The Solar Eclipse: Beautiful Victory

It was an experience.  A good and bad one.  4 years of thinking about our SolArt Project is ample opportunity to consider and reconsider things very carefully.  I can't say I had all my T's crossed and i's dotted, but I had a pretty explicit plan for making this event something memorable.  From a distance, it would have been fascinating, perhaps even humorous to watch the best laid plans come undone at the seams like the stitching on an old pair of cheap sneakers.  Up close and personal though, there was a lot of soul searching and anguish.

Adversity and Good Fortune

Things went wrong on a variety of scale, from the mildly frustrating through to the near catastrophic.  Everything from a mild bee sting on my leg (my first!) through losing 6 models in one day (five were supposed to be backups), to finding all our potential shoot locations off limits.  I've never seen a more secured wasteland than the scrub-land of Albuquerque.  Everything is fenced off and posted "No Trespassing" even when there isn't much more than random tumbleweed to secure.

It wasn't till the day of the eclipse that we finally got a go-ahead from the owner of our prime location and the last linchpin of our shoot fell into place, only hours before the eclipse.  It was a moment of great relief for me -- that everything that was conceived was going to happen.  Considering the adversity we faced, sudden success seemed hard to believe, like a first draft script of a bad reality TV show.

Yet not all went badly.  Weather had been a threat clouding my mind for a long time, and yet it was a nearly perfectly clear sky.  My estimate for a clear sky in May in Albuquerque was accurate, though perhaps this was more luck than anything else.  I transferred through Denver to get to Albuquerque, and it was cloudy and rainy there, only one hour's flight time away.

Another recurring nightmare was the thought of thousands of eclipse groupies wrecking the solemn solitude of my shot.  In fact, Albuquerque as a region was besieged by enthusiasts from everywhere and in some noted places, quite crowded.  As it turns out, even on the very cattle ranch we set up shop, there were thousands of cars parked in a carnival atmosphere, only just past the sand dune we occupied with a satisfied serenity as we found out afterwards.

Knowledge of making Women look Beautiful comes in Handy

Perhaps the most revealing part of this experience was that we successfully recruited a traveler from an adjacent hotel suite as a stand in for the AWOL models.  Just a woman who flew in just to take photos like everyone else, and bless her heart she had the faith and presence of mind to accept an invitation from three strange men to come out to a desolate desert and be our model.  When you think about it, its pretty crazy.  But this whole project was nuts to begin with.  Our good fortune was to find a free spirit whose greatest concern was whether she was "model material".

And I didn't want to laugh outright because that would have been impolite and would have conceivably risked losing our last option to capture these unique images.  But of all the potential pitfalls to be concerned about on this project, whether I could make an ordinary woman look beautiful was not even remotely on that list.  I assured her that I would make her look beautiful.  I just needed her to be willing, and leave the rest to me.  And indeed, following a quick "how to look super-sexy" training session in the hotel parking lot, it was so.

What we Learned

Perhaps victory in something grand is not meant to come easily.  I didn't set out for an "adventure", or for "challenges".  I'm well past the age for that kind of youthful character building exercise.  I just wanted to get some beautiful and unique images.  Adventurous challenges were a frustrating obstacle in my path towards getting them, at times engendering a feeling of humiliation and impending defeat.  Somehow we managed to make it work.  And for that, I am grateful.  Grateful that the circumstances came together to allow it, grateful to my assistants for backing me up and brainstorming solutions with me, and grateful for a young lady from New Jersey who had enough faith in three strangers to join our intrepid team and be the centerpiece of our project.

We learned that there is no "I" in team.  We learned to trust ourselves and others who share our passions.  We learned that photographing an eclipse without a filter on your camera will not set it on fire or damage your sensor.  We learned that if we were really determined, we could be responsible and not look directly at an eclipse.

Photo by Steve Griffey (right)

You can view slides of the experience here.

And you can purchase some of the images here.

Dario

INFINI Boudoir

SolArt Project 2012

Beautiful Failure

Odd juxtaposition of words, yes?

"Beautiful" and "failure" are not words that ordinarily associate with each other.

Failure is the frequent result of facing adversity and the unknown.  Failure can present some interesting opportunities -- as Thomas Edison had noted, it can teach you the ways to do something that don't work.  It can also provide a healthy sense of caution and help develop those skills necessary to adequately deal with adversity.

But if, at core, failure is when you don't get what you want, how can there be beautiful failure?  Is there beauty to be had in failure, aside from its hard lessons?  Read on to find out...

Pushing the Limits

All innovative, successful companies are driven by their leadership's passion for their work.  In order to grow, to stay competitive, to succeed in a wide market of competitors, they are driven to continually push the boundaries of their products and services.  This leads to the creation of internal "research & development" teams, those charged with the task of trying outlandish ideas with a high risk of failure, and potentially great rewards as well. To explore what is possible, with the intent of discovering the profitable.

You can't try out these ideas on clients.  They are paying for results!  Failure is most definitely not an option with a client.  Maintaining customer satisfaction rates requires the use of tried and true techniques that always produce great results.  But if that is all you ever do, the work becomes stagnant, stale, and uncompetitive.

