The Love-Fest

O.K. I'm posting it anyways, and to hell with the consequences, namely either flaming, or total silence...

For the last year I have spent an inordinate amount of time on Model Mayhem, web-models forums, photosig and the like, chatting and networking with like-minded souls and exploring the vast world of internet modelling and photography.

And this world really IS vast. Model Mayhem for example, has approximately 436,000 members at last count. That’s nearly half a million models, photographers, MUA’s, stylists and wannabe versions of the categories. You don’t need any qualifications to be one of these – enthusiasm and desire are enough. Anyone, even myself, can realise their dream, or delude themselves that they can. Whereas maybe a few hundred of these folks possess the actual capacity for talent and the potential ability to produce fantastic art, the majority are just wannabes like myself, and there’s no way in hell they will ever achieve their dream of ultimate fortune and glory. And yet they kid themselves that they can. They don’t want to hear the truth, they don’t want to hear honesty, they just want to be told that they are fantastic, beautiful, talented, gifted artists. They just wanna be loved.

Although I'm as guilty of this as the next model, I've been re-evaluating my thoughts on the matter.
I am tired of it all. Really, completely bone-tired of this fantasy world, the hypocrisy, the “being in with the in-crowd”, the having to be so bloody NICE, no matter what I really think and feel. If I see a crappy snapshot of a young model, taken on her home instant camera, where she’s just got up in the morning, looks like shit, malnourished, and so ill and starved that frankly she should be in hospital, even though I feel genuine concern for her wellbeing, then nevertheless I still have to say instead, “Darling, you look gorgeous. You’re a babe! How beautiful you are!

These are the unspoken rules of internet modelling. You have to be nice, kind and supportive, no matter what. Sod honesty. It’s not important. You have to be polite at all costs, you have to network in order to be part of the “in-crowd”. Say what they say, dress (or undress) like they do, shoot in the style that they shoot, do lighting as they do lighting. You have to fit in and BELONG. You have to LIE.

But hang on a minute, acting like this makes me what I most despise. It’s no different than me trying to join the alpha-mother/yummy mummy set, no different from Richard trying to fit in at the local camera club and having to praise as “high art”, those awful snapshots by members of the committee which frankly should never have seen the light of day, all in the name of being polite, kind and sucking up to the right people.

Now there’s nothing wrong with being encouraging, or with kindness. Everyone’s art is different after all, and is a matter of subjective opinion. I get this. But there’s a fine line between kindness and sycophancy. And this line is crossed every single day in the online modelling world.

Kind is good. Everyone has been unbelievably kind to me over the last year. They’ve praised my images even when they plainly suck, told me to keep on going with a particular style, when God knows I should never have shot like that in the first place. I’m grateful for their kindness and encouragement, and they are lovely people who are generous by nature and who mean well, but it’s all an illusion, a fantasy. And we are all perpetuating that fantasy. I know some of my images are terrible (I’m learning) but I even get praised for those too.

By all means praise me for my courage to attempt internet modelling when I’m disabled, because that is genuine feeling, but I would far rather people were honest with me, rather than this continual “Love, love, kiss, kiss, you look fabulous” when even I can tell I don’t. Unless you criticise my images openly and constructively, how else am I supposed to learn? Unless you’re honest, how can I become better?

Mercifully the photographers and models who comment on this blog, and are linked from here, are real and honest folks. I learn as much from their silence as I do from their comments. That’s why I respect them as artists and genuine people. When they talk, I listen, because I know they say what they think, rather than what they think I want to hear. I believe this makes them better artists.

If I’m completely honest with myself, I don’t fit-in to this online photographic love-fest. Neither does Rich. We are both rebels, and we always will be. If that means we are perpetual loners, then so be it, but at least we are true to our convictions. At least we are honest.

Just because the camera often lies, doesn't mean you have to...




Feline Infektious.

Endings

Had a long and bitter bloggie rant about modelling tonight and then deleted the post two hours later.

Probably offended half the readers for those two hours, so my sincerest apologies to all. It may have been a cracker of a post (IMO), but sometimes it does no good to offend good folks, nor does it do me any good to expose my occasional cynical and disillusioned views about the modelling world. Still, it was cathartic at the time, and I feel much better now. Please just put it down to me having a dippy moment.

I’ve had a week of endings, tidying up loose ends. I pulled two of my youngest children from one (evil) school, and enrolled them at another (good) school (where my oldest is). Now the youngest ones are just serving time at the old one, until the end of term in two weeks. I’ve been zipping between schools all week, plus dealing with coughing, spluttering cold-ridden children. My oldest son got an A* (top mark) for his English project on Mystical Creatures, which (being a wannabe writer) I was ecstatic about, although after two days of solid proof-reading, I never want to see a review of Harry Potter again. Plus the oldest has his first date tonight, with a very pretty girl with long hair and nice teeth (I have a thing about perfect teeth). Aww..so cute. First date at 12! So young nowadays! (I was spherical, hairy and scary at 12 and no-one would go near me until I was at least 17!)

In addition, there were other small niggly endings this week – I got pissed off with one of my banks and ditched them, our Prime Minister quit his job (we now have the anti-christ for a new P.M.), and I decided to take a break from Model Mayhem and web-models for a while, for reasons I briefly ranted about before removing my highly offensive post. Best left dead and buried, methinks.

