.0 @ 125th.

Here's another shot of Barcelona's wickedly-cute, Rebecca.