How many photographs is enough?

After Lin’s last post and the comments that have been left I think I should say some words on the subject of Lin’s decision.

I have been shooting Lin in the studio for nearly a year with most of the shots being in the form of the simple figure study. We have made maybe 1000 shots of varying levels of success. In recent months, every time we did a shoot Lin would be disappointed, not because the images weren’t good, but because they weren’t getting better than those she already had.

Now 1000 shots of anyone on a grey backdrop with 2-3 lights is going to cover just about everything you can do with those limit variables, and we have done pretty much everything I can think of. So to my mind it was time for us to do something else. To take better photographs of Lin the change that’s needed is in style rather than just taking more pictures.

I want to expand into other areas and Lin wants good photographs. I think this is a win-win situation and does not mean seeing Lin as “not beautiful enough”. I hope you will agree.

All I can say is “Watch this space”, we have good things planned.

Here is my favourite picture of Lin, one of the first we shot. I have it printed 16x12 and framed above my desk where I can enjoy the beauty of Lin when she’s not sitting here with me.

The Ravages of Age

This is an immensely painful post to write. I have decided to discontinue my studio fine-art nude modelling.

I have been deeply unhappy with the quality of images in my portfolio for a while now.
When I first started nude modelling it made me feel ecstatic, happy and fulfilled. I was proud that I had managed to conquer the hang-ups about my body (facial and otherwise). I felt really beautiful.
But time and a year’s studio nude photography have had a creeping and negative effect on me.
Now when I see the images of me nude in the studio, I just feel old, and not proud of it either.

My nude modelling in our new studio has become an unspoken undercurrent between Rich and myself. Neither of us wants to argue about it but he no longer wants to shoot me nude in the studio. This is because I constantly moan about how nude images make me look unflattering, old, saggy. Losing 8 pounds in weight hasn’t helped either. I am pretty scrawny, and although I feel better physically for the weight loss, my body now resembles more of a mature fashion model rather than the typical fine art-nude physique. I don’t blame Rich for not feeling inspired to shoot me. I wouldn’t want to shoot a model who was depressed about her figure either.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe I look great for someone who is nearly 40 and who is facially paralysed. However I can’t help but compare myself to the usual twenty-something models that Rich shoots, despite my best efforts not to do so. Obviously there is no way I could look that good, but that’s not the point. Looking that good was never my intention anyway, but I am increasingly conscious that Fluffytek is first and foremost designed to be a business, and fine-art nude images of me won’t help his studio portfolio any! Youth and beauty sells. A sad fact but unfortunately true.

There are of course a few beautiful 40+ nude models on MM and good for them ! However for me personally, there comes a point where I have to say enough is enough and I must regretfully call it a day. I may still do environmental nudes or shoot with more natural lighting, if the mood takes me. But no more shooting me nude "fine-art style" in the studio. Fine art studio photography is a particularly unforgiving science. The fine-art nude style is all about shooting form and lighting. The levels of perfection of form required simply are not suited to my physique.

Rich has been trying to encourage me to become interested in fashion and fetish….I think I might enjoy the fetish side of modelling more, and I am also considering this. I would also love to do some more adventurous weird and wonderful art type shots. Rich is keen on this too…..he has a phenomenal imagination so expect some pretty unusual images of me in the future.

I do love to model. It makes me happy and it is a lot of fun. Plus a happy model makes a much more effective muse. I know there is a modelling niche for me out there. I just haven’t found it yet.

I was hoping to extend my studio fine art-nude modelling until my 40th birthday next year, and go out in a blaze of glory, but ‘tis not meant to be.

How do I really honestly feel about this ? Unbearably sad yes, but I know this is the right thing to do.

Here is an image of me, taken last week with the most beautiful feline model of them all, my lady Tiggs.

Blofeld's cat

At long time before D Brian Nelson got his cute little cat, I had long harboured a secret desire for a shoot with a Bond cat, lovingly entitled “The Blofeld's cat shoot”

Yes, I admit it. I am a Bond fanatic and a mad cat lady. (The neighbours' kids have called me that). My family is not complete unless it contains at least 3 cats, preferably more. At one point I had six, and Richard threatened divorce.

Recently I have been nurturing a dream of a nude shoot with a white cat i.e. Blofeld's cat.

