Days in the Life of a Nude Photographer

So...Someone Asks Me About Gear

2007-09-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

I ignored this blog for a while, but I find it's still sending me traffic, so I guess I'll start posting again.

Actually, I don't have to imagine too hard because I get that question in e-mail now and again. Today, I'm a Nikon guy. I'm not a "Nikon do or die" fan like some. It's just that at some point I had to make a choice and I chose Nikon. Canon is also a good choice. There are other good SLR's out there made by Pentax, Sigma, and others, but with Nikon and Canon, there is a knowledge base no other brands can match, and that counts for something.

I'm not using the very high-end "pro" Nikons with metal bodies, though. My cameras have plastic bodies, which is good for several reasons, to wit:

1) a plastic camera will be less expensive than a camera with a metal body. Why? Well, you can mold plastic and quickly ready it for production much more cheaply than a metal body which may be molded to start with, but has to be worked longer and harder to make ready for assembly. While a metal body may be "built like a tank," hey...I'm shooting girls in a hotel suite, not athletes or soldiers. I was sold on the toughness of Nikons when, back in the late 1960's, during an antiwar protest, my friend's Nikon was grabbed by a cop and thrown about 20 or 30 feet like a rock. The camera landed on concrete, had a deep and ugly scrape on one corner of the body, and the lens was cracked and useless. My friend put on a new lens and the camera worked just great! I doubt if he has switched brands, but I'm sure there are people with great stories about the durability of the pro-level Canons.

2) Generally speaking, plastic is lighter in weight. I do a lot of contract work for the likes of ATKingdom and Karups. I may be shooting nearly 2000 photos in the course of a shoot. After a while, a few ounces more or less makes a difference on my shoulder muscles and back as I hold the camera up to my face hours on end.

3) Shooting with a less expensive camera makes it less traumatic to upgrade and have backup cameras. Combined with Nikon's philosophy of never changing the geometry of their lens mounts (I write with fingers crossed), I can pretty much count on having to buy only cameras for the time being, not lenses. Canon now has something like three parallel camera/lens families going. Switch from one to another and not only are you buying a new camera, you need to reinvest in lenses as well. Nikon has introduced new technologies with new lenses for sure, but a perfectly good manual lens you bought in 1967 will mount on the latest Nikon and be useable (it won't magically auto-focus, of course, but you can use it).

Several years ago, I was shooting with Olympus C-line cameras such as the C-2040, C-3000, and C-4040. Many of my best photos were shot with these cheap cameras. ($300-$400 was cheap back then...today it's almost enough to buy a Nikon D40 DSLR kit including a decent lens.) Believe it or not, some of my best images were taken with these cameras, and ironically some of the reasons the photos are so good have to do with some of the drawbacks of the technology of the time. Below is an example of an image shot with one of those Olympus cameras that simply wouldn't look nearly as good shot with one of my Nikon DSLR's. This may strike you as an altered image, but believe me when I tell you, other than increasing the color saturation just a tad, this is what the image looked like out of the camera. It looks a little "posterized" to me and probably due to some compression, some of the detail has been simplified a bit. The funny thing is, a more "accurate" image from one of my current cameras would probably be much less striking (you can double the size of this shot by clicking on it):

Isn't it gorgeous?!

The images I now shoot with my Nikons are quite suitable for the work they do, but they aren't as pretty to someone like me who comes to photography from a fine art background where I did paintings and posters for the most part. I don't worry about things a lot of the photography nerds do, like pincushioning or shadow detail. My main concern is the overall impession of the photo. There are many photography nerds who know everything about photography except how to compose one. How sad.

Okay, so about my gear.

About five years ago, one of my top clients demanded I stop shooting with the Olympus cameras and get something more professional, and so I went out and bought a Nikon D100. I could just as easily have bought a Canon, but at that time, the D100 was the "big new thing," catching Canon flat-footed for a brief time with a camera that was attractive to many pros while being more affordable than the nearest offerings Canon had at the time.

My cameras get very, very heavy use (600-2000 shots per shoot). After a while, some things stopped working perfectly on the D100 and so I got a D50 as a backup. I liked the D50 so much that the D100 became the backup. However, the D50 got heavy use as well and during a shoot the pop-up flash simply stopped working. My lighting system uses my camera's built-in flash, blocked from hitting the subject directly and diminished in power 3 full stops, to set off my flash units (more on those in a bit). I got the D100 out and started to remember why it had become the backup camera: its built-in flash failed to fire anywhere from one time out of 10 to one time out of six. Frustrating for both me and the poor model. Arrgghhh!!

So, the D100 is currently in the hands of the Nikon repair folks, who want almost $400 to bring it back to normalcy. I'm trying to decide whether to spend the money in order to have two backups, or just say "screw this!" and throw it away. After all, $300 is enough to buy me a factory refurbished D50, and the D50 is one helluva camera! $400 will buy me a couple decent lenses as well. Or more lighting. It'll buy lots of things and the D100 is getting a little long in the tooth. Looks like the D100 is likely headed for the trash heap.

(A few words on refurbs: Someone who works in a high-volume storefront/mail order/web order operation told me that if he didn't already get a hefty discount on new gear, he'd buy refurbs. He explained that [a] most refurbs aren't returned due to damage or malfunction, they are returned in order to get an upgrade or another camera better suited to the customer's needs, and that even if a camera is returned "with cause," [b] a refurb actually gets more intense care and testing than one that goes through the normal assembly line process because they don't want that camera returned yet again. It may even be less prone to failure than a brand new one is. I can tell you that when I opened up my factory refurbished D50, there was no hint that the camera wasn't brand spanking new.)

I had a profitable contract job coming up with a D100 on its way to Nikon at the time and a D50 in a local repair shop for the flash problem. What to do? Well, I went out and bought a D40, which comes (in the case of Nikon approved retailers, at least) as a kit with a nice little lens. The D40 is a kickass camera. It's smaller and lighter in weight than the D50 and much smaller and lighter in weight than the D100. As it turned out, the D50 was repaired by the time of the shoot, so I went into the shoot as I wanted: with both a primary and a backup camera.

About the D40: It's a cute camera but very functional and quite suitable for my needs. Unfortunately, while the kit lens is a great value and suitable for many people's needs, it's a little slow to focus for my purposes. I tried using it but quickly went back to my (ready for a mouthful?) AF-S Nikkor ED 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G IF, which is at this point probably the best-reviewed midrange zoom lens for Nikon auto-focus cameras. While the little kit lens focuses absolutely silently, it takes longer to settle into a focus. The other lens focuses with a tiny bit more noise, but it does so at a speed that leaves your head spinning. If I get the D100 repaired, I'll probably team it up with the little kit lens that came with the D40, my three outdated 256 meg CompactFlash cards, the older of my two chargers and one of the three batteries I have, and get rid of it at a $200 profit (anyone want to take me up on it?) .

