wild Kyotocat on the waterfall

Well, for sure it's not necessary to introduce Kyotocat, the marvelous  US-American model who fur sure was tumblr-celebrity when tumblr still  was a free social network. Her naturalness not only appeared in her  sometimes - as in these photos - abundant body hair, but also in her  friendliness as a person that also expresses in her joy in posing free  and open.

I took these photos at a romantic little waterfall in  the wood with a 200mm tele lens, so there was quite a distance between  her and me. I had to shout and use gestures with my hands to advise her  about the places and light spots where I wanted her to climb, the  direction I wanted her to look, the poses I wanted.

In such a  situation it is a big advantage to work with a professional model who is  used to show herself in front of a camera: I can give very general  advice's and don't have to care about the little details (put your hips a  bit to the right to give a curve in your body, let your shoulders  fall...). On of the wonderful things about Kyotocat is, that - although  she's very used to professional photo sessions - she is able to keep her  happy naturalness and to act in front of a camera just as if she was  enjoying herself without being watched.

As you know I mostly  work with a wide angle lens (and sometimes with a 100mm portrait and  macro lens) and in my "former life" (before the digital age) I was used  to work with a 6x6-Hasselblad camera that allowed me to control the  image through the huge view finder. I could compose the image up to the  edges and, very important, I could /see/ where the focus lies in an  image and control the depth of field visually.

With the small  viewfinder of my Canon I can only compose approximately and it even is  difficult to keep the horizon horizontal, especially when working fast  to capture moments. But the most difficult is to focus correctly. I must  rely on the autofocus-system of the camera. I only use the center focus  point because fiddling with the small button to change the focus point  in the tiny viewfinder is not my thing. So I take in the middle of the  image where I want to have the focus, press the trigger half way and  then move the camera with the fixed focus to the composition I want.

This  implies a move of the camera just in the moment of triggering,  especially when trying to capture "the right moment" in a moving  situation. It's not problem with a wide angle, but with a tele lens  every little move makes the image blurred unless you use a very short  exposure time.

The forest was quite dark and above all, because  of the clouds, the light changed every second, so I had to change  exposure time quite often - or aperture that made the depth of field  even smaller. With all the branches and leafs it was not easy to focus  on Kyotocat because the camera sometimes focused on a detail in front of  her that I didn't even see in the viewfinder while it was still  blurred.

So some of those photos are slightly blurred or out of  focus, but instead of publishing only the correct ones I decided to also  show you those that are not perfect from a technical point of view, but  still beautiful, I think.

Still, in many images you can see each  and every of Kyotocat's wonderful, so very soft and cozy body hair, her  marvelous bush that extends wildly to her thighs and belly, her bushy  armpits and her very hairy legs.

I hope you love what you see as much as I do!