You know the name - you know the cat. Blofeld - well known for being the bad guy in six James Bond movies and his white cat, behind which he normally hides from the cameras. That cat is my icon. beautiful, sophisticated, cuddly, evil. The epitome of everything a James Bond heroine should be.

Now I am very sophisticated, cuddly and evil myself, and because a couple of months ago we were down to only one cat in the family (totally unacceptable), I decided to increase the family by purchasing another couple of kitties, of which one had to be PURE WHITE to fulfil my dream of “The Blofeld’s cat shoot”.

I researched cats on the internet, and even got as far as reserving a beautiful and unique white pedigree Norwegian Forest kitten. This kitten would have been vastly expensive but Rich was O.K. with that. He understands my needs completely – what a guy. This is part of the reason I don’t mind buying him frighteningly expensive camera equipment. Who says a Hasselblad costs too much ? Although we’ll have to save up for that one. A digital Hasselblad costs 2 years school fees, but what the hell. I am everly hopeful that a Hasselblad may actually result in me looking more beautiful in his photographs, although I suspect that in actual fact the reverse may be the case. (The camera never lies. Plus we may not actually shoot with the camera- we may merely stick it on a tripod and worship it instead)

But I digress. Back to cats. Well, you can guess what happened next.

I made the mistake of going to the local cat shelter, and then fell utterly in love with two six year old giant cats, who had been there unwanted for four months and who happened to be sisters and apparently brilliant ratters to-boot. So we ended up with two moth-eaten moggies, not remotely Blofeld-like. They are not white and I have yet to see evidence of a single rat. Plus they aren’t very keen on the camera and are way too scared to go out and do their job of rat catching (we are in the wilds of Eastern England, hence have a giant mutant rat problem).

Yes, our cats are cowards. In actual fact of course, Blofeld’s cat was a consummate actor but also a coward too. In “You Only Live Twice “ Blofeld's cat was so scared by the loud noises in the finale that it was only found several days later cowering in the rafters of the volcano set. Yep, that’s my cats.

I did try to introduce the black and white cat to the camera, and was totally lacerated for my efforts (and I have the scars to prove it). But here is the more docile and cuddly of the sisters. Alas not white, but no less cute for that. She’s a darling. Her name is Tiggs.

My dream lives……

35mm, Medium Format, DPI; how good is good enough?

There was a thread on a forum yesterday where a user of a Canon 20D was arguing that no one needed medium format (or for that matter anything of higher resolution) because his 20D did everything that was needed. Lots of people bandied about opinion but no one actually gave any physical reasons why what appears to be an idiotic statement was actually wrong.

Before deciding if anything is good enough, you have to define good enough for what. I did a quick search and came up with the following standard print specification in terms of DPI for different print media:

a) Web: 72dpi
b) Colour newspaper ad: 150 to 200 dpi
c) Glossy magazine: 266 to 300 dpi
d) High end printer: 300dpi
e) High-end coffee-table book using stochastic screening: up to 350 dpi.
f) human eye resolution (high contrast) : 600+dpi

Let’s take a look at what the 20D offers in terms of image. The sensor has a RAW native resolution of 3504 × 2336. If we convert this into the image size created for various print resolutions we get

72dpi - 48”x32”
200dpi - 17”x11”
300dpi - 11”x7”
350dpi - 10”x6”
600dpi - 6”x4”

So this sets the maximum image size we can achieve for any given resolution. You can see that for a good quality print the maximum size you can print is 11x7.

Let’s assume that you are going to do your own printing and have an A4 printer which will create prints of 12”x8”. We can see that we will get just under 300dpi. This is very good and anyone would be happy with that. Try A3+ at 19”x13” and you have a resolution of 184dpi which is passable if you’re not too close. If you have a larger printer such as an Epson Stylus Pro 7800 (A2) which produces 24” on the narrow side you have a resolution of 97dpi. This is well below the resolution of a newspaper colour print and I doubt if anyone would be happy with it. We are, after all, trying to produce high quality photographs.

If we bump the quality a little and go to the 5D (4368 x 2912) we get the following resolutions: A4=364, A3+=229, A2=121. This is good for A4 and A3+ but poor for larger sizes.

