Corner Unit

In the Spring of 2015 I signed a lease at 610 South Main Street for a corner unit on the 7th floor (#735). It would be the third iteration of LUCIMA STUDIO (aka LUCIMA STUDIO III) and the first time I had a corner unit as a studio.

Over the course of the next two years I would shoot this studio day to create all sorts of different looks. My favorite setup was 8AM direct sunlight streaming through the East-facing windows onto the south wall of the unit. You can see the lighting pattern from the image above. That setup would create the most brilliant highlights on the models' skin (more on this in a future post maybe). My failsafe setup was allowing mid-day diffuse light through the East-facing windows hitting the subject on grey paper. I shot this setup to death and while it worked amazingly well, it was too easy. Finally my second-favorite setup was using the corner windows to create opposing light (usually backlight) to shape the model. You can see the windows of the corner in the following picture.

While I never painted the walls grey (as I would later for all future iterations of LUCIMA STUDIO), I used the modular 4x8' walls from the original LUCIMA STUDIO as grey backdrops after I painted them grey. They were mobile and lightweight and served extremely well until put them in storage after moving into LUCIMA STUDIO IV. The following image is an example of the faux walls as the backdrop. You can see the seam of the two walls overlapping.

Shooting the corner was never easy. The exact placement of the subject between the two windows was critical because the distance from each window would dictate how much light the model would receive from each side. This would cramp my style a little bit since I normally prefered to have more flexibility in placement and movement. But when the light was balanced properly you'd get magic like this.

Or this where the windows were not exactly juxtaposed but served amazingly well as a main light with a back/rim light.

But I didn't come here to talk about old pictures and corner units exactly. I am here to talk about this image.

Because this is not a picture that I shot. Rather this was an iamge created by Stable Diffusion that reminded me very much of LUCIMA STUDIO III. So much so that the placement of the windows relative to the walls (and the subject) is nearly identical to my actual unit. While I could have tried to use Stable Diffusion to inpaint (modify a part of the image in Stable Diffusion) the walls and windows to look more like 610 South Main Street, my fascination for this image is how much it reminds me of #735 610 South Main Street and also the level of realism from Stable Diffusion. I've been using the Edge of Realism model for a couple weeks now and it's by far my favorite model for creating images that resemble my work. Even though it's a SD1.5 model, I find it uncanny how lifelike the results are. The last couple posts have demonstrated that I've come full circle. When I first got my hands on Stable Diffusion it was all about exploring and making random pictures. Then I started applied a logic set that forced me to explore the "impossible". While I still have many series that I've yet to show from that logic set, I've already come back to exploring what feels familiar. These images while not terribly interesting, mundane even, are still not easy to create. The iterations required to produce something that I deem valuable and worthwhile enough to share is about a day's work on average. Luckily I have a 4TB HD and a mobile workstation otherwise I wouldn't be able to run all these experiments at all hours wherever I am. Maybe the point of these recent images is to simply come home and say, "the heart wants what the heart wants". Sometimes it's not about shooting "the impossible". Sometimes it's just about making something that makes you say "wow" and refine that to the extent of your abilities (and the technology). It's okay that it's not different, unique, impossible, and never done before. Sometimes it's just enough that you like it.