English content Originally posted on ELLO

Positive Motion, This is Aurore

Since my very first post on Ello, I promised I would talk about pictures. The thing is I’m not really fond of talking about the past, I’m more concerned with present and future ; that’s why I didn’t post about previous photo sessions. I’ve just published a new shoot about the series « Positive Motion », so I bet this is the right time.

Positive Motion is born something like 3 years ago now. The main aim was to express positive feelings and emotion, without getting into the traditional clichés of little girls running in a bright sunny field and butterflies :) Well, the first thing I learned was it was really easier to express negative feelings than positive emotions. It’s easier to have a strong black and white with contrast, to show muscles and pain, to have deep make up. So I went and look for a vector. Something to lye on that would help me this my way of expression.

Music was the first key. Even if I’m not a musician, music is part of my life kind of everyday. And with music comes motion. So I thought about the technics and how to express motion, in particular to show the trails you can see on those pictures. In past projects — during a past life let’s say - I worked a lot on duality, ghosts, second personalities. So I did know how to show in single shot kind of ghosts and that would be perfect to build motion trails and build a link to the past, since continuity is really important in my projects.

Now I needed to have somebody else, a different character than the model, somebody to make a duo and come along with her. And here is the white veil. I started with a scarf, but the motion was a bit crappy. I ended with using silk white veil commonly used in oriental dancing. Perfect, we have the last and final part.

Now here is the method. I’m using long exposure time with a flash to freeze movement at some time. Long exposure show trails and the difference in light temperature between pilot lamp and flash is a part of the development process I use. But the key is not the technics, it’s the way model is directed: I use songs and shoot during a whole song to let the model dance and enjoy this moment. First song is usually not that good, since a bit of time is required to have the model not be shy and really enjoy the music. More than that, it’s the time I need to learn how the model would dance, and anticipate her movements. After each songs, we — the model and I - give a look to the raw files and we learn and improve.

I’m more used to short series, but Positive Motion is really the exception. It’s a series that have been running for more than 3 years now. We’re at the part III (Part I was black and white, Part II with color, and now Part III has this very blueish development process and particular light I love), and it will go on for a long time … I bet :)

See the full series on my website, there are a ton more about Positive Motion if you like it.
Full Aurore set : Positive Motion part III. Aurore/
Other shots : Positive Motion

Original link for the post.