We now move to consider medium format film and digital. The H2D (22mp) produces a resolution of 4080x5440. This gives the DPI for our prints of A4=453, A3+=286, A2=170. We can go to 39mp (5412x7216) which gives an image that’s 24x18@300dpi. So that’s about £20000 of camera to get 300dpi at A2 (ouch).

Let’s take a look at medium format film. If you take a good film scanner you will scan at round 3200dpi which will give a scan with a resolution of 7559x7559 for a 6x6 film. This exceeds the resolution of a £20000 camera and for large prints will produce outstanding results.

So at the end of the day the 20D is a fine camera and if you only want to print small images its fine for the job. However, there is no way that it can compete with a medium format if you want to print above A4, and for a large format printer the camera would be next to useless. For the ultimate in quality you would want a fine grained film scanned at a very high resolution.

Maybe its time for me to consider a medium format film camera, a developing tank and a good scanner!

The photo is of beautiful Linx shot last month.

Model Skin

O.K. Here is the post that I said I would never do, and the one Rich least wants me to do.

Confession time.
I am a nutrition bore and health food junkie.

Anyone who has looked at my profile will see that I’m one of those health nutrition bores. I have dedicated practically every spare waking moment of the last 7 years to researching the link between nutrition, health and cancer. I have read more medical and research papers than you can possibly imagine. I really know far too much on this particular topic.

The last 7 years of research has led me into CRON (calorie restriction with optimum nutrition) and Life Extension (through nutrition) in a serious way. Yes I sincerely believe that we can extend our lifespan through monitoring and modifying what we put in our mouths. CRON is the only scientifically proven way of extending lifespan. For anyone who is interested, I recommend Beyond the 120 Year Diet by Roy L. Walford or Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever by Ray Kurzweil

As I said, I’m totally barmy. You should feel sorry for Rich for having to eat the delicious healthy stuff I cook.

I’m not going to blog much about the specifics of diets here, because there are better books and blogs that do it for me, but suffice to say that the absolute truth is:

1. Good Quality, young-looking smooth skin is essential for Art-Nude modelling
2. What you shove in your mouth directly impacts the quality of your skin


This is basically translated as GIGO or garbage in, garbage out. If you eat total crap, you will get crappy skin. And guess what ? It goes straight to your face and makes you look much older than you are.

Yes this can be fixed with Photoshop. Kate Moss, for example, has appalling skin (pre-Photoshop) and bloody amazing skin afterwards. The poor photographer, but hey, great Photoshop skills!

Richard spends a frightening amount of time Photoshopping skin quality, particularly the faces. It is his most common complaint (usually only complaint) with regard to models. The quality of skin is the first thing he looks for.

We have met some delightful models who are incredibly beautiful, amazing bodies and so forth, but how much more radiant and youthful would they look if they ate healthy food all the time ? Of course, many of them do, but quite a few do not. (I politely ask, in case you are wondering how I know).

Hey, I understand. I love food and God knows I’m no beauty myself. Boy, do I require photoshop or what ? But not my skin, at least not beyond correcting the skin for past surgical scarring. So at least I’m a “time-saved-in-Photoshop” model even if I am a relatively aged model myself.

Eating healthily is not rocket science. Any Zone-ish, natural food-type diet will do the trick. Lots of protein, extra lean meat, fish, fresh veggies, plus small amounts of low fat dairy (if you must), and some basic supplements will give you amazing skin. Just stay off the processed food O.K?

Please. For the sake of your health and your modelling career.
I guarantee you that this will make you feel better, improve your mood, improve your sex-drive, give you amazing skin and will almost certainly extend your lifespan.

And I guarantee you something else : photographers will love you.

Landscape photography – Art or snapshot.

Last week I went to a photography talk from a gentleman who had been involved in photography since the 40's. He has taught in colleges and has some impressive work, most of which is landscapes or buildings. At various point in the evening he would hold up and image and the audience would murmur its approval of a great shot, at this point he would stop and say "I didn’t create the landscape, it was already there. I just happened to be in the right place to point the camera, press the shutter and capture it!"

He described in great detail some of the techniques he has used/developed for printing. Some of these techniques would take a week or more and involve all sorts of strange processes. This was a man who felt that the art in photography was not what you captured, although that was important, but the way in which you printed and presented the image.