Plus, the biggest ending – after several years of 70+ hour weeks, the new version our day-job software will be out next week. This signals a new, and hopefully more positive chapter in our lives. The last three years have given me a daughter and nude modelling (in that order) but otherwise, they have been pretty grim, business-wise, health-wise and financially. Without photography to brighten our days, Rich and I would have cracked under the pressure long ago. And that’s the truth. Pretty ladies and ultra-charming photographers have been the light in our darkness, and we will be forever grateful…

On a more annoying note, I bust my hernia stitches again this week (something to do with getting stuck in a doorway whilst wrestling a very large blue sofa - just don’t ask), so I’m on enforced rest again, something I’m very bad at. Tonight, my surgeon threatened me with being completely grounded unless I’m a good girl and do as I’m told. He’s a very big scary chap, an absolute sweetie of course, but these surgeons can be very Dom at times, and of course, I’m a very bad Sub…

Lastly, since I’m finishing off house-keeping, I’ve been meaning to refer everyone to Marcus Ranum’s beautiful critique of the hypocritical Dove Adverts. I have posted this link before to everyone I know, but I can’t remember if I posted it on the blog. Apologies if this is a repeat (my memory is not what it should be).

Right, my three year old daughter is reaching over my laptop, trying to turn it off, so I guess that’s a signal for Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Nightie, nightie.




Cheeky Lee and Myself, in another of Rich's Zentai series from last year. We did have some more engaging shots, but I lacked the balls to really ham-it-up and start groping her. She wouldn't have minded, but her experienced-fetish-photographer-boyfriend was present, and I was too embarressed!

How do we get more comments?

I frequent about fifteen of my favourite blogs every day (any more than that and I end up getting no work done at all). Some are photography blogs, some are nutrition blogs and some are anti-cancer blogs. A good smattering of all my interests.

I always read the comments on these blogs – they say as much about the personality of the blogger as the blog entry itself. Comments build community and friendship between the blogger and readers. If you follow the links from commentators (and most bloggers always do) you find out what type of person reads your bloggie ramblings, plus you discover many hidden internet gems – many commentators have outstanding blogs in their own rights. Through getting to know your regular commentators, over time they become valued friends.

Of course, blog comments give you valuable feedback on your writing and photography. You learn what style of blog entry will trigger a comment, and which ones are guaranteed to trigger nothing but a deathly internet silence. With some of our posts, you can practically smell the waves of boredom and/or disapproval coming off the computer screen.

For example, if we blog about general contentious photographic issues, such as photographic laws, pornography, or make some amazingly arrogant (and usually incorrect) observations about the psychology of a photographer, then we are guaranteed comments. The more contentious the issue, the more comments, providing our opinions are argued relatively eloquently, and we're not being total idiots.

Comments are essential to blog writers – they let us know that people are reading (and hopefully liking) the writing style. They give valuable wisdom too. Who needs a therapist when you have hundreds of people regularly reading your blog every day? If I blog about a personal emotional issue, I am lucky enough to guarantee that some kind soul out there will express their opinion, impart their knowledge, offer support, or more often than not, tell me I’m a complete idiot, and need to think again.

The type of images you post are also critical to the number of comments you receive. A blog is target-audience dependent. Readers of this particular blog want to see nudes (although many will tolerate my attempts at fetish, if only for the humour value). They want to look at the nekkid chicks, and because we deliberately put the image at the bottom of the post, we make sure than they have to work for their boobie-fix by reading our waffle before they reach their reward, the eye—candy at the end.

If we post some of Richard’s other photography at the end of a post, such as a landscape, or an animal, no matter HOW GOOD the writing, there will usually be one comment at the most. The reader is subconsciously annoyed because he has read through all our drivel, and he didn't even get his yummy carrot as reward. So nudes it is, I guess. And of course they have to be women. I can only imagine the deathly silence we would get if we posted a nude image of a man (apart from the readers who are female models – yey girls, let’s get some man-flesh to ogle!)

People who leave comments here are mostly photographers. This gives the false impression that all the readers are photographers, and I know for a fact that this is not the case. Many models read this, but they lurk rather than post comments, or email me their opinion instead. I am guessing that this is because they are shy.

Often the off-blog emails that we receive are more frequent than the on-blog comments. Many readers email us instead of commenting, because they do not want others to know they read a nude blog, or because they don’t want to let others know their opinion, or because they have internal political issues with other regular commentators. We have between five and ten regular readers who would rather email us with their comments rather than posting a public response on the blog. Not that we mind, but sometimes the blog does give the impression that because there are too few comments, that not many people are reading it. This is not the case, thank God.

If I blogged about diet, nutrition and cabbages, then I’d probably get between 10 to 20 comments a day. . I know one anti-cancer blog that gets between 25 and 85 comments every single day (I’m madly jealous! But it’s well deserved as she is an awesome writer) Of course, if I blogged about nutrition, I’d go slowly insane from boredom, but these blogs get more comments because a) The commentators are mostly women, and women post more than men, and b) because cabbages are not secretive, hidden, or remotely pornographic in nature, then it’s safe for the lurkers to post.
The bigger blogs, with 10+ comments a day, also have word verification turned off. So if we also did this, we’d certainly increase the comment quota too, but then we’d spend half our day being spammed into extinction, so we’re reluctant to take that step.

