Ok, so now things take a bit of a turn, literally. I persuaded here to disconnect from the countryside and pose for me a bit before we took our leave. I particularly wanted to use the nice green hilly backdrop on the leftward part of the overall scene – here with a road cut below her elbow. But there is a tech note here that is very relevant to what happened next. I was shooting her frontally at an angle that mostly shadowed her front side, the sun being mostly over her shoulder. I knew this would mean that her lovely lady shapes and textures would be somewhat dimmed out against the brightness behind her.
I had an “aha” moment – I had a new gadget in the car that I had brought with us to try out on this trip – a collapsible, spring-loaded, pop-out reflector intended for exactly this kind of situation – using the reflector, the natural sunlight can be reflected onto the subject to “fill in” the shadows that would otherwise be darkened or poorly exposed. So, I trotted back to the car to fetch it, leaving her standing there naked, and then on returning popped open the reflector and put it to use for the first time. If you take a moment to notice, you will be able to tell that her body from about her hips upward are showing just a bit brighter than is probably completely natural for this situation – that’s the reflector doing its thing.
So, the mood shifted from just enjoying the natural scene and its sensations to a bit of a “project” mentality, with attention on equipment, camera settings, body positions … still fun for us, but mentally in a bit of a bubble, more focused on tasks than surroundings.