We at INFINI Boudoir keep our edge not by experimenting with our clients, but using specialized models to try our newest visual experiments on.  When we succeed, it is nothing short of glorious, and we seek out ways to incorporate this new technique into our standard process.

When we fail... well... the result is usually what we call "beautiful failure".  Failure, because what we got did not meet the vision of what we were going for.  Beautiful, because the results are often a very beautiful image that without the context of a pre-conceived vision would be a delightful success.  Only in the shadow of what it was supposed to be is it a failure, albeit a pretty one.

SolArt Project 2012

This is one of our most ambitious and long term ideas... to capture the splendor of a horizon level solar eclipse in context to the female form.  Conceived some 4 years ago, we have decided to pursue this celestial opportunity, funded through a Kickstarter project.  For the first time, it invites our fans and friends to join us on this journey of discovery.  "Discovery" because shooting a model in front of an eclipse near the horizon has never been done before.  While we have some visual idea of what we're trying to achieve, exactly what it will look like is not at all clear.  The results could be spectacular... or they may be "beautiful failure".

When conducting photographic research and development, beautiful failure is an option.

Things to fear on this expedition:

• Eye injuries due to eclipse watching
• Rattlesnakes
• Tarantulas
• Scorpions
• Gila monsters
• Cooking the camera sensor
• Rented mega-lens arriving or departing with inoperable damage
• Inclement weather
• Locals with an enhanced sense of territorial boundaries (stay off my land with that contraption!)
• Unamused law enforcement (you got a permit for that thing boooooy?!)

Yes, a lot of things can go wrong on this shoot.  But a lot of things went wrong on this shoot too.  You dont know the shot I was trying to get.

Yet, we have beautiful... failure... to show for it.  So join us.  Contribute to our adventure, success or failure. You'll be part of it, and you'll get to join in our joys and passions.

SolArt Project 2012

INFINI Boudoir

800-941-6640

The Purpose of Photoshop

is to compensate for what the camera does to photographs.  In MY world that is.  Photoshop is used for many purposes, and to varying skill levels.  It is a tremendously complex and versatile program that like most things can be used for good or evil, and anything in between.

Cameras on the other hand, while also a marvel of modern engineering, are designed essentially to do one thing -- record what's in front of them.  One of the most at-home assignments for a camera is in the Mars orbiter where it blithely records the various landscape features of the red planet in precise detail.  This is where the camera is at its most natural state -- recording what it sees pixel for pixel.  But as we will see, this is not necessarily what a boudoir photographer or his client wants.

Emotions Affect Perception

Have you ever noticed how you may see someone who is at first very attractive, but then when you get to know them, they become much less attractive?  Or someone you did not find all that appealing over time becomes more and more attractive as you got to know them better?

 

It turns out that our feelings about a person affect how we see them.  This is ultimately why the inner person is as, and perhaps more important, than the skin they are wrapped in.  And this is also why we like to shoot our clients long enough to extract that inner person, since that person's inner beauty, personality, and life will be captured in the images.

But back to the camera -- this visual recording device is in the end, only a machine.  It has no love or passion for what it shoots.  That lies in the hands, mind, and heart of the camera operator -- the photographer.  The camera is merely a crude tool to capture the photographer's passion and vision, like a rough chisel on a block of stone.

With judicious lighting, posing, collaboration from the client, strategic use of fabrics and props, one can yield a very beautiful photograph.  But when viewed closely, a woman's eyes might be drawn to self-perceived flaws and inadequacies, completely overlooking the fact that her lover does not see these personal flaws.  The photograph of course captures them, as the camera is simply a cold, hard machine.  It does not see through the rose colored glasses of passion and love.

Photoshop is the Bridge between Man and Machine

It is here where Photoshop fills the gap between what the camera records, and what a man sees with his emotion-influenced eyes.  In experienced hands, Photoshop is a tool that re-sculpts, re-maps, re-casts a crude pixel mapping of a woman's body, into the glorious work of art that men see.  When done well and to this purpose, Photoshop is essentially invisible.  You can't tell what's been done because it looks normal and beautiful.  And that's exactly how it should look, because that's exactly what men see.

Sadly, there are many examples of inexpert Photoshop work that push women into impossible and even unattractive ideals.  It takes an expert eye, a sense of what human anatomy looks like, and a level of common sense that says, does this look realistic?  Is this flattering?

Because a boudoir photographer is not out to make you something you're not.  That would be as nonsensical as putting your head on someone else's body.  No, our job is to make you look like you on your best day, the way the man who loves you sees you on your best day.  And that's what we at INFINI Boudoir do every day.

When you look at our gallery and think, wow, those women are beautiful, I could never look like that, its important to understand that those are real women who all have self-perceived flaws, which have been adjusted in Photoshop to show how your man sees you, or how you would like to see yourself.  In a sense, a shoot with INFINI Boudoir is the chance to see yourself through his eyes.  And that is a wonderful experience for anyone.

INFINI Boudoir

800-941-6640