Revisiting
September 23, 2008
As time allows, I’ve been going through over two years of raw digital images searching for good pictures that have been overlooked. My skill at converting raw files has improved over time, so I am also redoing some old favorites.
Model Sarah (larger)
Sarah is one of the few “professional nude models” I ever photographed. Through websites like One Model Place, she has built up a client base of photographers who pay for her to travel around the country to model. As you might imagine, she has plenty of good stories….
When I first got into this internet models project I worked with a few good “pro” models — Sarah Ellis and Tiana Hunter were the other ones — to learn the ropes. But even though these ladies conducted themselves very professionally and were quite serious about their poses and appearance, the whole modeling culture struck me as kind of creepy. Basically any old guy can pay his money and shoot “art nudes” with these fine models — which is all well and good, live and let live, whatever…. But when you look at most of the photographers’ results, the models are interchangeable and the photos start to look generic and predictable.
So once I got a handle on how to shoot nudes I pretty much stopped photographing nudes for the sake of “doing nudes.” Sure, since then I’ve photographed plenty of people in varying stages of undress, but there has always been an additional context and a reasonable reason for their being clothed or not. And of the naked few that I have photographed, they’ve modeled for free and taken their clothes off “at their own suggestion” — and been my friends — so having that added comfort level has made the photos feel “right,” to me at least.
I’m friends with Sarah, even though I paid her that time (it’s her business after all.) She is probably faking it but I like to think I captured more than just another corny art nude photo. Regardless, I learned a lot from the experience.
Texting is a sort of universal constant, she was flirting with some male model in NYC at the time. (larger)
FWIW these were done with a five-year old Nikon D-70 with ambient light. When I first started with the internet models project I shot with only that camera until I felt more confident and comfortable with my abilities (which meant I used it exclusively during the Summer of 2006.)
Earlier on I thought this was the strongest image from the shoot. (larger)
When the burkha photo was posted on Flickr it got thousands of views and odd comments from horny Islamic men. What made that even funnier to me was that we shot this on the grounds of West Point Military Academy….
If you dig way back into my archive, you’ll find a very different interpretation of the burkha image.
Reader Comments (add yours)
1. cafe selavy — Sep 24 2008 08:01 AM
Creepy Old Guys: bad necks cause them to rotate body to compensate when looking to the side or back (Torso Twirl); use hands to sit in chairs taking weight off bad knees, hips; stare too long at women because they can't quite see clearly; have too may opinions that they like to expound on laboriously and loudly (hearing is going); smell of whiskey (which you notice because they tend to get too close and touch when they talk); and have to use the testicle tuck before they sit due to lifelong gravity issues.
Yes, taking photos of nude women ought to be left to creepy young guys.