The other night I decided to take my little artsy shibari photography show on the road. To be completely honest little might now be the right term for me...and art
sy is in the eyes of the viewer...and my shibari is pretty simple so...the real truth is I found a model willing to let me tie her in public and take some pictures...I decided for this shoot that I would need an assistant. I'd never had one before and I wasn't going to pay anyone so it had to be a friend. It had to be someone that would not freak out the model and that knew a thing or two and that would exude calmness because even though I was certain that I would not be arrested this was the first time I'd decided to take the show outside.
My friend/co-worker/photographer/cool guy Manzell (when he give me a link to his work - I'll give you one) decided to be my wing man. We worked our day job during the day form 9 - 7 with the plan to pick up the model at 10 and do some crazy guerrilla style shooting...
A word or two on my tools for this job - a 1dMk II - old by todays standards and probably not the right tool for this job. Sufficient and in it's day a great camera but slow focus in low light ended up a problem for me as the night went by. 70-200 2.8 IS is a champ and I love it. 16 - 35 2.8 also a champ on a 1.3 crop...(version 1 is soft on full frame and i have...version 1 but not a full frame so it all works) and the weakest point in the whole set up is the canon 550 flash. The flash from shot to shot is inconsistent even in manual (which you have to shoot since canon does not have ttl wirelss) and a relatively slow recylcle speed made for some moments lost.
Back to the (mis)adventure. We pick up Asha at 10 - she is right on time which in my experience is a sign of the apolypse as most models seem to be a little late - and we begin to drive toward some locations I have in mind. I never got to shoot at either of them as I seem to have misjudged the number of tourists that would be out from 10 - 12 on a Tuesday night including a few too many kids. So we drove a bit and I came to Beaver St in the financial district about 100 steps to Delmonicos Steakhouse and found a building with a service elevator door open (not the actual elevator but the door that let people make deliveries to it...the room was surrounded by scaffolding so it made a location that I decided would be fun to shoot.
to be continued - life gets in the way of living...
