STEAMY SILENCE
SNOW PRINCESS - Moscow, Russia I've photographed Lena on numerous occasions, and one of the things that's so great about her as a model (along with her being a super cool, creative, funny person in general, not to mention being willing to stand outside in the snow for a couple of hours in freezing weather) is that her face takes on new dimensions in nearly every shot: she can look completely different from one frame to the next, but of course every variation is lovely. Lots of things went wrong on this shoot, including the wind blowing my light stand over, smashing my flashes into the snow, and bending my umbrella shaft beyond repair, and on this particular frame, the flashes didn't go off, so this shot ended up being unintentionally taken with completely natural light. Luckily, the overcast sky and the field of snow provided a softbox/reflector combo larger than any photographer could muster with gear, no matter how much money they had to spend, and more importantly, Lena was firing off a look that could both melt your heart and then freeze it again before you knew what hit you. It was a good reminder to me to me that when mother nature is in the mood to bathe your subject in beautiful light, sometimes it's best just to turn off your external flashes, compose your shot, and click the shutter. Please check out Lena's blog, where she was kind enough to send a shout-out to me: http://lenamaska.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/modeling-for-rob-corpuz-photographer/
