Jason Tag Photography

Well it’s that time again. Time to analyze and dissect the latest shoot in order to understand what worked and what didn’t work in an attempt to learn and become a better photographer.

First of all let me just say that I have made a promise to the model not to use her real name on the site. Being the gentleman that I am, I will simply call her “The Model”.

The ideas I had for the shoot consisted of shooting in four different area of the location. The first being a bamboo forest. The way bamboo grows wildly, it creates all these amazing angles and lines that just go everywhere. it looks like complete chaos at first glance but after a while you start to see some really interesting shapes. The second part of the location was an old concrete road probably built around 1930. It’s not well traveled so it made perfect sense to shoot nudes there. Third was a chain link fence. The fence was very modern in the middle of this bamboo forest. I wasn’t sure what to do with it but I wanting to give it a try anyway. and last but not least was the summit of the mountain we were hiking on. There is an old concrete structure probably built in the 1930’s to mark the summit of the mountain. The view from this point is just amazing. Naturally I had to do a nude shoot there.

We started the shoot off in the bamboo forest with some basic shots. Head shot type stuff, slightly clothed. She brought a lot of really cool fabrics and clothes for us to play with. we started with a nice, crocheted top that just looked gorgeous on her. After a few shots covered we went right off the trail and into the bamboo. It was tricky because I had to wedge my body between the stalks of bamboo in order to get a good angle. I’m not complaining because it was fun.

Once we started shooting nudes she really found some wonderful poses and I of course found some fantastic angles. The bamboo part of the shot went very well. It was good that I shoot from the hip and don’t really plan my shoots a whole lot because as we kept going deeper into the forest, things kept getting better. I think we could’ve lost ourselves in there. That’s not a bad thing though…

The only thing that happened that I need to work on from this part of the shoot is that the light wasn’t as bright as I would’ve liked and so therefore more than a few of the shots I got we’re blurry. This was due to long exposure times. I did increase my ISO setting but got a lot of noise without much in the way of better exposures. Next time I think I’ll bring my tripod.

Next we went off to the summit. As we walked towards the top we passed by a construction site. We didn’t really think about at that time we just kept on walking. At the top we took a break for a few minutes and I just looked around for some ideas and angles. We played for a while in the tall grass up there. I really liked how the tall grass concealed her nudity while still having the intimacy of a nude. We also played with the concrete structure we found up there. The only thing I would’ve changed was waiting till the end of our shoot to shoot up there. the light was right on the cusp of shifting from harsh to soft as the afternoon wore on. Of course I couldn’t have known that the light was going to do what it did until about 30 minutes later.

After the summit we walked down the hill and as we passed the construction site. This time it really stuck her and me that we could do some col stuff there. So we did. I hadn’t thought about shooting there so I just basically went on her lead. She was great and it seemed like she really enjoyed just playing around and trying different things. The light really shifted at this point in the shoot into that soft afternoon light right before sunset. It was just gorgeous. I really think she was in her element on that day. She just seemed to light up whenever we came up with a new idea. I got a lot of shots of her on a bull dozer and a crane. The contrast and even the similarities between the human body and the man-made machines were quite beautiful and striking. If only those construction workers knew that there was a beautiful nude woman playing on there equipment they would have flipped. But I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded if they had watched…(wink)

We hit our two hour mark and I felt a little sad that the shoot was over. We we’re having such a great time I didn’t want it to end. I asked her if we could do an extra 30 minutes and she said yes. I got some shots on the road but because of the changing light I ran into the same problem I had in the forest. Some really great poses came out blurry because I couldn’t get the shutter speed fast enough with the light I had. The shots still came out beautiful but maybe it would’ve been better to shoot the road earlier in the day. Again a tripod would’ve saved me. I promise I do own one, I just don’t like how it slows me down.

All in all I had a lot of fun and I know that the Model a had a lot of fun as well. I will definetly be working with this model again soon….I hope

Aloha,
Jason Tag

P.S. a few images from this shoot can be seen on my portfolio page. (they are the three images at the top of the page)