It has been a year since I took these pictures – time has flown, and I'm only now getting to blog about them. Oh well, better late than never...
Back in September of last year (2020), during a bit of a lull in the Covid-19 pandemic, and while the alpha (B.1.1.7) variant of SARS-CoV-2 was still incubating somewhere in north Kent, I managed a trip away with Lulu Lockhart and Tim Pile, plus two other like-minded photographers. We spent a whole weekend in the Yorkshire Dales, and for one morning, we went up onto a limestone scar, where these pictures were made.
Lulu doesn't just bring new meaning to the word tough - she redefines it completely! There was a howling gale blowing, and it was cold to the point that I never took off my warm, padded jacket, even after a steep climb up onto the scar. Ignoring the conditions, Lulu can pose and make fabulous shapes for fine art nude photography, maintaining poise and control at all times. Even so, there were moments that she could pose for not more than about 30 seconds before having to resume some warm clothing.
The scars are the tops of limestone hills still exposed after the glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice age, weathered by rain over millennia. Occasionally, the disappearing glaciers left behind large rocks; these remain to this day, erratic boulders smoothed by the weather of ages, standing upright in almost impossible forms.
Lulu casually skipped along the craggy scar, and found some large glacial erratics to pose on. The first two images here are poses on erratics. I have named the opening image at the start of this post Embryo and Egg because that was what immediately came to mind as Lulu made that extraordinary pose.
There were also historic cairns and the remnants of walls at large intervals: Lulu took full advantage of them.
After about 3 hours of being blown and buffeted by the wind, all of us were exhausted, and made our way down the hill for a well-earned Yorkshire lunch. But what a morning!
I've chosen to present these in black and white for the most part because I feel that expresses the dramatic location best. For me, the shapes, textures and tones are the important elements of the pictures, and only Embryo and Egg works best in colour. (I've done a monochrome version, but I prefer the colour.)
BTW and FWIW :) I rented a Nikon Z7 and the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens for the trip to the Dales. I also had my F-mount 70-200mm f/2.8 E FL lens with me, which I used on the FTZ adaptor. The Z7 had (IIRC) firmware 3.1. All the gear performed flawlessly for the whole weekend for this kind of fine art photography. I'm planning another blog about the Nikon Z system, and I'll have some more comments about the Z7 and the 24-70 in that.