Beach Pool Nude

[Maris Rusis]

Beach Pool, Nude

Gelatin-silver photograph on Ilford MG IV FB, image area 19.6cm X 24.5cm, from a 8x10 Tri-X negative exposed in a Tachihara 810HD triple extension field view camera fitted with a Fujinon-W 300mm f5.6 lens.​

 

[Asher Kelman]

Beach Pool, Nude

Gelatin-silver photograph on Ilford MG IV FB, image area 19.6cm X 24.5cm, from a 8x10 Tri-X negative exposed in a Tachihara 810HD triple extension field view camera fitted with a Fujinon-W 300mm f5.6 lens.​

Maris,

Thanks for sharing this fine photograph. How big is your store of 8x10 film these days?

I like the very relaxed pose. This is a pure figure study with no trace of sexulaization and the result is impressive.

How do you take light meter readings for the bright beach and do you need a neutral density filter?

Also, what would you be able to do without the triple extension?

Asher

 

[Maris Rusis]

Asher, there's lots of 8x10 in my 'fridge. But I'll need a few hundred sheets more to complete my late career fade-out.

The pose is another in the series on how unclad people tend to disport themselves when not being hectored by a photographer to contrive extraordinary tableaux or unlikely contortions.

My sunny day exposure for Tri-X is 1/15 @ f45 (or equivalent); no need for a light-meter or an ND filter.

The triple extension camera gives me macro with a 300mm lens or infinity with my 610mm lens. I happened to be carrying it that day. The double extension 8x10 would have been lighter on my back and could have done the same shot.

 

[Jerome Marot]

This is a very nice picture, but I am not sure I understand the project. What is the project about?

 

[Maris Rusis]

This is a very nice picture, but I am not sure I understand the project. What is the project about?

I live not far from a beach where there are many unclad people most daylight hours, most days summer and winter. They swim, sunbake, converse, throw frisbees, and so on. It is an endless opportunity to observe and photograph the "human condition" under those circumstances.

I'm often amused and entertained by the difference between what "my" nudes do of themselves and what Per Ellstrom, another contributor here, stretches "his" nudes do. In any case the nude is, I reckon, a universal motif that can sustain both approaches.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I live not far from a beach where there are many unclad people most daylight hours, most days summer and winter. They swim, sunbake, converse, throw frisbees, and so on. It is an endless opportunity to observe and photograph the "human condition" under those circumstances.

I'm often amused and entertained by the difference between what "my" nudes do of themselves and what Per Ellstrom, another contributor here, stretches "his" nudes do. In any case the nude is, I reckon, a universal motif that can sustain both approaches.

There's also the case when the girl is claimed to be natural, but is actually posing!

 

[Michael Ritter]

Very different to the type of nudes I see these days but well done! I don't see many film pics either.

 

[John Miller]

It's great to someone working with a large piece of film. I bet the contact is really something to behold.

Awesome model and location!

 

[Asher Kelman]

It's great to someone working with a large piece of film. I bet the contact is really something to behold.

Awesome model and location!

John,

Welcome to OPF!

Maria Rusis is known for his devotion to photography with actual film where the process, refined by generations of photographers use remarkable knowledge of light sensitivity of simple chemicals to record images.

By contrast, today’s electronic media excludes us from this intimate physical process where we define the distribution of “revealing brightness” or “concealing darkness”, an the rate of change from one to another), by varying film stock, printing paper and all the timing, temperature and compounded we would use in classical photography.

So, in a way, although electronic recording of light focused on a surface works brilliantly and has largely replaced analog photography, it still stretches logic that the term “photography” still applies to silicon-based image preservation.

After all we are no longer “writing with light” but now recording luminance in millions of separate electronic detectors.

It’s something like the Persians being called Babylonians after the Persian armies crushed the Babylon's empire!

Maris, in his wet darkroom, is not moved by the electronic revolution which has captured the rest of us! Rather he practices his noble inherited craft in drawing images with light!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

​

John,

It’s worth noting again the pause in life required in using large the sheets of precious film!.

Unfortunately, digital cameras are so automatic, that exposures can be taken at phenomenal speed.

So, now, we hardly ever can share a picture such as this.

Asher