In the end, I guess it really doesn’t matter how many comments you get, it only matters that people keep coming back, day after day. There must be some reason they like it, other than the chix…

Congratulations for making it to the end of this long and immensely boring post.

Here’s your carrot:



Claire Louisa. Rich was one of the last photographers to shoot her before she retired from nude modelling.

Knock-off shops

There is a UK modelling site called Web-Models that is a very useful resource for finding and contacting models. Today I renewed my subscription in order to allow me to continue to contact models. However, I will not be uploading any more images to the site and I will be carefully vetting those who I work with from that site, because my recent experiences have been less than wonderful.

First up, their mods removed from my portfolio all images with my email address or URL on them. This is apparently so that they can adhere to the rule that you can’t advertise on their site. Now, given the impending adoption of the EU of the orphan works legislation and the costs involved if you want to register any images taken, it is simply not sensible to have images on the net with no identifying information. It not as if I used a huge banner. The text was always small and along one edge. I suspect that the real reason is that they simply don’t want other peoples URL’s appearing on the site. After all it’s THEIR site and they don’t want MY images to spoil it with some tacky URL. But it’s their call, so the only thing I can do is not upload any more images.

The second problem is that they have this really nice feature where uploaded images are displayed on the front page. So anyone can see them. It’s great for the models as there is a constant turnover of images. However, there is a downside. Within two weeks of my most recent shoot, there are dozens of similar shots appearing, most of them much worse. Some models who have asked to shoot with me in that style have just shot with some third rate snapper in exactly the same style with similar poses.

OK, so the photographs I took and lighting style are not unique and I have seen many similar styles of shot, but I have never set out to directly copy an image, and copying an image within a couple of weeks of seeing the first one, then posting it to the same site is just wrong.

But I can see another problem. The world of photography is always shrouded in the drive to find your own unique style. Imagine that you shoot some images and another photographer says “I love that, I’m going to do that”, so that’s what they do. Then they post the images and they have a higher profile than you, or maybe they are famous, so the general viewers see their work before yours, or a model shoots that style with them and then posts it to their port after arranging to shoot that style with you. From then on all people that view your images in that style or in that model's port will accuse you of being the copy, simply because they saw it first from the other person, or that person is more famous than you. I recently emailed a photographer to apologise for shooting a duplicate image of the same model. While the lighting was different, the model used the exact same pose and then posted both images to her port within days. It was very embarrassing!

It could be even worse. Imagine the photographer shoots a whole load of images and publishes a book. From then on all your work will be “Like that book from so-and-so”. Your unique style is now considered a copy! I doubt if any of them will bother to email you to check!

So I’m not posting my images to Web-Models any more. The ones on there can stand, and from now on I’m going to be more selective about who I shoot with.

I have an idea for a more distinctive lighting style, you will see it here first, it will not be going on Web-Models, but I bet I still see copies cropping up.

This does make me think though that the photographers whose work that I really admire often have something in the photographs that can’t be easily copied. Be that a sophisticated lighting style, a distinctive approach, an outstanding technical skill or interesting use of hard to find props. None of the photographers I admire make simple copies of other peoples work.

For the general bulk of photographers, imagination seems hard to come by these days. While it is true that there is nothing new in photography, I really do believe that we should strive to exceed the ability of a 3 dimensional photocopier!




This is Lilmummy.

Pimp Your Art!

It’s been a week to remember in the UK Art world.
More money has changed hands than ever before. A painting of Waterloo Bridge by Claude Monet sold for £17.9m ($36m USD), which was more than twice than expected. Matisse’s "Danseuse dans le fauteuil" sold this week for £11m ($22m). George Michael (famous UK pop star) is trying to buy Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull “For the Love of God” for £50m ($100m).

London is fast becoming the art capital of the world.

Welcome to New Capitalism.
In the UK, because of the beneficial tax regime for rich non-domiciles, the super-rich are moving to London in droves, and indeed, most of them pay less tax than the average cleaner on minimum wage. The UK is now Richistan. This means that our new super-rich inhabitants have millions free to spend, and spend it they do, mainly on property and Art, both of which have always been seen as good long-term investments, now even more so.

So it’s definitely a good time to be an artist or photographer, because everyone is looking for the “next big thing”, the undiscovered genius. There’s a lot of dosh floating around out there folks. Now is the time to seriously consider strutting your funky stuff. Doesn’t matter if you are a painter, photographer, sculptor or you make highly collectible knitted voodoo dolls, you have to Pimp Your Art with a capital “P”.

Go for it! Find your inner marketing- guru and seize any opportunities you can find. Up those Google rankings like never before ! (Yes, yes, O.K. I admit it, I was wrong about Google, O.K.? For a moment I forgot my “inner new capitalist”, but I’m much better now thank you)
If you can, really push to get a gallery exhibition. You never know who may be watching. You might get a rich private collector buy up your entire exhibition in the name of “long term capital investment”.

