vivian

The gymnast!

Tortured

As artists we are tortured. Some more than others. Paula is indeed in that category.

Themes

Themed shoots seem to be what's driving me these days. Last weeks theme was Frankenstein.This weeks theme was DEXTER.

Last night my scheduled model canceled.

I was lucky enough to call my friend Nettie Harris to come fill in. Damn we do some great work together. She trusts me completely. So much so that we established a safe word for tonight's shoot. If you don't know what a safeword is, it is primarily used in Bondage scenarios where the submissive may end the "scene' at any time. Dexter is the serial killer show on showtime and I recreated one of his kill scenes this evening. Plenty of plastic sheeting, Saran wrap and some stainless steel knives made everything look authentic. I still have to edit the images from today so here is a look at last weeks Frankenstein Shoot.

Forbidden Fruit

The Two Swimmers

A rare treat this weekend with Bella Blue and Nettie Harris together. Yay! These two beautiful and incredibly talented models were so much fun to work with and they put up with my crazy ideas and concepts.

Today I started out slow with a new model who had never posed nude before. She had actually only done two shoots in her life. She was extremely nervous as we started out. I did my best to calm her nerves, but it was evident in the first set that she was extremely tense and uncomfortable. She told me that she ran around her apartment naked to help her get used to being nude. We both chuckled at that. I finished the first set and I stopped and downloaded the card so that she could see the images. Most were awkward at best but we found one that she really liked. I told her that at this point everything else is lagniappe, and usually the first set is a throw away anyway because we are getting used to each other. I took a minute to show her poses from Victoria's Secret and from my previous shoots with great models. She started to understand.

Set number two and I could feel that she was finally beginning to trust me. "Point your toes, chin down, close your eyes and relax you face, stand on your tippy toes." All pointers that I gave her and she took direction extremely well. Once she learned a concept she didn't forget it. I showed her a couple of in camera images. Great work, I encouraged, nudging her self esteem. I wouldn't say that we had a breakthrough but she was now pretty relaxed in front of camera. Again back to the computer so she could see the work. "Wow I didn't realize that I could take that kind of picture" she beamed.

Set 3 I had 27 mins left before she had to leave. I pull all the props away and just shoot her plain on the wall. "Keep moving every frame." I am snapping away and she is really working her look. We agree to meet again to continue to work.

End of the day. I am going through the images and many of them are good, a couple of them are excellent images. A wonderful day with a sweet person and a really good new model with tons of potential.


Enjoy the images.

Cooking Models 101 by Sarah Ellis

I was setting up the camera for an interview with the lovely Sarah Ellis. I started recording while I was setting up just in case something wonderful would happen and of course it did. For those of you who have never met or spoke with her this is the real deal. She is actually this sweet, candid, and is not in the least bit pretentious. I told her later that we had already started recording but it did not phase her in the least bit she just laughed.

I will post the full interview on this blog later. It is about 15 minutes so. I am considering posting a couple of parts so it has good pacing.

Enjoy this clip of someone I consider to be one of the significant art models of our time.

San Francisco

Luckily it has been unseasonably warm here in San Francisco. Natalie and I shot first on Monday the 19th. We wandered down to Mission beach by the Golden Gate Bridge. This is an old war battery where the guns were mounted to keep ships/subs out of the San Francisco bay area. I also had a chance to shoot with the amazing Betcee May. She was amazingly sweet and willing to pose and do all of my crazy concepts. We shot in Jack Kerouac Alley, the Conservatory of Flowers, Pacific Heights, Murals in the Mission district, and the Financial District. An amazing shoot with a great team. Thank you Iona Lyn, www.bayareaboudoir.com assisting and Lauren Warner on makeup and of course Betcee.

Soul Searching

Every once in a while the model and the photographer touch each others soul. This is a brief encounter and not a romantic one. The model with her beauty and grace. The photographer with his creativity and vision. Add in serendipity, fate and a cat named Jim for something that is way beyond the sum of it's parts. The inner beauty of the model and her personality shine through transcending the medium. The model entrusts the photographer with her sensuality, beauty, and for the brief time together the photographer holds that close and protects it.

Bella Blue



This is a quote that I heard from a photographer:

I don't photograph anything unless it's an important challenge to my own sense of being or my own sense of life or existence.

I am not that deep, sometimes I just like the pure beauty of the moment.

Case Dismissed

My model and myself remain citizens in good standing.

I love this town. It finally paid off in my favor. I took care of a necessary evil. Righted a wrong. Cured an injustice.

An inappropriate charge for a victimless crime. What we did was neither heinous nor lewd, it was simply an expression of freedom, an expression of beauty, a capture of a second in time.

I stand appreciative yet guarded as I wonder how this will effect my creative freedom. I expect that I will be shooting in the studio more often now tethered to the limits of black, gray and white backgrounds.


To those who helped, I thank you.

Lewd Conduct

In the French Quarter, New Orleans. God forbid.

Anyone who has modeled with me, knows that I have a passion for location work. Shooting nudes in the studio is good work but location nudes always trumps studio anytime. The extra element of location adds multiple layers of interaction, risk, architecture, and environment.


WTF? I have seen so many naked women in the quarter I can't even count. There are armed robberies, violent crimes and yet last night I am accused of lewd conduct for trying to shoot some art nudes in the French Quarter. We are released with a ticket to appear in court.