When I saw the D40's battery, I was a little concerned. The battery is about 1/3 smaller than the battery for the D100 and D50. If I shoot 2000 photos, I'm going to have to feed the D100 and D50 a spare battery about halfway to 60% through the shoot. The little D40 got through the same shoot on one battery. That's impressive! I guess that due to design improvements, it's much more conservative as far as battery usage. I do have a spare battery, but that may have been $40 needlessly spent (though, like any kind of insurance, you buy it for the peace of mind).

Back to the lens for a minute: you may be thinking that a lens limited to an aperture no wider than f/3.5 isn't very "fast" (a funny way photographers have of expressing that a lens works well in low light). Well, it's not, but it's used almost entirely either with my flash system or outdoors during the day. Optically, it's incredible, so I'm not interested in buying a faster lens I don't really need at the expense of crappier optics.

My flash system used to consist of flash heads (the kind you mount on a camera's flash shoe) used as slaves triggered by the camera's built in flash. As I explained earlier, the camera's flash is deflected away from the subject at greatly reduced in power because its sole purpose is to trigger the flash units, and the units don't seem to require a very powerful trigger flash. I'm not up on the technology involved, but it seems to me that slave units are as sensitive to sudden changes in light at least as much to intensity.

However, the problem with those is that the flashheads is that they were all powered by rechargeable AA batteries and the more they were discharged, the longer they took to bounce back and become useable again, resulting in frequent flash misfires. I'd been using this system for a while and had also grown tired of dealing with recharging 20 sets of batteries prior to a shoot. So I started shopping around for a good value in terms of monolights (there are two similar sorts of studio flash units: traditional studio strobes run off power packs which look similar to car batteries and are much more expensive than the alternative: monolights). Monolights usually run off wall current. There are many differences between the two, but compactness is important to me since I'm about 100% a location shooter. While monolights actually tend to be a bit larger than comparable studio strobes, the power packs are relatively gigantic in most cases (remember the car battery analogy? And what could be easier than to plug a monolight into the wall or into an extension cord? I went with monolights.

There are other forms of lighting which range from really cheap to extremely spendy. When I first started out, I used photofloods—very powerful incandescent bulbs in reflector bowls. These are hot (and, actually, I find that models shot under floodlamps actually look warmer even in black and white!). For example:

Way out of my price range, not very compact, and not needed for any practical reason anyway, are very expensive fluorescent and halogen systems which work far better for studio photography than for lugging into hotels.

After a very lengthy and intense process of research that included both reading what was available online and consulting with other photographers, I found that some of the least expensive units were also among the most highly recommended. These are the Alien Bees I eventually bought. I have two of these and they work perfectly. I got the midrange Alien Bees B800's (320 true wattseconds) on the advice of the Alien Bees people. The B400 is recommended for highlights (e.g., a "hair light") or for maybe illuminating a space behind a model. They told me that as long as I'm shooting in relatively small spaces like a hotel room or suite, the B800 is plenty. And, indeed, I am frequently shooting with it at less than 50% power at something in the f/8 or f/11 range (which to the non-photographers, means that I have to close the aperture to keep the scene from becoming overexposed).

For diffusion, I am currently shooting them into a pair of 48" umbrellas with silverized linings. I'm sure some photographers are thinking that "light boxes would be better," but like a lot of things the photographic gadget collectors think, the improvement might actually be below the level of perception. I'm getting gorgeous results and the umbrellas are so quick and easy to set up that I love them. They are mounted on either stands or tripods. I prefer to use the Bogen tripods I have because they are so stable it'd take a tyrannosaurus rex to knock one over, but the stands, while not as stable, are so compact and light in weight by comparison that I tend to use them when I want to be stealthy, as when I'm checking into a hotel wanting to look like just another traveler checking-in.

(Believe it or not, when I make a reservation, I do not say, "I want to shoot some softcore in your hotel...do you have any rooms for me?" Does this seem unethical? Well, I'm sure that down the hall from me, while I'm shooting a naked 18 year old doing randy poses, some married guy is riding his secretary like a pony. Is it ethical for hotels to rent spaces for that? I guess they think it is, and I take my cue from them. It's a hotel's job to rent rooms and not to ask too many probing questions.)

Getting back to cameras, you may be wondering why I'm still stuck at six megapixels. The D100, D50, and D40 are all six megapixel cameras. Well, frankly, for web work, even a three megapixel image is going to be reduced in size. And if you want a good print at a reasonable size, it's been proven that a print from a 12 megapixel file looks indistinguishable from a print from a three megapixel file. The main—and perhaps only—advantage of a bigger image for most practical purposes (and assuming you don't need an image for a mural) comes in terms of cropping a detail and still having enough information for a good print. I'm extremely good at composing in the viewfinder, so cropping isn't something I often find myself doing. Read The Megapixel Myth for more on this subject. By the way, even a mural should be seen from a suitable distance. Think about those billboards along the highway that look fine from the road, but when you get close to them you see they're composed of dots the size of pocket change.

But all of this is moot when you consider that in fact (and contrary to what unwary consumers may believe), a 12 megapixel image isn't as much bigger than a six megapixel image as they seem to think. This is because megapixels represent area rather than dimensions. Think of a square 3"x3". It has an area of 9 square inches. If you increase each side by only 1/2" (not that much bigger), it goes from nine square inches to 12.25 square inches, which sounds like a much bigger jump than it is when expressed as square inches. For example, a typical six megapixel image is something like 3000x2000 (3008x2000 in my Nikons, to be precise). What are the dimensions of a three megapixel image, then? How about 2000x1500? So, the six megapixel image which sounds to the untrained ear like it's twice is big, is really only about half again as big in linear dimensions.

The truth is that there is more than enough information in a three megapixel image to create a wonderful 8x10.

Don't be a sucker. The manufacturers use The Megapixel Myth to make you feel like your dick (did I say dick? I meant camera) isn't big enough. Pooh!

Well, there you have it: What equipment I use and how I arrived at it. Next time, perhaps: my thoughts on software.

The Jewish Princess and the Jeweler

2005-08-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Jyllian just started showing at my twin sites, CoedsInHeat and TeensDotCom. She's a cute little Jewish girl with great big boobs and a gigantic exhibitionistic streak. She's not bad looking, either!

I hear her family isn't really happy about her modeling, but she doesn't care. She's a free spirit and a very horny chick!

Down below this paragraph is Hillary, an art student who works in a jewelry store doing a bit of everything. Her favorite parts, though, are creating designs and doing repairs, which she's very good at because that is her specialty in school. She's also good at taking her clothes off, for which I'm quite glad and think you will be, too! She's the latest girl appearing at GirlsDotCom.