And if you think I’m talking total nonsense and that no-one will ever do that, think again. Charles Saatchi has just bought out a undiscovered young photographer’s entire graduation show, for the purposes of sound-financial investment and making humungous profits. James Howard, a student at the Royal Academy school, was doing a small graduation exhibition of his digital prints, each one a collage of photographic images, and Saatchi took a fancy to his work and bought the whole lot. Not for very much money admittedly, but the young artist’s work is now worth many times as much as the original purchase price, and young James is going to be a very rich young man...

Who knows ? It might be you next.



The lovely Lilmummy, a couple of weeks ago.

The week from hell continues

Yesterday was the day of the kids’ problems.
In order of children:

1. My oldest son (12 years old) came home bruised and battered after being picked on by a couple of kids in his class. I would say “bullying” because that’s what it was, only he’s much bigger than them and has an orange belt in a pretty lethal form of combat training.
Why didn’t he use it? Well, he says he’s because he doesn’t want to hurt people smaller than him. “So that gives them the right to beat you up does it?” I said. He’s thinking about that.
In the meantime, we are in negotiations with his Housemaster, who is a very powerful wizard, and will no doubt sort it all out by turning the offending students into small green toads with a flick of his wand. (You’ve seen the Harry Potter movies, his school is just like Hogwarts, I swear. Hogwarts is the great public school stereotype, after all)

2. My middle son is hyperactive. This can largely be controlled by excluding additives and sugar from his diet. Unfortunately he had too many chocolate rolls at school and literally climbed the walls yesterday evening when he got home. He gave Spiderman a run for his money. Maybe these chocolate rolls actually react with the body by producing little suckers on hands and feet so they can stick to the walls. I don’t know. Either way, our walls and paintwork will never be the same again, and the stair banisters are in severe danger of collapse (His father doesn’t know this because he was hiding in another room, blowing things up on his computer…sorry to break the news to you on the blog Rich, but it’s probably just as well…)


3. My 3 year old daughter had her second-ever-session at nursery yesterday. This time she only screamed for half the morning. The nursery staff didn’t call me. No, no, that would be admitting defeat. Instead they left her unattended to cry in a little heap in the corner for two hours. I arrived to pick her up and found a small, pathetic and desolate sobbing creature in the corner, who cried for several hours even after I brought her home. Today I sent in a letter, cancelling her nursery place.


Tonight I have a photographically barren evening at the world’s most boring accountancy lecture on “How to be a Financial Director”. Kinda like trying to teach Grandma how to suck eggs. If I don’t know after 12 years of being one, I’m never going to know. I intend to sleep through most of it, largely because I didn’t get any last night (sleep I mean) due to a small three year old child having separation anxiety hysterics, and yelling for her green teletubby and her Mama at 2 a.m, 3 a.m., 4 a.m. etc. So I really wish I didn’t have to go tonight, but it’s compulsory so….you never know, I might learn more about what I’m actually SUPPOSED to be doing in my day job, as opposed to what I’m actually doing (writing this and browsing the photography blogs)

Richard thinks that all 40 year old Financial Directors should be made by law to wear red latex catsuits.

Hmm…..





This is from a quick impromptu “let’s see what the latex catsuit looks like” photo session last weekend, so my hair and makeup are not done, as I just threw it on and Rich snapped a piccie.
“Threw it on” is a small white lie. I actually had to dive off the wardrobe to fit into it….blimey it was TIGHT! Yes I know latex is supposed to be tight, but there's a difference between "being snug" and "death by latex" which is what it felt like.
I need to lose some weight! I was a size smaller when Rich bought it for me 6 months ago. I blame my middle son. When he’s not being Spiderman and destroying the house, he does bake exceedingly good cakes.

The Bondage Shoot Disaster

We photographed a model a few weeks back. She was a lovely girl. Most of the shoot was art-nude, but it had been pre-arranged to shoot a bit of bondage at the end of the shoot, with me in that part of the shoot as well. She was happy to do this. She had shot bondage before, and had no problem with shooting this style again.
So far, so good.

The art-nude part of the shoot went really well, although Rich has yet to finish the pictures. The bondage part of the shoot also went well, or so it seemed initially. We didn’t do anything outrageous, just tying her ankles to a chair (very loosely – easily a couple of fingers width between ankle and chair), and her arms tied loosely above her head, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling. She mostly held the rope, so she could govern how high she lifted her arms. That was the extent of it. No other gags, or blindfolds or anything like that. All the time Rich was saying “Are you O.K. with this, are you sure? Please stop if you aren’t comfortable with this in any way”, to which she replied, “No, no I’m fine”. But I noticed her face was tense. She looked unhappy. Again I checked, “Are you sure you are O.K.? We can stop this if you’re not happy” Again, “No problem”.

So we persevered. I was present at the shoot, to make sure everything was O.K, and position and hold the rope occasionally. Rich had the idea that I dressed in costume – a zentai suit, part of the anonymous zentai series that Richard is shooting. She was O.K. with this (we checked). But then at the end of the shoot, when I took off my mask so I could see (I was blind as a bat before then), and I helped untie her, that she practically tore at the ropes to get them off. We worked quickly, and removed them within a few seconds. And then the crunch came. I noticed that she looked pretty grim – her mouth was set and looked unhappy, and then I saw that she discreetly wiped tears from her eyes, when she was getting dressed.
I asked if she was O.K. “Fine” she said. And she stayed for a while afterwards, and had some lunch and a good ol’ chat as we always do with models and photographers who visit. And we parted on good terms. She loved the photos.

