Kristen (seen here previously) emailed me a few weeks ago to tell me she was going to apply for Faces Magazine’s calendar girl contest by submitting one of my photos. Faces is a local Halifax glossy monthly, although I’ve actually never seen it in all my trips there.
Well guess what? Our photo won!
You can download desktop wallpapers at the Faces site.
And yes, this picture was taken at the same shoot where I damn near broke my ankle.
From last summer. Crystal Crescent Beach, Nova Scotia.
About half an hour before this picture was taken, I damn near broke my ankle. I mentioned it in a previous post but never told the whole story. Kristen and I met up at the Halifax Shopping Centre, which was an adventure in itself, with her trying to direct me to which part of the parking lot she was in.
We then drove 30km south to Crystal Crescent Beach. As it was a weekday, the beach was pretty deserted. Crystal Crescent is actually a series of beaches, the last and furthest of which is an unofficial nude beach. Stupidly, we decided to walk along the beach to get to the nude section, rather than the grassy path. This was stupid because much of the beach is strewn with enormous rocks and boulders, close to the water’s edge. Much of the trek was only boulders, in fact, with no sand in sight for a few kilometres.
Everything was going just swimmingly until I stepped on a loose rock and my left ankle twisted, rolled, then buckled underneath me. My body weight came crashing down on my ankle in an awkward squatting position, made far, far worse by the added weight of my two camera bags that had been slung over my shoulders. The extra fifty pounds of camera and lighting gear is probably what did me in, as I think my ankle would have been relatively fine without it. I gasped in pain and knew immediately that something was wrong. For a second, I thought my ankle was broken, as I was not able to move from the position I landed in and was in a great deal of pain. I managed to shimmy the bags off my shoulders and somehow didn’t let them slip down the rather large crevices that separated each boulder. Once my gear was safe, I worked on returning my ankle to a non-pretzel position. I wasn’t sure at this point if I could go on or not — but I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, Nova Scotia. Kristen sure as hell wasn’t going to carry me back to the car. So after taking a few minutes to recover, we pressed onward to our destination where the photo above was captured. The cool water of the ocean helped ease the pain, and the limp back to the car (along the path) was not nearly as painful as it could have been.
However, my ankle got much, much worse as the day wore on. It swelled to many times its original size and became discoloured. The buckle on my sandals had to be let out several notches to accommodate the ever-growing size of my ankle. My range of motion became more limited, it hurt like hell just to walk, and I couldn’t drive or even sleep properly. I ended up at a walk-in clinic where I got some anti-inflammatories, an ankle brace, and confirmation that I did indeed sprain the hell out of it. The rest of my two week trip was followed by constant nightly icing of my ankle to reduce the swelling that easily built up every day from walking around. When I got home, six weeks of physiotherapy helped to get my ankle back in normal working order. Even now, some eight months later, I feel as though my ankle is only at about 90-95% of what it was before. It no longer causes me pain, but I can tell my range of motion is slightly reduced compared to my other healthy ankle.
The upshot of all this is that the photos turned out really well, though I can’t show many of them here.
Isn’t that a great name for a motel? It instantly evokes vague memory, history, and maybe even regal things. Sounds like the setting for a movie made before I was born. The Palliser is in Truro, Nova Scotia, on the bank of Salmon River, which is one of the best places in the world to see a tidal bore. According to Wikipedia, a tidal bore is a “tidal phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave (or waves) of water that travel up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the current.” In other words, you can watch the flow of a river reverse directions rather spontaneously.
In 2007, I came for the tidal bore.
In 2009, I came for Kristen.
The following photos were all shot in my motel room at the Palliser in a very limited time frame. Although I was expecting to spend a lot longer shooting Kristen, she had to attend to another matter that night… which meant I rushed to get in all the scenes and setups I had in mind. The purpose of my trip to Nova Scotia was solely shooting models, so I was pretty annoyed to travel all that way and then have it cut short.
But I digress. On to the photos!
First, the bed:
Then one against the fabulous wood paneling:
And finally, on to the bathroom:
The bathtub shot in particular was difficult to get. I had badly sprained my ankle five days earlier; it was swollen and weak and I had to balance myself on the edge of a chair to get high enough. I was shooting blind, holding the camera at arm’s length in front of me, hoping that it was fairly straight and the lines would be parallel. All this while shooting at fairly slow shutter speeds due to using the incandescent light in the bathroom. A light, it should be noted, that I had to make sure not to block with my head or body as I teetered on the chair. Luckily I sustained no further injuries and I think the results were totally worth it.
Aren’t those shoes fabulous?
To see more of Kristen, check out her profiles on ModelMayhem and deviantArt.
While in Nova Scotia recently, I went to the beach for a photoshoot with my new best friend, Kristen. Here’s a little video preview of our antics.
Photos from the shoot coming soon!