My first ever off-ice photo shoot was with Kyoko Ina & John Zimmerman for the cover of U.S. Figure Skating's magazine, SKATING.  It was a horribly hot August day--in the upper 80's with 100% humidity--and they were wearing jeans and sweaters, as this was for the October issue. Two years later I was asked to shoot them for the cover of the March/April 2003 issue of Blades on Ice magazine. This time it was December and only 17 degrees out. We chose the roof of IMG's office in midtown Manhattan. Every way we turned had a different backdrop, either a cloudless New York City skyline or some magically textured surface.

For one of the series of photos, I knew I wanted to play up the contrast between the two of them. When we were planning the shoot, I asked Kyoko to bring a white sweater and John a black and chose an industrial-y backdrop angle. I took the negative and scanned it and worked on it in Photoshop. Their eyes were selected and kept in color and then the rest of the image was desaturated until I had a predominantly black and white photo.

The full-color version of the photo ran in Blades on Ice, but I still prefer this one.

Canon Elan II body, Sigma 28-105/3.8-5.6 lens, Kodak Portra 400 UC film. Exposure unrecorded.