Kris: Radiant from within

Lucky is the photographer who finds a model with camera charisma. Such a woman is featured here.

I'm not sure what causes it, but it has to do with the ability to act - to assume roles and to project them for the lens. It has to do with more than beauty, self-assurance, and the ability to take direction.

I discovered Kris when, as an Advocate photographer, I was shooting a high school basketball game and she was a cheerleader for the opposing team.  I think she was a junior then.

Over the next few years we shot thousands of images in black and white, color slides, and color negatives. She modeled for many types of photographic projects - fashion, pin-ups, promotions, illustrations, and experimental.

I was never disappointed with her performance, her ability to assume a role and sell it. Her appeal wasn't just facial or physical,  of which there were plenty. No. Her camera charisma radiated from within, a quality that can be neither taught nor mimicked.

Whatever it is and however it's attained, Kris had it and I used it at every opportunity and there were many. That's why it took many hours of sorting and deciding and picking and choosing and eliminating for me to select the cream - at least part of it - of our efforts, presented on this page.

After Kris graduated from high school she attended an out-of-state university and I photographed her when she came home for vacations. She graduated, got married, and I haven't heard from her since.

I doubt she'll ever see this and make contact so I can write the final paragraph to it - whether she made further use of her camera charisma, or whether she gave it all to me.


We might have been trying for an effect with her hair in this semi-silhouette when Kris put her face straight up, stretching her incredible neck like a swan or something. I loved that aspect, but the hint at details of her shoulders, arms and back - delineated by reflected light - make this shot an ace for me. I cropped the front because otherwise most attention would be drawn there - though I am forever preaching against amputation via the cropping tool. This time it preserved the subtleties of the image.
With this expression of semi-amusement you get only a hint of what lies beneath the surface. I can't remember the inspiration for the magenta filter, but in those days I was doing a lot of color experimentation. That's when the Advocate was flirting with color and using an obscenely inefficient and convoluted technique required by the technicalities of letterpress and hot metal. It was never successful - we never reproduced a single 4-color photo accurately, in my opinion. Still the tools we had for it inspired stuff like this. In that respect it was worth all the bother and expense (I thought).
This is one of my all-time favorites that never got published (family newspaper, you know) until I got my own web pages. By the way, it is indeed a bathing suit. Kris maintained this pose for several seconds while, in a totally dark studio, I painted her with a blue-filtered flashlight. The angles from which the light hit and the way the highlights and shadow detail emerged using such a loosey-goosey method was pure luck, though this is the single best attempt from among many that session. Kris, beside just looking great, had the patience of a saint.

With Kris, it was difficult for me to just let it rest at sweet and pure. This was shot during a session for one of the fashion pages. I don't remember which shot made the paper, but I never forgot this one. Letting the strap fall off the shoulder disqualifies it as a fashion photo but sends, instead, a message of implied availability - and that translates, in my mind, with the "come and get me" attitude I like for models to project in pin-up type photos.
This is among the difficult shoots that required a lot more than just beauty. Patience for instance. Physical stamina, for instance. Because I asked Kris to do this run from the school bus over and over and over. That, plus  many poses getting off the bus, standing by the bus, standing in the near foreground, but there was only one frame that was just right and this is it. The hair, the clothes, the light, her expression, her position with the bus, the clouds, all of it perfect.
And here's what came of all that work - more work to make one of the covers I did for one of our frequent special sections, this one about back-to-school fashion.

Part coloring book, part photograph, part beautiful girl, and part local school bus, the thing took some time. This lousy old clipping and some great memories are all that remain. Hardly immortal, but most of the joy of it was in the doing, thanks in large part to Kris.
Camera charisma. This was when she was in college and at her apex. It was shot at her home when she was on break from classes. We were shooting summer fashion, but I must have been overwhelmed by her eyes, hair and the way she looked at the camera and couldn't resist - as happened often - reaching in close for a capture of that face, that attitude, though I knew it would likely never see print.
The Christmas-tree bulbs were on hand from a Christmas fashion spread. She was there in a bikini and so the connection had to be made - as most every glamour photographer since the invention of such lights has envisioned it. It pains me that there is no visual logic to this whatever. The effect, stereotypical as it is however, is interesting, because she makes it so.
Among the things Kris could always do that most models can't do is look graceful and beautiful while performing a major physical activity. Here, the legs are perfectly posed as are both hands, even as she holds her hair back.
Fish net in a studio is like candy to a kid. There are so many ways to employ it and each of them takes on a different aura. From among many shots we made with this prop, I chose this one for the composition made by the interplay of Kris' body and folds of the net.
A single light source from directly above can, if you have Kris sitting under it in a bikini, yield incredible sex appeal by the interplay of what can be seen against what is hidden in deep shadows. The composition is largely angular except for the circular rim at her lower back. But you already noticed that, didn't you?
In addition to the stereotypical Christmas-tree lights, there's the stereotypical Vasoline-coated filter over the lens, which is what you see here. I like the way this works because everything is fuzzed except  details of the party dress and that's  the subject of this fashion photo. It is a case where the model, however lovely, provides only her graceful curves as a frame for the dress.
Regal as a model, Kris does a walk above camera level. Notice her hands and, except for one eye, her veiled face - again total femininity showing, but not overpowering the dress being modeled.
The female tummy is widely photographed to resemble sand dunes or slippery slopes or deep mysterious gullies, leaving interpretation to the viewers' imagination. A variety of crops would produce such effect here - except I really like these curves identifiable as God made them and Kris shared them. She was perfect.

Newark Tea Party Page One

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