No harm done. Right ?

Wrong.

Since the shoot, I have been extremely upset, unable to sleep or eat properly. An emotional mess.

I feel terrible. I can’t bear the idea of the fear I saw in her eyes when I took off the mask. I have rejected bondage completely (previously I thought it was a bit of fun). I’m a gentle soul really – I can’t bear the idea of causing harm to another living thing, let alone a person. I feel horribly guilty at making someone cry, putting someone outside their personal comfort zone. I don’t mind play acting, or creating Art, but when it gets too “real” and the submissiveness and upset is genuine, then I can’t handle it. I looked into her eyes and saw myself, 20 years ago, scared and abused by my then-boyfriend. It brought back the pain, the anguish, the guilt. Horrible, really horrible. I thought I had forgotten it, but that moment dredged the whole lot back up again.

Poor Rich has been patient, comforting, despairing and finally annoyed with me. He says “She’s O.K. She consented to do that. We checked before, during and after the shoot that she was O.K. with it” Obviously he was upset that she wasn’t happy, but he says that we did all that we could, and we weren’t to know that she had issues. Plus he says that she could have stopped at any point she was upset – we made that very clear. He says I’m projecting her upset onto me.

He’s right of course. He usually is.

Some folks are going to think that I should get therapy for the events of 20 years ago. The thing is, I made my peace with my past a long time ago. I am healed, or at least as much as anyone can be after something like that. Regarding the shoot of a few weeks ago, I know it’s not my fault that the model wasn’t completely honest with herself or us about how she felt, and I know she may have private issues of her own. She’s a lovely girl, and very professional, but that still doesn’t stop me acting irrationally and feeling bad about what happened.

Currently I’m in a bit of an emotional pickle. The experience (my first joint bondage shoot) was ultimately a total disaster, and it’s put me off bondage for a while. I don’t want to limit Rich’s Art, but simultaneously I don’t want him to shoot any bondage in the near future either. At the moment, I can’t even look at the images from the shoot.

Rich is exasperated, completely understandably. He’s got lots of cool ideas for shoots, and I’m rejecting the whole bondage thing. We are going in separate directions.

I think I’ll be fine, but I need to shoot some more romantic “fluffy” bondage, with an experienced bondage model, whom I know and trust– something a bit lighter and happier, so I can regain my confidence in the whole thing, rather than dredging up the past. I need to have some fun with it, otherwise I’m not going to get past this experience.

This post is not to gain sympathy in any way from you guys, it’s simply by way of explaining what’s been going on in the last few weeks, and why I’ve been a bit quiet.

Of course, I’m a novice model at this sort of thing. Two novices at bondage, plus operating outside personal comfort zones = emotional disaster.

Sigh.

We’re still learning.




Roswell Ivory, a nice happy, glossy latex piccie, which always cheers me up :-)

Cooeee, Its me, I’m back

Well almost. I’m shooting again and, while it’s great to be behind the camera again it, makes it that much harder to remain dedicated to the day job. The software is still not out. The beta testers love it but are finding little things for me to fix. The website is nearly done, but I have about 190 pages of documentation to write and about 20 video tutorials to shoot. Its not as much fun as shooting naked women. Actually, it’s not as much fun as shooting the dog! But it has to be done if we are going to eat.

Anyway, Last week I shot the lovely Lisa “Lil Mummy”. Great session and I took about 130 pictures which I’ve whittled down to 50 or so that make the grade. Tried some experimental stuff (for me) and they came out well. You’ll see them in the blog over the coming weeks.

Now when processing the images I previously used Photoshop CS2 and have a bunch of javascripts and actions tied together and put into droplets to create the 3 images sizes I use for the web and blog and also add the frames and labels to the web sized images. This worked really well … until I upgraded to CS3.

The first time I ran the script on CS3 it started its resize operation and the memory usage immediately went to 2GB. That’s right, it maxed out. Everything I tried maxed it out. Eventually I broke out the script debugger and started to go through the lines one at a time until I found the problem.

I normally resize my images for the web to 600 pixels max for height and width. In order to maintain the correct aspect ratio the script calculates the current aspect ratio then sizes the dimensions appropriately to maintain the ratio in the resulting image. Unfortunately the default setup in CS3 was inches not pixels, That’s right, I was trying to resize my images to 600 inches wide at 300 dpi, that’s a 50 foot wide picture. No wonder it gobbled all the memory. Knowing what the problem was made the fix easy. I changed the ruler scale to pixels rather than inches and off went the scripts. Problem solved. Hurrah.

And this is what I have produce, the first of the finished images shot with Lisa and put through the CS3 processing. I hope you like it.



It’s a week and a half to my next shoot, just time to finish the rest of the photos from last weeks shoot and get some day job work done.

The Google Game

Buck-naked nude nudes!

Naked nude female models

Why are two world class photographers playing the Google Ranking Game?

Are they addicted to the number of hits themselves, the power, the fame of having over 100,000 hits a week, the glory of being the world’s most visited nude blogs?

Guys, RELAX…..maximum hits are just for the masses….the quality of your Art is more important than the number of hits you get from tens of thousands of guys looking for cheap thrills.