Will my creative passion be limited to just studio work from here on out?

Ginger Hansel Sinner Interview

Here is a video interview with one of my art models. After the work we did with Sarah Ellis I thought it would be interesting to interview the models and ask them a few basic questions. This is my first interview so please excuse my ums. I will do better next time.

Sarah Takes the Streets of New Orleans

In a departure from studio work I hit the streets with a crew of six early last Sunday morning. Lots of emails and a fairly comprehensive list of what we were shooting and where. Planning it felt like it was a Heist. Getaway drivers, muscle, the computer guy, the director, the last minute guy all of the players were there.

5:00 am I am up grabbing my coffee so that I can make it to the studio to meet Karl, the videographer, Britney, my assistant and Kenny getaway driver, muscle and animal wrangler. I had another shoot the night before so I packed up the gear last night knowing that I am not a morning person. I look out the window to check the weather. Great news it looks like fog. I look again, damn, it's just humidity on the window.

6:00am I am at the studio getting ready and Britney is there just after me. She is sooo reliable. Karl and Kenny arrive shortly after. We load up softboxes and lights that we need for the shoot.

6:20am I get a call from wardrobe/models assistant who is supposed to pick up the lovely model Sarah from the hotel. The model is at the international hotel, right? Is this the right hotel he asks? No the intercontinental. Damn a snafu first thing in the morning, but wait I hear a female voice and laughter in the background. Jokes, my friend has jokes this morning. I hear Sarah say,"It wasn't my idea!"

6:45 am Jackson square parking lot. behind the canon. You know where the president said he would help out New Orleans. We decide to nix the wedding dress because it too hard to get off. Sorry Sarah for making you lug that all the way from S.F. Trenchcoat ready we get Sarah into Jackson Square in front of the Cathedral. The homeless guys are asking a lot of questions like who are you? What are you shooting? Then Sarah walks up and loses the trenchcoat. Silence. Then applause. One of the homeless guys insists he wants a picture to send to his buddy Howie. Stay away from the the model I say shaking my head, nervously clicking off frames. From behind me I hear a booming authoritative Voice. "Sit down Sir!" It's Kenny the muscle, getaway driver and animal wrangler. I hear it again "SIT DOWN SIR!" then I hear the homeless guy apologizing profusely. I am trying to compose the picture and do something but the cathedral is too big the angle wrong and I decide to move on.

Next post Pirates alley.

Model Sarah-- Vunerable

I guess that I have fallen off of the blog wagon, I had no idea that it has been so long since I posted and image or thoughts or any thing here. This is Sarah Ellis, a wonderful free spirit model. She was professional and willing to do whatever it took to get an amazing image. I pretty much tortured her trying to get a certain bodyscape look that I hadn't been able to get before. After about 3 hours of shooting she asked me for a cushion or something because the wood floor was grinding into her hip. I was so focused on the image capture that I hadn't even thought about it.

This look that she gave me just exuded vulnerability. I remember it because I told her that I felt bad clicking the shutter, I felt like such a voyeur capturing this look.

We are working together again in June. Full guerrilla. Our entourage is going to be shooting nudes in the french quarter and downtown New Orleans. I usually don't travel with that many people but we have lookouts, a videographer/photographer friend of mine, my assistant Brittany, a getaway driver, and an english bulldog named Ozzie, I wanted a Makeup artist but I think it's too eary in the morning to make that happen.

Check back for this one as I know it is going to be great.

Dancer

So my next model arrives From England:

Katy T came dancing into the studio and I had only dynamic images in my vision. She was 100% professional and really wanted to make great images. Her knowledge of her body, hair, hands and where everything was relative to the shot was really great to see.

I had her leaping and jumping through out the studio and despite a lens problem we were able to create some of the most memorable images to date for the definewomen.com website. What a treasure to work with and in the end, we both felt that we had great images for our portfolio.

I can't emphasize how nice it is to work with a professional model again. If these are the outtakes , I can't wait to incorporate the other image for the book.

Manipulation

Digital manipulation of images is a new problem for a new age. How much can you touch up an image and still be true to the original? At what point do you alter the image so much that it no longer is true to the "capture". This is an image that I posted on Fred Miranda.com a website dedicated to more advanced photographers. A brilliant graphic artist from Argentina named Natalia offered to enhance the image. I sent her a full resolution copy of the image and this is what she did to it. In her subtle way she added what I wanted in the original capture.

I also want to give her full credit for the Main Page on the Dow website. She and I had different ideas on the fonts and how the words follow the lines in the images. This is her Flickr website:

nataliataffarel

She really is gifted.

Stereotypes

In creating the book and website defintionsofwomen I am forced to consider stereotypes. The questions that I am pondering about is should I fall into these stereotypes.

Should stereotypes define women or do women define the stereotypes?

Here is another image of Makeda that could fall into that definition of a stereotypical black woman. On one hand it is a clearly beautiful rendition of her shape and form but is it too stereotypical to use as a fine art piece in the book/website?

Is this a direction that I want to go in with my art or is it too easy to fall into that trap? This is indeed a slippery slope that will need consideration. As much as I like this image I feel forced into excluding it from the group just on these grounds. As this blog is new has not had too much consideration I as for those to post their response as to whether or not this image should be included. Please post your comments, I would like to hear them.