These two "J"-birds are hot!

2005-08-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

I really have to reach for connections between girls sometimes. These two cuties were put up on GirlsDotCom and the names of both girls begin with the letter "J."

Jerrie is a long and tall naturally redheaded coed who came my way to earn a bit of spending cash while in town visiting her brother. She proved to be a wonderful model who had no problems opening up her legs and even posing with a nice green vibrator for me. Here she is:

Also added recently is Jasmine, a little gal who'd going to cosmetology school in a nearby city and traveled up to Portland, Oregon (where I live and work) to pose for some white-hot shots. My faves are the ones of her out in the backyard of another model's home, dressed in full schoolgirl, laying pantyless on her back and spreading her nice little pussy for us. In case you're wondering just how cute she is, here is a shot of her:

Because Jasmine is learning cosmetology, her hair, nails, and makeup change constantly (as the students practice on themselves and each other).

Two college cuties for you

2005-08-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

Janine is the new update at the twin sites, TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat. Just one look at her tells you she's no trailer park girl, but instead is a girl of some intelligence and learning.

Over at GirlsDotCom you'll discover that Taryn has just been added. This ripe and sexy redhead had, shall we say, and "ample bosom" in addition to her natural red hair, fair skin, and long, shapely legs. Here she is:

Meet Chelsea and Kris

2005-08-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

Chelsea is my latest update at GirlsDotCom. She's not a punker or goth but she's definitely alternative, not to mention eccentric. When you see her nude, you'll notice a tattoo of the Catholic Sacred Heart on her chest. And I really don't think she's Catholic. She's really not a nice Catholic girl, given some of the poses she does including not just open poses but insertions.

On my twin sites, TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat, Kris is the latest update. She's a checkout girl in a grocery store and thus epitomizes "the girl next door" kind of girl my sites are famous for. Here she is:

And here's a close-up of her really nice breasts:

Two beautiful brunettes

2005-07-29T18:09:00.000-07:00

Pam, yesterday's featured update at the twin sites TeensDotCom and, Coeds In Heat is a conventional beauty who has it all going for her: great legs, great ass, fairly big boobs, pretty face, and an absolutely glorious head of hair. Just look at her:

Justine is one of my favorites. She has dreadlocks, but not because she's a hippy: She just thinks they look good on her, and I think she's right. Her body, like Pam's, is "to die for." While her breasts are smaller, they are gorgeous and firm and i could look at them all day long...if she'd let me! See what I mean:

You'll find her at GirlsDotCom. She was added yesterday as well.

I love goth and punker chicks

2005-07-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

I shoot a lot of web content and it's hard to sell gals with a punk or goth look to my clients. I argue that, hey, this is the 21st Century and girls have tattoos, piercings, dyed hair, etc., but generally they're not listening. They're still operating under the assumption that girls should look like they did when Playboy opened its doors back in the 1950's, except that back then girls didn't shave their pubes, though it didn't matter because they wouldn't show you pubes anyway.

The latest update at GirlsDotCom is Fiona, an Irish-American girl with lots of tattoos and a killer body, especially if you like your boobs on the big side:

Over at my twin sites (identical content, different graphic concepts), TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat, the latest update features a somewhat gothic chick named Xandra:

Even though I'm as straight as an arrow (well, aside from the business I'm in), I've found that these gals are as nice as can be. Not at all as defiant as some people might imagine.

There's a problem with hard-core

2005-07-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

I get asked from time to time "Why don't you do hard-core?"

Well, technically girl-girl and girls with toys is considered hardcore by many people, but to me it's what I call "medium-core," because I feel the soft-core and hard-core distinction is too hard and fast. For some strange reason, in our culture, two girls having sex is just cute or beautiful, whereas anything involving a stiff pecker penetrating any part of anyone's body is automatically hard-core...or anything involving two people and sperm. Girls getting off with toys is more debatable.

But basically, I'm still just a photographer of pretty girls and the reason is simple: there will always be a market for pictures of pretty girls. I don't even think it would make sense to challenge that position, it's so obvious, so I'll just state it and leave it at that without any attempt at proof. If you think I'm lyin' your brain must be dyin'.

Hard-core has a big problem: the human female has only three sexually useful apertures in which to stick a dick: the mouth, the pussy, and the asshole. With males, you subtract one of the above so gays are even more limited. Human joints only bend and rotate in certain ways so only certain positions are possible. There are some postures even contortionists can only imagine and so, trying to create interest only through body position and penile insertion has pretty much run out of gas. If you're not 14 years old, you've seen it all before, and since most of the hard-core anymore is done in video, and done rather poorly, it can't even fall back on the universal and eternal appeal of the pretty girl.

Girl flesh just looks so much better in stills, excepting only the best (very expensive to produce) videos, such as in the Barely Legal series by Hustler.

It may be premature to announce the death of traditional hetero "fuck & suck" porn, but lately the guy who wants to make the big bucks in hard-core needs to be working an angle. The big thing now is working situations such as having sex on a boat (Captain Stabbin), in a van (Back Seat Bangers), in an automobile (Teen Hitchhikers), while on a hidden camera (Street Blow Jobs), and so on.

Me, I'll stick with pretty girls. Like I said: there will always be a market for pretty girls.

One natural blonde and one unnatural redhead

2005-07-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

Bridget is today's update at TeensDotCom and its twin, Coeds In Heat. She's a dishwater blonde, no dye involved. She's got almost no boobs at all, but she has loooonnnng legs and a face that's made all the cuter for having a teeny bit of a hawk nose. Not so much that you jump out of your chair and form a cross with your index fingers, like I've seen on some girls, but just enough to be a characteristic rather than a flaw. Here's how you might see her attired if she were walking down a public street:

and here she is masturbating with a vibrator (sorry about the angle, but I try to keep the blog R-rated...images in the site leave nothing to the imagaination, I assure you):

Over at GirlsDotCom, Kamryn is the most recent update. She's a very natural redhead who has turned herself into a gal with very unnatural dyed-black hair. However, her pussy hair reveals the true Kamryn as quite the redhead. See what I mean?:

Photographers will note the mixing of color temperatures in this shot. (When photographers talk about color temperature, you can mental erase the word color, for it's the color of the light they are talking about.) In this shot, the light is a mixture of flash (fill and bounce) and a little floodlamp recessed in the ceiling above this chair that threw a spotlight on Kamryn.

The light from a flash unit pure white whereas incandescent lamps put out a light that varies somewhere in the range of yellow to orange. Normally, mixing color temperatures is a no-no, but like any other so-called "rule," it can often be broken not just with impunity but with excellent results, and this is one of those occasions.

Oh, and did you notice? Kamryn has very beautiful breasts mounted with really delicious-looking pink puffy nipples!