Of course, it helps that your work quality is absolutely world class anyway, and that you are two of the best nude photographers in the world, but since the majority of people hitting your blogs are just frustrated pervs looking for non-paying ways of getting off, (pervs, we love ya, please don’t leave us!), why the fascination with being on page 1, 2 or even 10 of Google?

Doesn’t the Google hit obsession mean that you are as addicted to the hunger for glory as some power-obsessed glamour models looking to be the next Jordan? (For those outside the UK, Jordan is the UK’s number 1 glamour model, and a damn fine business-woman to boot. Google her! Jimmy D, you should shoot her!)

Shouldn’t the fact that you’re making world class Art mean much more to you? (Yes of course it does) Or can you actually have both? World class Art and be the world’s most visited nude blog? (And not attract the plebs that can’t appreciate Art if it spanked them on the bottom with a paddle)

Note I’m definitely not criticising, (in fact I’m jealous of your rankings and Google marketing technique) plus I’m searching for the reasons behind the nude rankings issue, the reasons why the photographer chooses to market his blog this way, what he’s looking for? Are all blogs just a marketing exercise? Is this what I'm doing unconsciously by writing this? BTW, an answer to the meaning of life as we know it would also be handy, while you’re answering all these questions.

On the other hand, if a photographer is earning an income from his work, then I can certainly understand the need to push up those Google ratings. Everyone’s gotta eat.

Talking of which, in preparation for our major day-job software release, Rich and I are spending several weeks revamping our main web site. As we are an internet software company, we depend on customers hitting our web site, and since most folks only look on page 1 of a Google search, it becomes critical that we are listed on page 1, for the UK anyway.

So I’ve been spending the week optimising the Google lingo….software terms which might be Googled by potential customers, and making sure the appropriate wording is located near the top of the front page.

Getting listed on the first page on a Google search is an art-form in itself. There are no current manuals to tell you how, the books and web articles written on it are hopelessly out of date, and beyond the obvious optimisation techniques, it seems largely a matter of trial and error. Of course, the quality and number of links to your web site/blog helps, so the better the links, the higher in the ratings you go. This is just as, if not more important, than putting keywords at the top of the page.

In addition, the latest Google spiders are "country sensitive" for some topics. This is a big problem for a small international internet software company like us, which means that there is no hope of getting our software listed on say, the US pages, unless we pay $5 a hit via Google Ads. And no I’m not kidding about the cost. Google Ads are a significant part of our overheads. This strategy was specifically designed and implemented by Google last year so as to boost their turnover, and of course, their share price too.

Google’s spider is a mysterious acromantula. No-one can fathom its algorithm, which changes every few months anyway, so just as you think you’ve got it sussed, Google changes the way it works, yet again, and you’re back to square one. Of course, Google has thousands of servers, but they appear to be governed by two main mothership Search servers. These both work in entirely different ways, and generate the hits and Google rankings differently. Every three weeks the two mothership Google servers switch, so whilst you may find yourself on page 1 for three weeks, and raking in loads of hits (and cash), by week 4 the servers have switched, and you are on page 5, have no income, and are starving to death.

To make matters worse, if you ever experience the unfortunate occurrence of being blacklisted by Google (surprisingly easy to do if the spider mistakenly thinks you are ghosting,or doing some other forbidden thing on Google’s secret list, which I might add, also changes on a regular basis), it takes at least 12 weeks (and sometimes up to 9 months) to get listed again. Pleas, emails, phone calls, begging simply don’t work. You just have to spend weeks guessing what you’ve done wrong, and pray that their spider forgives you some time soon before your house gets repossessed. We have been through this three times now, and it really sucks.

Google own your soul, and don’t you forget it.

And yes, yes, Gary, I do realise you were simply congratulating Don on his Google ranking. You’re not at all bothered about your Google rankings I’m sure.

And Don, I love ya, please forgive me….don’t forget to put those naked chicks/nekkid chix keywords at the START of the post, and BTW, if you ever want a new job optimising our Google rankings, you know where to find us……..



Roswell Ivory, in a pose which is vaguely spiderish (at least I thought it was!)

What do you consider beautiful and why?

Melvin Moten challenged me on Friday to define my concept of beauty.

Oh dear. Time for another incredibly long blog post, then.

It really isn’t possible for me to define what beauty is for everyone, because beauty is subjective. Everyone will have a different concept of what they find beautiful, so we’ll just go for my view.

Now I read Harpers and Queen as much as the next girl. I do love my fantasies. The images of women inside are beautiful, no doubt about it, but I’m not kidding myself – they are an illusion, a mixture of good photography, MUA’s and Photoshop. Great Art though. And an enjoyable fantasy on a warm summer’s evening when I’m curled up on the sofa drinking a glass of chilled chardonnay. I don’t kid myself that I could ever look like that, and nor would I want to, truth be told. I bet those models don’t look so great when they get up in the morning after four hours sleep either. I don’t look at those images and think, wow they are beautiful, I have to look like that…in fact the images are often pretty samey after a while. So beautiful women in womens' magazines? Nope, not real beauty to me, I’m afraid.

To me, real beauty is the beauty of the soul.

AMOST ALL people, no matter who they are, have something beautiful inside them. To me, the psyche defines the person, and it is irrelevant what they look like.
I just don’t care.

