'I prefer my footprints in the sand... not the snow'
The first time I went to Florida, it was a mid January trip with the family of one of my best friends. Given we flew down from the North East, the mid sixty temperatures felt like a tropical paradise. We headed to the beach and dove into the water thinking nothing of it. I remember one of hotel clerks laughing at us returning back after our day at the beach, telling us that it was usually only tourists in the ocean during the winter.
Although there was a rare snowfall, (ok, just a few flakes) this past January, usually Algarve remains warm and beautiful during the winter. It's high fifties and low sixties may seem lovely compared to winter here, it does make it harder finding models who;ll get naked and frolic happily in the surf. So... then what does a location photographer do in Winter...in Mark Leighton's case, it's to work on his editing skills.
When I recently shot Mark a few model names I was interested in featuring, Mark was in the middle of revamping his website and working on new edits of many images in his gallery's. Mark says that new(ish) technology allows him to find useable shots in his archives that he had previously dismissed. Based on the spectacular image above, Petr was one of the models I was hoping to feature and luckily, Mark had recently completed re-editing, and updating Petr's gallery. As I was piecing together the images for this story I was also struck that if you squint just a bit, the white fabric almost looks like a wave of snow flowing across the sand and over Petr's body.
'In the past I found the editing process a bit of a chore but now I am getting a some satisfaction from "re-cycling" my older images. Looking back, I was appalled at the standard of some of my old edits, and am finding I get more out of some of the images by using new technology and better editing skills.'