Let's talk about the underwear thing

2005-07-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

I mean that "thing" so many guys have for undies. Me...I'd rather see a pretty girl with her panties off, but a lot of guys apparently like to see girls with their panties on!

Cotton whities or prints are the classics. Take a look at Chastity and then Brooke from recent updates at GirlsDotCom:

But other fabrics, like silk and satin have their proponents as well, and here are exammples from recent updates at TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat. First Madalynn:

and now Chastity:

Chastity is here showing the appeal of the "peek-a-boo" or "upskirt" shot.

You might also note how Chastity's hair changed over time. Here first shot here is more recent, after she adopted a less "alternative" hairdo. The bouffant hair in the final shot is how she wore it when she first started modeling. After a while, she figured that an oddball hairdo was costing her work, so she became a lot less alternative.

One without a top; one without a bottom

2005-07-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

I don't get to work with many black girls in Portland, as I've noted before, but Babette, the latest update at GirlsDotCom is one of the cutest. She's a beauty school student and dreamed up this hairdo after arriving at the shoot. She's the one without a top:

Another minority girl, Carla, falls more into the "hottie" category than Babette. In fact, I often refer to her on my sites as "my hispanic hottie" or "my red-hot hispanic chili pepper." She is one sexy girl with a pretty face, fantastic legs, and small boobs with nice pink puffy nipples, although this is the without a bottom shot:

She is the latest update at the twin sites, TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat.

Another lovely Russian

2005-07-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Karin is one of four or five Russian girls I've shot. I'm not sure if Portland is a magnet for Russian girls or if Russian girls are simply a lot more likely to be ready to pose nude. I suspect the latter. Anyway, she is the latest update at GirlsDotCom. She's quite the looker:

Over at the twin sites, TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat, photos of Cameron have been added. She has a lovely slender body and is just as cute as can be. She also has some of those tattoos so many of the girls insist on getting today. I can tolerate them on a great body, but I do wish they wouldn't get them.

The scoop on cameras for adult work

2005-07-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

I get admiring comments about my photography all the time, and most of the photos receiving praise were done with a digital point-and-shoot, not an SLR. The cameras I used during the first years of my digital career were Olympus C-xxxx cameras. starting with an Olympus C-2040, I owned a C-3040 and a C-4000 as well. How good can such photos be? How about this shot of one of my favorite redheads, Chastity:

Believe it or not, this shot was done totally without "pro" lighting. It's just fill and bounce plus window light, and you could hardly improve on the lighting in any way.

Way back when, I used a traditional SLR, but digital cameras really make a lot more sense for someone shooting adult content for websites. Why? Let's break it down:

Cost. My little Olympus cameras cost around $400 and had killer lenses ideally suited for the kind of shooting I was doing, which was in enclosed spaces such as living rooms, bedrooms, or hotel rooms or suites. To get a good digital SLR body with a good lens can't be done for anything like that. And as I'm proving, film cameras can't even be considered. There's also the incredible savings in terms of film and processing costs. It doesn't take too many 300-photo sessions to pay for a few memory cards.

Convenience. With a digital camera, you can get a good idea regarding exposure by looking at the built-in display or, better, taking a look at the photo using a computer. Most digital photographers shooting away from home have a laptop they take with them for this purpose.

Privacy. During the years I shot on film, I had to change processors several times. My first processor processed a few rolls and then told me that someone in the back room objected to the content. My next one processed the film but was lousy at doing the color correction and other optimizations the photos sometimes needed. When I finally settled on one, I often had to bring in ID items to restore their confidence I wasn't processing underage models. You see, an 18 year old girl can frequently pass for anything from 16 to 21, so I totally understand this attitude. With digital, you don't have to take your photos to a lab, which is great for me, but it's also great for the people shooting illegal content, so I also understand why the authorities are worried. However, when I read the news, it seems like the guys doing kiddie porn over the Internet are not very smart. It's pretty easy for the authorities to find out what's going on in cyberspace by comparison with private transactions going on through standard "snail mail."

Info. Assuming the camera's internal clock is set properly, digital photos have a date/time stamp. Some of the common formats (notably the ubiquitous .jpg format) include an astonishing amount of additional information such as whether flash was used, the actual exposure time and aperture, and much, much more. You just need to look at the file using software which can access these "properties" (as this information is called in most such programs). I've never been one of those people who write down the aperture and exposure for every shot, but with digital cameras this is done for me anyway.

No need to dread Justine's locks

2005-07-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Justine is one of the loveliest girls I've ever shot, but she's up against the fact that a lot of guys don't like dreadlocks. Dreadlocks, for many people, conjure up images of girls who never bathe, never shave their armpits or legs (or pussies, for that matter), and live on a hippie commune out in farm country.

Well, in Justine's case, she's a veterinary student (just loves animals like crazy), is anything but a hippie, and only wears dreads because, well, they look good on her, althouth, when you see her lovely face and body, you may not be thinking too much about her dreads:

She is newly featured on the twin sites, TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat in today's update.

Over on GirlsDotCom, Piper is today's update. She's a classic MILF, being a bit closer to 30 than 20 and actually having one child. She obviously stays in shape, though, and visits the tanning parlor from time to time. Her sets prove that she's one naughty mama!

Introducing Sylvie and Sybil

2005-07-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

Sylvie is a slender, deeply-tanned surfer girl who is attending a local community college. She grew up in California and had only been in Oregon a few months when I did this shoot. She is the latest update at the twin sites CoedsInHeat and TeensDotCom.

I think she's the only caucasian model I ever shot whose hair was lighter than her skin. You'll notice, she has absolutely perfect breasts.

At GirlsDotCom, Sybil is yesterday's update. A bunch of sets shot in my apartment, taking full advantage of the incredible sunlight I can get there on a sunny afternoon.

She's a tiny model with a short person's build, but she's incredibly sexy and also has fantastic boobs with great puffy nipples. In real life, she's every bit as perky as she and her breasts look!

Bella, Bella, Bella!!!

2005-06-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

"Bella" means "pretty" in Italian, and Bella (aka Bella Star) certainly is pretty. I do think that she's a bit more innocent-looking and cute in my photos than in some of the work she's done for other sites since three summers ago, when these shots were done, but I'm certainly not saying she's turned into a hag! Far from it. She has simply gone into a more glamour-oriented vein, and looks a lot less like the girl-next-door I captured in my shots. She

She is last Monday's update at GirlsDotCom. At the twin sites, TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat!!!, I put up a number of sets of a real girl-next-door, Kris. She works a checkout stand in a local grocery store and if you've ever wondered what a checkout girl has under her store uniform, well, here one instance when you can actually see!