I have found beauty in the most unlikely places, as well as the most conventional ones. I have several friends who have suffered tremendously with cancer, and come out of it with dignity, courage and a burning thirst for life. They may be bald from the chemo, emaciated, exhausted, tired and grumpy, but their spirits are all beautiful because they remain undefeated by their ordeal.

O.K. you say, but what about people who have done evil? There’s no beauty in them.

Many moons ago, I used to do befriending work in my spare time with prisoners – letter writing, visiting them in prison (because no-one else would) and so forth. I met quite a few unfortunates whom society locked up and threw away the key. I wrote to and visited several guys over the years. It was difficult stuff, and sometimes hard for me to cope with emotionally, but I persisted, and one or two even became (almost) friends. On the whole they were nice people, usually “normal” (whatever that is), severely mentally scarred of course, and they had done terrible things, but these guys definitely had inner beauty, the same as you and I.

One guy, who hacked his girlfriend to death with a kitchen-knife, eventually had the immense courage to face his wrong-doing. He knew he had evil inside him, he faced it, and wanted to talk about it, although it took him two years before he could trust me enough to tell me exactly what happened on that awful night when he committed the murder. Now if It had been my daughter who had been murdered, I’m damn sure I wouldn’t have found any inner beauty in him at all, but as it is, prison befrienders have to try to look beyond the evil, to try to help these people, to convince them that there is a way back from the abyss, that their soul does possess the capacity to be beautiful. And if being a prison befriender sounds like a weird thing to do, so be it. But it certainly gives you a unique insight into good and evil.

So do I see myself as beautiful? Well, of course I run myself down in the blog sometimes, much to the annoyance of many of you, but yes, I DO see myself as beautiful, and ugly too.

Have you ever read D.H. Lawrence ?
He had a concept running through many of his books called “ugly beautiful”. Basically you can’t have one without the other. Ugly and beautiful aren’t far apart at all. They are both inside us, and they are inexorably intertwined. When I look at myself, I have both beauty and ugliness inside and out. I am, after all, only human, and I am both good and evil. Not in the same balance as the guy who murdered his girlfriend, of course, but still a mixture of light and dark.

Such is the nature of the soul.

Daniel Defoe once said, “The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear”

I’d like to think that good photographers help take out that diamond, admire its beauty and its flaws, and then give it a quick polish, before putting it back in the box.




The lovely Kate, from last year.

Photoshopping is evil. Discuss.

Our dear friend Iksodas has written a very stimulating post on his blog, about the digital enhancement of photographic images using Photoshop. Please read it here (his 6th June post)

Iksodas is one of those rare breeds of photographers who is so incredibly talented, that he doesn’t actually need Photoshop. He can make my old Aunty Aggie look good naked, without any Photoshopping whatsoever (and that’s a pretty tall order I can tell you), through talented use of lighting, shadow and posing her in a subtle and seductive manner, so as to show off her genuine beauty, whilst hiding her less flattering features, such as her big hairy moustache (Note: not that Iksodas has not actually photographed my Aunty Aggie, but I’m sure he’d rise to the challenge magnificently, if I asked him).

He argues that extensive photoshopping an image of a model “creates a fiction far divorced from reality” and “Enhancement, and misrepresentation of the female form is a bit of an evil in our culture. One, that affects many women in this world, and not in a good way”.

Good points of course, but I respectively disagree (which is rare for me, because we usually agree on everything).

My view ?

Photoshop can be the modern form of paint. It is as much an art-form, as photography in its own way.

Richard shoots models “as is”, and won’t photoshop them, other than removal of a few wrinkles and the odd bit of cellulite. Like Iksodas, he treats it as a betrayal of learning photographic principles, and believes Photoshop is uneccessary, and can be an an example of poor photographic technique.

Richard, is however, extremely good at Photoshop. He has run classes on the subject. He is, actually (in my opinion) as gifted a Photoshopper as he is a photographer. I have seen him morph multiple images of several landscapes together to make a new landscape together, which is extremely beautiful, but a work of total fiction. There was no such landscape in reality. Does this make it any less "art"?

Way before digital computing was invented, even Ansel Adams modified his images during the printing process to make the image what he wanted it to be, other than what it actually was. The result of this process was fantastic art.

The modern method of doing this technique would be through use of Photoshop. Not that most people who use Photoshop are as good at art as Ansel Adams, but my point is that modification of photographs can be beautiful, even if they are not real. Modification of images of people should not be treated any less as an art-form than modification of landscapes or backgrounds.

I would also argue that good use of subtle lighting (without Photoshop), can make a model look beautiful, but this is just as much a misrepresentation as a photoshopped image. You are still portraying the woman (through the clever use of lighting) as other than she really is, by not displaying her most unflattering bits, or placing certain parts of the body in shadow.

ALL photos displayed over the web are processed to some degree.
There is no such thing as a completely undoctored digital photograph.
All nude photography can be argued to be fiction to a greater or lesser extent.

As to whether or not these images are misrepresentation, all modelling photos portray a fantasy - it’s what they are supposed to do, to stimulate the imagination of the viewer.

Fiction ? Yes, certainly. But is misrepresentation like this a bad thing ?

