Into The Archives, Part 4

This month’s Into The Archives features one of my favorite redheads: Kisa Hues.

I’d had one official shoot with Kisa Hues prior to this shoot, as well as an impromptu shoot one random Saturday and a workshop invite that I received from her about two weeks after our first shoot. But this was the second time that I had actually had the opportunity to plan a shoot with her. I had done my first couple of studio shoots right before this shoot and was still getting use to using strobes. I was also only a couple of months into shooting film and was still learning that as well.

Everything was looking great until I got to the studio and realized that I did not have my wireless triggers to shoot the strobes, and the studio owner, for as helpful as she always was when I was there, only had a trigger for Canon. And if you know me, you know that I don’t do Canon because… Nikon Gang! So constant LED lights was what we had to work with.

Not really knowing what I was doing and having not learned how to really pay attention to what I’m shooting before I shoot, the positioning of the lights were not the best. But this was a learning experience that yielded some dope photographs despite the hiccups.

But the lights were not the only issue this evening. There was also forgetting to check the ISO settings on the Nikon FE when I switched from shooting Portra 400 to shooting Ektar 100. Half the roll of Ektar was exposed at 400, and still being a newbie to film I decided to switch the camera over to ISO 100 for the rest of the roll. Because of this, I sat on this roll of photographs for about a year before I finally decided to develop it. Something had to be sacrificed. Would it be the first half of the roll or the second half? I decided to go ahead and develop the roll at a push of 1 stop over box speed, basically sacrificing both halves. I like what I got.

Then there was the HP5 that I shot, that I think are still some of my favorite photographs of Kisa because I convinced her to not worry about the fact that I was shooting film and each shot cost money and just to have fun (see main photograph above). Yes, film is expensive. But if you stop yourself or your models from having fun because you don’t want to “waste money”, you’re going to miss out on getting fun photographs.

The one thing that sucked about this shoot is that it was the last shoot that Kisa and I had until December 2022 because of the Covid. That was just over 3 years of not being able to create something with someone that I’d grown to love creating with. But our 2022 creations turned out dope as hell because I’d had time to learn more and get better with my skills. Kisa and I did not do any shooting in 2023, but I do want to get back with her in 2024 and create something new.