I started posting some of my photos to Instagram a few months back, thinking that it might help me to meet people interested in doing photo shoots and that is where I met Elina. Elina is from Japan originally, but has lived many years in England and America, so she is fluent in English. She is currently in Nagoya because she is working as a production coordinator with Cirque Du Soleil who are performing TOTEM in Nagoya until January. We planned to do the session at Noritake Gardens, so we met at Nagoya Station and walked to the site, with Elina pulling along her suitcase full of clothes. Having worked out a plan for where to shoot at Noritake, and in what order, I was pretty shocked when we got there and found out it was closed on Mondays. Oops. Feeling pretty unprofessional, I suggested we go to Sakae since I didn't really know the Nagoya Station area very well. We did stop in front of a cute cafe on the walk back to get a few shots, and then we got on the subway and went to Sakae. By the time we got to Sakae, after going up and down various stairs and standing in the crowded subway car, I'm sure Elina was exhausted from walking all over town in high heels, carrying her suitcase, but she was nice about it. We took some photos in front of the Aichi Arts building while it was still light, and then walked over to Central Park as the sun started going down. We had lost time with the change of location, and we were losing light quickly, so I took out my two flashes and tried to arrange a two off-camera flash setup, with one flash providing fill, and one providing back lighting, but I spent too much time fiddling with my optically controlled flashes, which I am still learning how to use, while Elina waited patiently. (Incidentally, I've decided to invest in some cheap flash transmitters that don't require line of sight to make my life easier in the future). Also, once it got dark, I found that the auto-focus on my camera could not find her in the dark, so that was another lesson learned. In the end, though, we still got a lot of usable photos, so I was pleased with the session. Elina was really professional, changing clothes on the fly, suggesting ideas. She really knows how to hold her body and head, so it was a pleasure to photograph her. I was stunned by her beauty, so I hope that came through in the photos. Hopefully, we'll be able to get in one more session before she leaves town. You can see Elina's Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/elinaninja/