While I'm at it, I might as well tell you who's coming up tomorrow at both sites. At GirlsDotCom, members will be seeing some fabulous photos of Tasha, a girl who probably could have been a major runway model if she'd been an inch or two taller. Take a look:

She also has a nice wild bush, which I like to see from time to time. My next update at the twin sites, TeensDotCom and Coeds In Heat!!! will be a girl-girl shoot involving two serious cuties. Chastity is a natural redhead that I shot many, many times. I have only two shoots of the brunette, Pixie, though. This shoot and a solo shoot, both of them excellent. Here is a teaser shot, but you can be sure there's plenty of pussy licking and toy use in tomorrow's sets.

A tale of two tushies

2005-06-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

I love butts. It may be my favorite part to look at on a girl. Sometimes, otherwise skinny girls can have incredible asses. Take Madison, today's update at the twin sites, TeensDotCom and CoedsInHeat, for example:

Pretty slender, right? Well, I got her into my shower stall and took this shot:

Not bad, huh?

Now, take a look at Ronnie, a Japanese-American girl with a bit more meat on the bone. this shot is in today's update at GirlsDotCom. I really love her butt as well.

BTW, this shot of Ronnie was done in a bedroom in a mansion owned by a multimillionaire photographer friend. This particular bedroom is done almost entirely in white and the effect of putting a girl in there dressed almost entirely in black (except for a very dark green and navy plaid skirt) is quite dramatic, don't you think?

Pros and cons of shooting in hotel suites

2005-06-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

I do most of my shooting in hotel suites. Occasionally, it'll be a room, but usually a room simply is too cramped and doesn't really have enough little mini-locations in the space. Even less frequently, I'll shoot in a private home or some other borrowed space, and very rarely, outdoors.

The trouble with outdoors, is that most of the available outdoors (other than people's backyards) is public parkland, meaning that there is no guarantee of privacy. I have tried driving out to the real boonies, where we go off road by foot and wander into the forest looking for places to shoot, but Oregon is a very verdant place and I've walked for a half hour through knee- or even waist-deep underbrush without finding a clearing suitable to shoot in. Screw that!

So, most of my shooting is done in hotel suites, which is a big expense. These two shoots were done in two very different hotels.

This is Lauranne. She is the latest update to the twin sites, CoedsInHeat and TeensDotCom. I presented her a few postings ago:

I shot Lauranne in a nice but not terribly expensive suite. It's not terribly evident from this photo, but the furnishings of this hotel's rooms are almost outrageously colorful. Some of the clients I shoot for love that and some hate it. When I say colorful, I mean that some of the rooms have a red/orange/yellow color scheme, while other have a pink/green/red color scheme. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, one of the problems working in colorful surroundings is light pollution, where light bouncing off the furnishings mixes in with the pure white light of your flash units. This has to be compensated for in post processing.

This is my latest update at GirlsDotCom. Her name is Tyler (and wow, look at those breasts!):

I shot her in a hotel that is easily one of the city's two or three leading hotels. I once saw Harvey Keitel eating in the main floor restaurant and I know that Presidents, Vice Presidents, Presidential candidates, and other celebrities stay there with great regularity.

The rooms are very luxurious and the color scheme is much simpler than in the other hotel: green/yellow. Unfortunately, these colors mixed with fleshtones do not produce the most pleasing looking skin, so color correction after the shoot is much more critical in this environment. Also, the ceilings are quite high, meaning that using bounce lighting works less well here than in the other hotel.

Despite all the problems, I'd rather shoot in a recognizably real-looking location instead of a building a set in a studio that rarely looks convincing.

On big and little bones

2005-06-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

This week, I have a classic big-boned girl and another one who's decidedly on the frail-looking side, and both of them are pretty hot.

Let's start with our big-boned gal, Ember. She's a graduate student studying government, but I think based on the layout I just put her up in over at GirlsDotCom, I think we can rule out a run for President of the United States (though Heaven knows, I would vote for her!

Check out the butt on this gal! I shot her twice and loved shooting her both times, because she is very bright and the conversation was extremely interesting, even as she shoved a big toy into her pussy!

In stark physical contrast to Ember is Marnie. A lovely dishwater blonde who is decidedly on the slender side. She is one of these girls who has what you might call "bedroom eyes." However, she wasn't really tired and was a very eager and creative poser.

After disappearing for about two years, she has turned up again and you can be sure I'm going to try to shoot her again.

Voicemail messages I don't return

2005-06-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

You get some strange voicemails in this business. I advertise for models, and as a result I get unusual phonecalls and voicemails. When some gets through to me directly, of course I have to deal with it, but certain sorts of voicemails I don't bother to return.

When I go to bed, my phone gets switched off. I like an uninterrupted night's sleep. In the morning, when I'm ready to start doing business, I check for voicemail, and quite frequently, I get calls I'm not going to return.

Chief among these is the local call I get between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. (I can forgive someone in Europe or Samoa or Australia for not remembering to check what time it might be here in Oregon. These calls generally come from an inebriated male and begin something like this: "I see here you're advertising for pretty girls. Well, my wife/girlfriend is a really sharp lookin'...) at about this point, I erase the voicemail. Anyone who calls you in the middle of the night or before universally recognized appropriate business hours and is under the influence of alcohol or drugs is not someone you want to let into your life.

The other category is the girl whose message goes something like this: "Hi. My name is Jennifer and if I don't come up with $200 by Friday I'm (being evicted, losing my car, not going to be able to afford tuition). I'm sure many models use the money I pay them for rent, car, or tuition payments, but I feel that if that's such an urgent reason she's willing to more or less beg me for work, she's later going to regret what she did and may later do what's happened three times now: beg me not to use her photos.

One model came to my door to pick up some prints I made for here after a shoot and asked to have the negatives as well. (This was back before I went digital.) I was astonished. "You mean, you want the modeling fee and the negatives? What do you imagine I'm supposed to get out of this transaction. Naturally, I denied her request. In retrospect, I think perhaps she thought she was posing for a perv who just wanted to be around a naked girl for the duration of the session and simply wanted some prints from the session to wank to.

So, the desperate for cash type of girl is not a girl I particularly want to work with.

I much prefer working with exhibitionists who think that getting naked for the camera is a kick.

One ebony and two ivories in today's updates

2005-06-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hallie is certainly one of the cutest girls I've ever shot, and it goes without saying then, given how few black girls I've shot, that she's one of the cutest black girls as well. She is today's update at TeensDotCom and her twin, CoedsInHeat.

She worked as a bar waitress just a few blocks from my apartment. This bas is quite the meat market and while shooting, she told me stories about the people she met while on the job. For example, said that one night this gorgeous tall gal came in, looking for all the world like a supermodel. She hung out at the bar chatting with what were obviously some friends. The next thing Hallie knew, this gal was squatting on the floor with her undies halfway down her thighs and her butt hanging out taking a piss right there on the club floor! Unbelievable!

