"Returning to images that I shot months ago has been a habit of mine lately. Recently, my day job has been so busy, that I have not had any time to schedule a shoot for personal work. As many times as I tried, kept finding myself instead reviewing images of the past year that were not selects and seeing if there was anything I could do with them.
I keep going back to the series of images I shot with Anastasia Bachykala back in the summer. We collaborate well together, and always have an idea for the shoot that changes all the way until the moment of the shoot. It's one of my favorite ways to collaborate with my photography. In this case, she wanted to wear her white dress and white hat for shape. There was something special about that shoot, with the makeup artist not being able to attend in the last minute, and moving the shoot to 8am in Anastasia's kitchen that she shares with half a dozen other Russian speaking room mates.
I took a painting off one wall, and moved her kitchen table into the business end of the kitchen. I taped a green piece of felted cloth on the wall where the picture was before, and setup my Elinchrom 100cm to block the kitchen window, and on the opposite wall was taped a reflector. I shot with the light as a strobe, but quickly shifted to working with the modeling lamp only. I also put down the massive 5Dmk3 with the 85L mounted, and started shooting with my Leica M and the 50 summicron, and parking it as close to wide open as possible at 800iso. It was a turning point for how I want to shoot portraits, where I found that using my rangefinder gave me a look that I've desired for years that my other portrait cameras and lenses couldn't do.. it allowed me to work with less of a massive camera kit, and socialize more with the models that I collaborate with. I was able to get personal and more relaxed moments captured cleaner. So it's the images of that shoot that has me studying how I shot, more than what I shot.
So there's been months of reviewing the images from the shoot with my ipad or iphone. Often I would take an image into Snapseed to push it around for fun, and after a few successful attempts at using it to process, I started to take it more seriously. I've built up a few favorite methods that stray from the presets that I work with, and just a few days ago pulled down another image from the shoot that opened up enormously with dimension once I started working it.. and this is that image."- Joel Aron
EXIF:
Device make : Leica Camera AG
Device model: LEICA M (typ 240)
Focal length: 50
F number: 2.4
Exposure time: 1/45
Lens: Summicron-M 1:2/50
ISO Speed Rating: 800
I've been going back on my of my images as well since I have not had the luxury to do a proper shoot in a while. You sometimes come across old gems that didn't seem to look good initially.