At the end of the talk, he described a process that he had not been able to perfect even after 20 years of trying. He then held up a photograph that was perfectly finished and looked exactly like what he was trying to produce. I'm sure I could hear sadness when he described how he had created the effect in 5 minutes in his digital photo editor.

This is not to belittle landscape photographers. A master of the zone system who goes to the right location and waits for hours for the right lighting is creating art, but it is the art of the process.

Digital photography has all but removed the art from the 'non-creative' side of photography. It is now possible to buy a digital camera, take a decent photo and print it in a style that would have taken a master printer a week to produce. The best landscapes I now see are the ones that take more effort than driving in your car in the countryside, or going on holiday, but they are still not art. You can use a master’s technique to capture the landscape image, print the picture in an artistic way in a darkroom, but the image itself is not art.

On the other hand, there is art in photography, but it’s in the eye of the photographer. You have to create the image; it must gel in the mind and find its way into the camera. In this respect photography becomes more like a traditional art where the canvas fills from the photographers mind, not just what they happen to find in front of them. If the image starts outside the mind, then no matter how good the photograph it is simply great technique, if the image starts in the heart or mind, then it is art.

You might think then that photographing the nude should not be considered art. I would agree that there the vast majority of nude images are not art. However, when photographing nudes the model and the photographer can get into a kind of choreographed dance where each responds sympathetically to the feedback of the other. The technique of photography is still present but it becomes secondary to the dance. This is the point where the images go from being good photographs to being art.

Photographic art is finding a way to use technique to capture an inner vision. Of course art is subjective, I think the image for this post it art and fashion. You may disagree!

Day Job Blues

I've got the day job blues.

Long days working on the next product release. Too much code, early mornings, late nights. At the end of it I'm too tired to take photographs, too tired to think, too tired to post.

I did take some time to change the front page of the web site. I'm planning to redesign the website to make it look a little more polished and inviting, but that's a project for another day. I've also written a photoshop javascript plug-in to generate all the image formats I use in the blog and website. Now I can drop the files I want to publish onto a droplet and get the full size, thumbnail and blog size images created automatically. Saves quite a bit of time.

I've finished some more shots of Claire Louisa, pictured here. The digital dust is gone and I'm making sure I'm happy with the BW conversions.

I think I need to find some TFP models to try my hand at fashion. I took a look at the Lithium Picnic site and while his nudes don't speak to me, the fashion shots did.

Fluffytek and the Comfy Bear Zone

My 2 year old daughter has a computer game called “Jump Ahead Baby” which is one of those frightful educational exercises that teaches you to read, count, use the mouse, develop the shooting reflexes of a professional Counterskrike gamer etc.

A cute brown female teddy bear character guides you through the game, singing in a high pitched stuck-up English accent, telling you what you need to do. One of the exercises is to dress the teddy bear, to make her feel happy. She sings “If you help me pick the right clothes, I’ll be a comfy bear!” Our daughter is utterly obsessed with the game, and worships her big brother’s teddy, which closely resembles the nauseating little bear in the game.

After three kids and this game, it is firmly entrenched in our psyche. We go to sleep humming the annoying little tune, and dreaming of dressing little teddies in pretty pink outfits, slinky pyjamas and black PVC dominatrix costumes. No, no. Before you report us to the authorities, no PVC fetish gear is ACTUALLY in the game yet (Market niche anyone?), and the game is entirely “Comfy bear” for the little ones.

Why am I spending so long on this irrelevant drivel ?

Well, the “comfy bear” feeling is essential to what we do. Like the game, it is very important to Rich that he makes potential models, clients, and most importantly, me, feel comfy bear with the type of images we do. Safe, secure, pretty, soft, fluffy, feminine, beautiful. The very essence of Fluffytek itself.

We registered the domain name Fluffytek.com some eleven years ago when we set up our computer software company (which has nothing to do with fluffies incidentally). Rich was the very manifestation of the computer geek at the time – a brilliant software engineer who spent every waking moment on the computer (alas he still does) to the exclusion of all else, including me. I used to say that the computer was his “Other woman”, his floosie and his fluffy. I even named our first company after this. We both instinctively felt that “Fluffytek” would be the name for the sister company, so we registered the domain name all those years ago. It wasn’t until last year, when he returned to the photography, that we finally realised what the name “Fluffytek” was destined to be for. So this is why “Fluffytek” has its name. And this is why we operate in the comfy bear zone of ourselves, our clients and our models.

This doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to do anything “Edgy or controversial” and it doesn’t mean that the style of what we do isn’t going to grow and change. But it does mean that we will be pacing our evolution, thus protecting the personal comfy bear zone of Rich’s fluffies, including me.

Right, I’m off to browse black PVC Dominatrix outfits on Ebay. In the meantime, here is the lovely, sensual, and soft Claire Louisa from a recent shoot. The essence of comfy bear.

The Hotel Room Nudes Appreciation Society

We have an early morning routine in our house. After we get up, feed the tribe of animals and kids and finish the morning chores, we sink into our chairs in the office with a large VAT of coffee and catch up on the Blogs.
Top of the list is always the latest post from D Brian Nelson’s Hotel Room Nudes

We are on UK time here, and D Brian Nelson often posts very early in the day San Diego time, so there is always a fresh blog entry ready for us with our first coffee of the day. It has become as familiar a routine as our favourite dose of connoisseur coffee, and no less enjoyable.

D Brian Nelson is an exceptional photographer. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past eight months, his blog is about…..you guessed it….nudes shot mainly in hotel rooms across the world whilst on his travels.

Such is his reputation, ladies will drop everything (and I mean that literally) to shoot with him, and he never seems to have a shortage of young and beautiful maidens who are willing to bear all just for the privilege of saying that they have been photographed by the Great Man Himself.

He is very much a purist and shoots only film, and his genius is such that he takes stunning photographs with only standard hotel room lighting. And the photos are bloody good. A fusion of light, beauty and emotion. No Photoshop, no professional lighting kit, no studio (well, rarely). The personalities of both the model and the photographer radiate through every pore of the images. Every picture tells a story. And if that isn’t enough, he accompanies each photograph with an account of the image, plus maybe a tale of his colourful exploits, or maybe his philosophical insights on a wide variety of topics.
It’s like reading a daily chapter of your favourite art book, or tuning into your favourite soap (not that his blog entries resemble anything as tacky as a soap opera, but they do get addictive after a while).
Unsurprisingly he has a large following, and his blog is deservedly one of the most popular of the nude photography blogs.

Before this sounds too much like a sycophantic ass-kissing exercise, let me say that from a heterosexual female professional accountant’s point of view, some of his images are mildly controversial in places. It is not unusual for me to stumble bleary-eyed from bed into the office and spit my early morning coffee all over the computer. Some of the images are a little hard to greet you before breakfast. Models spanking (one of his hobbies!) or masturbating can provoke a little beverage-spitting first thing in the morning. Rich, being a guy, just smiles and enjoys them, but hey, I’m a 40 year old repressed business woman, and the images can delight and repulse me in equal amounts.

D Brian Nelson occasionally does trophy shots, for example, in a recent one where he photographed himself er…..groping the model’s breast….provoked a reaction of me storming through the house yelling to Rich “If you ever do that I’ll nail your balls to the wall!”. Rich looked rather alarmed at the outburst, raised an eyebrow and sighed “What’s Don done now?”
Likewise the model tied to a toilet is a little outside my personal comfort zone. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t see the art involved in the shot. And D Brian Nelson would be pleased, I think, because he is the consummate rebel and loves to provoke a reaction.

The Man Himself professes to be all about the “naked chix” and “Have I mentioned lately how wonderful it is to have a pair of large young breasts pushing into my back?” but I suspect that this is 80% bullshit and bravado, and he’s simply too professional a photographer for it to be all about the laydeez. Some of his images are truly haunting (see his Night Photographs ) and reveal that underneath all the glamorous stories of hot-tubs, boozy nights out and sexually charged photoshoots (of which I’m very jealous, by the way), D Brian Nelson is in actual fact really rather a teddy bear, and is sometimes just as bruised and lonely as the rest of us.

But to be able to see this aspect of himself through his images is genius. Pure Art.

Needless to say, if he is ever in the UK (and if he ever forgives me for this post), we will invite him (nay, insist) to sample some Norfolk hospitality for a night, and yes, we can throw in a beer and beautiful young naked chick too.



The lovely Angela, in one of my favourite images, reproduced with kind permission of D. Brian Nelson