Over at GirlsDotCom, I put one of my hottest brunettes, Pam, together with my hottest hippie, for a girl-on-girl session that blows my mind every time I see it. Indira's only mildly hippie and has incredible long legs. Witn Pam, it's those boobs which grab your attention.

Pam, a single mom, has always been one of my most popular models, and I'm sure made quite a bit of dough during her several years of modeling. Like most of my models, both girls were simply as nice as could be.

How much more different can two girls be?

2005-06-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

Marcy is today's update at GirlsDotCom. After I did these shots, I developed a need for an office helper and Marcy became my helper for nearly a year. We made a pact that since we had to spend several hours a day together, as long as she worked side by side with me, I would never see her naked again, and that's the way it was.

Marcy was actually a bit off a punker chick with somewhat goth leanings. Her hair is was obviously inspired by the great Bettie Page, though Marcy's body was a lot less plump than the 1950's pinup goddess.

Coral was today's update at the twin sites, CoedsInHeat and TeensDotCom, and what a lovely girl she is! A natural blonde, her body is the picture of perfection. Beautiful face, breasts, legs. She even has a beautiful asshole! I swear, it looks as clean as an ice cream dish.

Whereas Marcy's shots were done in my apartment and include quite a few shots taking advantage of gorgeous afternoon sunlight, Coral's shots were done in a luxury suite in one of the Vegas strip's best-known hotels.

I had to laugh a bit at Coral, because while we were shooting, she lectured me about her obsession: healthful vegetarian living (she was a vegetarian for nutritional reasons, not ethical ones). After she left, I went down to the casino area and found her waiting to be picked up by her boyfriend. She was smoking a cigarette like her life depended on it. So much for health!

I love short hairdos...why don't you?

2005-06-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

One thing these two girls have in common is rather short hairdos. Gina is yesterday's update at the twin sites TeensDotCom and CoedsInHeat. She's a slightly alternative girl with a very appealing body. I have some great shots of her using a big toy which have to e seen to be appreciated. I imagine they'll have zippers coming down all across the world.

I don't buy the idea that short hair=dyke. I think that's a thought some long hair lovers interject in order to buffalo girls into letting their hair grow long. But short hair is cute! I especially like the pixie hairdo sported by GirlsDotCom's Kelly in yesterday's update.

And just look at those perfect little breasts as well! What a cutie!

I just love redheads

2005-05-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

Two really great models to discuss here. Carla is that rarity: a Mexican-American girl who's also a natural redhead. She's the latest update at my twin sites, CoedsInHeat and TeensDotCom.

Not only does Carla have a fantastic body, but I have to tell you, she is one of the hottest chicks I've ever met. I mean hot looking as well as hot-to-trot. In my several shoots with her, she has spun the hottest yards of any model I've ever shot. For example, I gave her a rather large toy to use for one shoot and she commented that it wasn't as big as the guy she had just had sex with that morning. She also admitted to masturbating for up to two hours almost every day!

In the latest update at GirlsDotCom, another redhead is featured. Meet Stacey:

She is not a natural redhead. Rather, she's a natural blonde who dyes her hair red. One look at her will also tell you she's not a serious candidate for a Playboy centerfold. She just doesn't have that bimbo look. Instead, her hair is every so slightly punkish.

Stacey has the most infectious smile and attitude of any model I've worked with. During this shoot, she was a real clown. Now, I don't know if that was a refelction of nervousness or if that's her nature. I rather suspect she's fun all the time.

She has a slender physique. Very well-shaped legs leading up to one of the cutest little butts you'll ever see. The one surprise about her is that her boobs are rather larger than one might expect on such a finely-built body. (Not that I'm complaining!)

By the way, both of the example shots with this posting use window light, which is something I've discussed before. I like to use it when I can. Photos always look more real (as opposed to "studio production") when you use window light.

A good (red)head on a great body

2005-05-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

Today's update at GirlsDotCom is one of my personal favorites, Chastity. This girl, aside from having a stunning body, is also very smart and attends one of the toughest private colleges in the country. She is a natural redhead and can prove it by showing that "the collar matches the cuffs":

Chastity has of late become more of an artist's model, posing exclusively for art photographers, of which there are many here in Portland. However, there are quite a few softcore and two-girl photos of her circulating on the Internet, created by me and a few other photographers. She was a very active softcore model for a while.

Some thoughts on panties and fetishes in general

2005-05-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

A fetish, for our purposes, is a special fascination with a body part (or more vaguely, some aspect of the person such as their age), an article of clothing or furnishings, or a situation. We all like sex, but fetishes give our interest a bit of a "boost." If our fetish is satisfied, it makes the sex (or the contemplation thereof) all that much more exciting.

Examples of common fetishes include the big breast fetish, the teen fetish (yes, it's a fetish, too), the panty or leather fetish, the satin sheets fetish, and the bondage or "dangerous sex" fetish (not meaning "dangerous" literally, but in the sense of doing where one might be observed or caught doing it, such as in an elevator or in a stairwell).

There are probably deep psychological reasons why we have fetishes, but what all fetishes seem to have in common is that if you aren't into the fetish you either "just don't get it" or think it's probably pretty silly.

For example, the idea that a grown man with a responsible or even a powerful job would want to surrender control to a domina may be exciting to men (and women) who want to experience domination through becoming a male "bottom" or a female "top," but to the rest of us it may seem a bit silly. To be told that "It's all about trust" and so on is all well and good, but for those of us who don't get it, it just seems silly.

For me, the fetish for giant hooters seems a bit funny. I like a smallish breast myself. I can't explain why any more than the guy who like gigantic ones can. Perhaps both of us would have an explanation after years of psychotherapy.

Anyway, some guys like the old "tighty whities" such as these white granny pants, worn by Oksana, a Russian beauty, and the latest addition to GirlsDotCom just added in today's update:

Now, there are also fetishes for lace panties, frequently with the additional requirement that they be black. You'll find a fetish for just about any kind of panty you can imagine: lacy ones, see-through ones, black ones, thongs, granny pants, and on and on and on.

I'm sure a lot of guys just like the way a girl looks when she spreads her legs wearing panties, so some of you find this shot almost excruciatingly hot:

This is Jerrie, the latest update at the twin sites, CoedsInHeat and TeensDotCom. Since she's a redhead, I might as well mention that many guys have a "thing" for redheads. Whenever you hear that someone has a "thing" for something in a sexual context, it is almost always a fetish.

While fetishes are weird in a way, so is sex if you stop to think about it, and fetishes sure make sex more interesting, not to mention, fun! (As though sex could be even more fun than it is already!)

On the importance of backdrops

2005-05-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Where you take a photo has as much to do with the impact of the photo as does the model. Today's update at GirlsDotCom shows the long and lanky gothic goddess Luna in her small rented house, whereas today's update at the twin sites, CoedsInHeat and TeensDotCom show tiny little waif Poppy in one of the city's most prestigious hotels.