Like any art form, when done badly, digital enhancement sucks. You can get crappy photoshoppers as well as crappy photographers (and usually both together). But when it’s done well, it can make the woman look like a million dollars, boost her ego and make her feel like the sexiest woman on the planet.

So do I feel bad about my images being enhanced? No.
If my images are photoshopped, it makes me feel better about myself. I’m 40 years old for chrissake. I’m no spring chicken, and the majority of photographers I know are not talented enough (unlike Iksodas) to make me look good naked, without either some form of photoshopping, or shooting me in total darkness. Unless I shoot with an absolutely amazing photographer, I NEED digital modification, otherwise I look like some sort of ancient she-hag. My poor fragile little ego couldn’t take it if there were “real raw” pictures of me all over the internet….part of the reason I shoot so little and post so few images. I’m just not that attractive a model, and I’m extremely insecure about my looks. I model because the images convince me that I am actually beautiful, no matter that I think I look like in reality.

Iksodas observes “So, the next time you open Pshop, are you correcting your Photographic mistakes, or feeding the monster?”

I like my monster, it’s part of who I am.

And if the images of me are part fantasy, part reality, I can live with that.



Sirensong. She loved this image.
I know we have posted this before (sorry folks) but it goes with the post.

The End of Naked Chicks?

The RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) is the biggest non-profit organisation in the UK dedicated to the protection of our feathered friends. They do a magnificent job too.
In my teens, I used to be a twitcher (birdwatcher) myself, and spent abnormally long hours staring through binoculars at birds, identifying them, cataloguing them, spotting rare ones and photographing them. I led a very sheltered childhood, as you can tell.

Anyway, the RSPB has now decided, in the interests of political correctness, and so as not to cause offence to sensitive souls, to remove from its web site and literature those words which have a sexual connotation. In particular, the RSBP’s computer has now replaced the word “cock” with asterisks on its web site, and in future, “cock” will be replaced by the word “male” in its literature and books, where appropriate.

This is symptomatic of an insidious move by authorities to modernise our language. Political correctness gone mad.

Since time immemorial, ornithological terms have been used as slang to describe human sexual acts. Bestial terms are common too, such as "ass", "bitch" and so forth. The history of language is long and colourful. Comparing humans to birds or beasts is a way of communicating the carnal nature of humanity. These words say more about what the speaker means and feels, than politically correct terminology ever could. Most folks realise that a particular word having a double entendre does no harm at all. Why censor a common everyday term?

What on earth is going to happen to the hundreds of English pubs which are called “The Cock Inn” or variations thereon? What happens to the "cock robin" or “aircraft cockpit”?
Where will it end?
Someone in authority obviously has a very cock-eyed view of the world (sorry, couldn’t resist that one).

Apparently the RSPB is also considering the removal of “tits”, “boobies”, “shags” and “chicks” from its vocabulary.

At this rate, soon there will be nothing left to ban…




Feline Infektious, who would probably be outraged if I called her a naked chick.

Stinky Sunday

Apologies for the lack of updates in recent days. This week has been frantic. It has been half term for the boys, and they have both had birthdays this week, which has resulted in a house full of other people's kids, plus marathon amounts of cooking, present buying/wrapping and generally picking up after them all week. Why is it that males make so much mess?

My middle son is deeply enthusiastic about cooking. I am not allowed to bake cakes without him, and I get interrogated on a daily basis by a small boy sniffing around to check I haven’t been cooking without him. Yesterday evening I finally escaped to the studio and had a quiet moment during which I thought I’d write a blog entry. Unfortunately I only had about ten minutes of peace and quiet, which was suddenly and abruptly shattered by Richard exploding through the studio door yelling, “Take the baby and get out of the house! NOW!!!”
Boggling somewhat, I grabbed my hysterical daughter, ignoring the searing pain in my side (not supposed to be lifting for another month yet), and galloped out of the house, simultaneously noting the vast plumes of smoke now emanating from the kitchen. I was joined quickly by two weepy and terrified boys who were also evacuating the premises at high speed.

It turned out that my dear son had decided to hone his cooking skills by heating up his supper (what was once-upon-a-time apple pie and custard) in the microwave, but instead of setting the timer for 30 seconds, he set it for 30 minutes, and then promptly forgot about it and went back to his computer game. Thirteen minutes later, my oldest son innocently enquired “Did someone burn the toast?”

The result? Complete panic, smoke, fire, weepy children, hysterical angry wife with PMT, heroic but mildly panicked father (renowned for his fire-fighting skills on several previous occasions), and no real harm dome other than a ruined bowl (my best china, mind you, as my son only uses the best), a terminal microwave and an extremely stinky house.

That was yesterday.

I have spent all of today trying to get the carbonated smell out of the house. I Googled extensively, and tried everything, from cleaning fluids, air fresheners, disinfectant, heating lemons and coffee (not together) but nothing worked, so I gave up. This afternoon, I decided to have a massive baking session, and so 40 cakes and one giant Mississippi-mud-pie later (I don’t do small portions – think “Izzie” from Greys Anatomy), the house finally smelled of freshly baked cakes, rather than burnt custard.

Now all I’ve got to do is find someone to eat the cakes.

Cake party anyone?



Chocolate cake and Claire Louisa. What more could you ask for?