When I first worked with Luna, she was a wee bit punk with a very short "alternative" hairdo. When next invited to work with her, she had turned into a full-blown goth.

For those of you who are totally out of it, "goth" comes from "gothic" and the goth movement or personal style is essentially a subset of the punk thing, and you'll find many goths still showing some punk leanings to greater or lesser degrees. Whereas the punk thing is full of active defiance for "The Man" and the straight world, Goths ponder the beauty of death. Want to hear some goth music? It can range from Nine Inch Nails to Portishead to Dead Can Dance.

Luna is a physically gorgeous girl who has had her share of issues, I guess (you'll notice some scars on her wrists when you look at her photos). However, she does like modeling and I like working with her. Her problems have never been evident while working.

She proposed we shoot at her home so that it would take as little time as possible, since she had a commitment in the early evening. When I got there, I found that her house was one of those built by their owners in the depression era. And by this I mean, "built without benefit of an architect."

As you'll see in the following shot, either Luna is seven feet tall (she is actually about 5'10") or the house was designed for munchkins or, more likely, the builder put very little thought into how high in the wall a window should be.

Adding to the effect is the chair, which I grant is a bit on the small side. Between the size of the chair and the placement of the window, our sense of scale is totally lost and we have no idea what the hell is going on.

Now, let's take a look at tiny little Poppy, who is almost dwarfed by the voluminous bathrobe supplied by the hotel. Poppy is in no way an upper-crusty gal, and in fact, whether or not she actually ever lived in a trailer park, she came from sufficiently humble beginnings that some would call her "trailer trash." This prejudice aside, she is actually one of the sweetest, nicest models I've ever worked with. A real doll. Despite her underclass origins, if you put her in a sumptuous setting, she looks like a million bucks.

One of the reasons I don't have a studio is that my clients won't buy that sort of work. They like settings with the ring of reality. Besides, can you imagine the expense and difficulty of recreating this scene in a studio? A studio set would almost inevitably be a very shorthand version of this one at best, unless the job were a very high-paying one. Now, I generally have been taking photos first and selling them later, so I don't have the luxury of drawing upon a client's funds for expenses while putting a shoot together.

Lugging my gear from location to location is a major pain, as is setting it up and taking it down, not to mention all of the lighting problems that need to be solved, such as how to light a scene such as Poppy's where there is no room for an umbrella reflector. The lighting ended up being fill and bounce, with the bounce coming from a flashhead mounted on a small tripod which itself was set on the towel rack over the bathtub. If you look at the towels above her head, you'll see they are getting plenty of light due to the flashhead placement.

Anyway, it's the challenge of dealing with all of these problems which makes location shooting interesting, and I'm the kind of guy who finds it hard to do anything if it isn't totally fascinating.

The unexpected resurgence of pubic hair

2005-05-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

One thing that really strikes you if you go back and look at skin magazines of the '70's and '80's is that models back then had bushes. And sometimes they had big bushes that ran up their tummies toward their navels and down their inner thighs a bit as well.

Then, someone got out the razor and/or wax and suddenly models looked as hairless as the day they were born. Well, hair is in again and hardly a pubic patch was to be found anywhere. The assumption seemed to be that pubic hair was disgusting and that nobody wanted to see it.

It turns out that this couldn't have been further from the truth. The first to realize this was Amateur and Teen Kingdom when they created their ATK Natural and Hairy sub-site.

The latest update at GirlsDotCom features a 2-girl series with Jyllian, a baldy, and Carrie, a gal with a very profuse and dark bush. She's and example of how good a full bush can look on a girl. She does a "bikini trim" to limit hair which might appear outside the panty area, but other than that, it's a warm, damp jungle down there, and I don't know about you, but that dark patch gives me a little surge of adrenaline I don't get when seen a baldy's little camel toe. Here's a shot showing the two gals in action:

It goes without saying that both of these gals have breast material to spare as well, but if you can take your eyes off that for a minute, check out that dark triangle, will ya!

This photo also shows my use of window light, which I try to use whenever I can. I rarely shoot in studios. I'm more of a location photographer. However, the more professional your lighting, the more you can make a real location look like a studio set, so by having light from a window, or better, including a view out the window, you let the viewer know these are real girls in a real place.

I always get a kick out of looking at a studio shot with a window in it, because there is never enough light coming through the window. Even on a fairly gray day, the light outside far exceeds the light coming from my flashheads. On a sunny day, when the light touches the skin directly, it blasts it to white, which is a wonderful affect when used correctly. At any rate, I think the light coming from behind the models adds much to the above shot, don't you?

Okay, back to pussy hair. ATK Natural and Hairy pioneered the "genre" of "hairy girls," we have others jumping on the band wagon. Take Hairy Pussy Cuties, for example. There are now literally dozens of hairy sites and hairy girl tgp's.

Bush is back bigtime!

This naked "teen" isn't as young as she looks

2005-04-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Kitty became the latest update to GirlsDotCom today, and some great shots of Jasmine were just added to the twin sites, Coeds In Heat and TeensDotCom.

I've worked with Kitty since she was 18. She was 22 in these shots and recently turned 23. The weird thing is...this chick simply doesn't age! At 22, she looks virtually identical to herself back at age 18 (and, I presume 16, though I never knew her when she was that young). Girls like Kitty raise a very scary prospect for people who peruse erotica featuring young women. Government prosecutors have a curious ploy of calling in an "expert" who looks at photos of a girl and then declares "She could be under 18" and then all of a sudden the burden effectively reverses and the treasured burden the state has to prove its case fades away almost entirely. I had been hoping the current administration, which seems to love catering to the religious nut case right would be voted out of office, but such was not the case, so watch out!

Compare Kitty at 18:

with her at 22:

and tell me if you see any obvious signs of aging. Like all girls, she's changed her hair a bit (made it a bit more colorful) but otherwise it's the same girl hardly changed a bit!

Jasmine is another little gal who lives within driving distance of Portland, OR, where I work. She's going to beauty/cosmetology school and is always experimenting on her hair and nails. The shots I just added were done in a hotel room that sounded really good in the description, but when I got there it was all in baby blue yellow and pink pastels and almost made me physically ill. Oh, well. It was too late to change hotels, so I did my best and got some good shots out of a location I'll never work in again.

I can't tell you how wonderful it is at age 58 to be working with such beautiful, bright, and overall nice young women. I truly have the job dreams are made of!

Some misapprehensions about nude models

2005-04-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I'll bump into an anti-porn feminist (yes, Virginia, there are pro-porn feminists...more on them later).

"You're just taking advantage of girls being pimped out or needing money for their next fix." The truth is, most of my girls are college girls or girls with everyday service industry jobs. If you take a look at my models and those of, say, Galitsin, Met-Art, or even CrazyBabe, the one main impression you'll come away with is that these are pretty healthy-looking girls. Take Seychelle, for example:

Does she appear to have missed many meals in order to get her next fix? In reality, many of the girls I work with are vegetarians or even vegans, quite a few workout, and the probably abuse their bodies quite a bit less than you do.

Now, I can't speak firsthand about other sites, but I find my models through advertising (see my publication How to Recruit Models for Nude & Erotic Photography), and if I get a phonecall from anyone other than the model, my usual response is to insist on talking to the model herself if at all possible. If she's not by the phone, I'll give out some basic information about working with me (pay, etc.), but I won't work with her until I've talked to her. That way, I can get a feel for how enthusiastic she is about modeling. The instant I get a feeling I'm talking to "Mr. Junior Pimpguy" (as I call this type of guy), I'm gone.

More than once, the male has given a response like, "If you want to work with her, you'll have to go through me!" at which point I generally say, "Well, then, I don't want to work with her" and I hang up. I like working with girls who speak for themselves, make their own choices, and are their own boss.

For the same reason, I don't get my models through agencies. Most of the model agents I've run into in my career have been turds or blowhards. I remember once when two agents were trying to get my business and one accused the other of being a crook while the second one accused the first of raping a model. Their egos are unimaginably huge and they'll say things like, "Do you know who I am? I can make or break you!" Yeah, right!

Do models frequently have problems with relationships? Boy, do they! But so do most of the other girls in their age group. They may have marginally more or less than their non-modeling peers. To my knowledge, no study has been done on the subject, but as elsewhere in life, certain feminists let neither the truth nor the lack of evidence stop them from forming a firm opinion. All I can say is that a gal doesn't have to be a nude model to have a boyfriend who spends his afternoons watching TV and drinking beer while dreaming of being the next big rock star or DJ.

Now, as to pro-porn feminists (see, I remembered), I won't provide specific links but you'll learn a lot more if you just Google around names like Camille Paglia ("Feminist porn means you remove all the things you don't like. You censor porn to make it subscribe or conform to a prefab ideology. It's diluted. You remove all the lust from it. This idea that porn has to conform to the ethics we live in real life is ridiculous") or Annie Sprinkle in an interview (Interviewer: "Do you regard porn as an 'art form'"? Sprinkle: "Well it can be and it can not be, just like food can be an art form and it can poison you"...my view exactly). Other names to Google: Nadine Strossen and Candida Royale. Beyond them, Google key words like "sex positive" or "pro porn" along with "feminist" and see what you get.

Even though I don't like the word "porn" because it's frequently negative and judgmental and etymologically means "pictures or writings of whores" (and my models generally are just college girls, not prostitutes), I can't change the way the rest of the world uses the term. I much prefer the term "erotica."

I know you like pictures, so I'll leave you with an image of one of the healthiest looking models I ever worked with, Rebekka:

Now not to recruit a nude model

2005-04-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

I have to laugh when I read mainstream photography books aimed at photographers who are not doing nudes when I get to their chapter on how to find models. Normally, they recommend going out and getting a business card printed that looks something like this:

The advice continues to keep these cards with you, and when you see a pretty waitress, countergirl, or coed, introduce yourself in a gentlemanly way, give her the card, and tell her you'd like to photograph her.

This may work for recruiting non-nude models, but it is 99% doomed to fail when recruiting nude models. Why? Because nudity is a big step for a girl and if you approach her, for all she knows, you're a stalker who's been following and observing her for a number of months.

It soon enters one's mind to hand out cards to nudie bar dancers, but the problem with this is that just because a model is willing to dance nude, it's fallacious to assume that she wants nude photos of her in circulation.

It's much better to let the model approach you. How is that possible? By advertising. In my How to Recruit Models for Nude & Erotic Photography, I outline proven techniques that actually work to have girls calling you. How well do these techniques work? Well, using these techniques, I've shot a good 250 models or more in my career.

Equipment collectors vs. photographers

2005-04-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

I've run into amateur photographers who have a lot more equipment than I do. They even have well-equipped home studios, except that their studios are rather small. I don't have a studio and prefer to work in locations, either outdoors or (for the naughtier material) in private homes or rented hotel suites.
Hobby photographers and "photo bugs" tend to think that buying lots of expensive equipment is the key to good photography. Me, I've come to realize that you can take the same photo with a Minolta as you can with a Nikon. The differences may be measurable, but they are not really perceptible.

A real photographer—by which I mean someone destined to be a photographer—has to have an "eye" for a good image. All the equipment in the world can't substitute for that. I've seen fellas with $10K-$20K or more in equipment whose images may be sharply focused and well exposed but are boring as hell and don't really do anything for me or anyone else. Think of all the good that money would have done donated to a charity!

Now, I have a pretty good camera. It's a Nikon D100. It takes wonderful pictures. The cameras I used before were all Olympus C-line cameras (e.g., Olympus C-4040) and they took wonderful pictures as well, so you don't really need to have an SLR to shoot for the web.

But you do need talent if you are to succeed.

Welcome to all interested in nude photography

2005-04-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

I earn my entire living from photographing women, mostly nude, and I know there's a lot of interest in this sort of thing from photographers, models, and the just plain curious.

The money comes in from several sources: 1) I own and operate several membership sites featuring my photography; 2) I do photo assignments for a number of sites using the sort of photography I do; 3) I sell the photos I developed for my own sites to other sites operating in similar markets; 4) I sell four nude photography-related booklets over the Internet; and 5) I make money referring models I work with or otherwise encounter to various producers.

I have done somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000-250,000 photos, most of them nude. A small proportion of them are "art nudes." The rest are "commercial erotica." Some would call the latter category pornography, but people throw the term "pornography" around like it's neutral descriptor, whereas it's a judgmental term, like "scum" or "trash.

If erotica is made for men to masturbate to, thus making them pornography, romance novels must be pornography, then, because women masturbate to romance novels. Erotica can be both sexually exciting and beautiful or artistically valuable.

What is the difference between art nudity and commercial erotica. Here are two examples from my own work:

Of course, these are two specific examples, and in my own work as well as in the wider world, these categories encompass a wide variety of image types.

If you'd like to see some examples of my work, here are a few links to sites using my photography exclusively:

GirlsDotCom
21st Century Pinups
The Illustrated Girl
Afterglow Erotic Photography

If you're interested in finding out more about the nude photography-related booklets I sell, their titles are How to Recruit Models for Nude & Erotic Photography, Nude & Erotic Photography: Getting Started on a Budget, Selling Nude & Erotic Photography to the World Wide Web, and The Adult Website Construction Set. You can find out more about them by clicking on this link.