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Are you a photographer who is short of inspiration? Are you short of new ideas? Do you need results FAST?! Then look no further…

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Of course you’ve heard the spiel that your muse can’t be bought, that a muse is a living and breathing human being, and that she is a product of “DESTINY”. You’ve listened to folks who tell you that muses can’t be purchased like a vacuum cleaner, that they are much more abstract and mystical. Some companies tell you that your muse will appear in your life at exactly the time she is supposed to appear, for FREE. You know, “meant-to-be”, divine inspiration, and all that bullshit?

But what if fate doesn’t intervene, and you can’t find her? What if your photographic mind is as dull as ditchwater, and you’re in dire need of inspiration and a sense of direction? What if you’re in a dry spell? Well in that case it’s time to :

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DIFFERENT MODELS OF MUSE AVAILABLE! GODDESSES DESIGNED TO YOUR INDIVIDUAL NEEDS!

What will she look like?
You could order the model designed by famous poet Rupert Graves: “A lovely slender woman with a deathly pale face, lips red as rowan berries, startlingly blue eyes and long fair hair”.
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CHOOSE YOUR TAILOR-MADE GODDESS AS FOLLOWS:

Summon your muse. Picture her in your mind. Visualise really hard. If you get nothing, then keep at it (Tip: alcohol sometimes helps with the visualisation process). The more you summon your muse, the more readily she will appear. Then complete your order by clicking on the “Buy Now” button.

HOW QUICKLY WILL MY ORDER BE COMPLETED?

FLUFFYTEK MANUFACTURING Inc is very efficient, but please note we are currently very busy, and are regrettably experiencing temporary shortage of materials. As each muse is built to individual design, a small delay may be experienced until your order can be completed and delivered. We hope you appreciate that QUALITY manufacturing takes time.

(All deliveries supplied via UPS. Delivery is dependent on weight of muse but starts at a lo $30. Import taxes to be borne by the customer).

HOW DO I KNOW I’VE GOT THE RIGHT MUSE?

FLUFFYTEK MANUFACTURING INC advises caution. On rare occasions we can sometimes make a mistake, due to malfunction in the order visualisation process, in which case you should re-seal your muse and return her in her original packaging to us within seven days please.

How do you know she’s your genuine article? Well, FLUFFYTEK MANUFACTURING Inc allows you to test her out on a free trial, in order to make sure she’s the real deal.

Tips for Muse-testing:

A real muse will be demanding, challenging and a right royal pain in the ass a fair bit of the time. Of course she is outstandingly beautiful (to you because you designed her), she has a gleam in her eye, she can see straight through your bravado and your bullshit to the essence of the man and artist underneath. A good muse will be strong, confident and she’ll know herself pretty darn well. She will never ever be a fake (if you detect fakery, then the product is defective and must be returned within seven days please.) Remember that your muse will not expect any fakery or possessiveness from you, otherwise the chemistry will be wrong and she won’t perform optimally. She may drive you crazy a lot of the time, but you will love her with a passion (this is absolutely essential. You can’t create real art without the passion. Mutual lust is good too, as this enhances the artistic process.)



INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:

When you receive your muse, please verify that she is the genuine product, and you’re happy with the quality. Then you’re ready to begin. She’s standing there, naked and ready for set-up procedure. Your muse is not delivered personal-photographer-ready. She only has a basic start-up routine and must complete a training process (please refer to installation manual at this point). Because each photographer is an individual, you are a blank slate to her – she has to get to know you first, which will take some time.

FLUFFYTEK MANFUCATURING Inc recommends that you buy her some nice things (something shiny and expensive – Tiffany’s recommended for optimum performance), feed her what she loves, ply her with some good wine, talk to her gently, and talk some more, and then again and again, long into the night, until you’ve bared your very soul. Keep going until she’s sucked you dry and there’s nothing left. Only then can you be free to open up to your potential, be inspired to Art. Talking is the key to good musedom. Only then can you pick up your camera and create amazing and innovative results!

YOUR STATUTORY RIGHTS:

Of course you have full statutory rights regarding your muse. She has a job to do and is designed to perform to optimum standards. Do not allow your muse to be lazy. Refuse to put away your camera and do not let her rest until you’re completely satisfied with her inspirational performance. Shoot every day, several times if necessary. Try for at least three new ideas every day. She is surprisingly resilient, and will supply an infinite stream of ideas under your able guidance. Setting boundaries like this will ensure you stick to your aims and after only one week you will have several hundred new photographs which you should be very happy with.

WHAT DO I GET WHEN I ORDER?

The end result is guaranteed satisfaction, OR YOUR MONEY BACK!
Your Art WILL IMPROVE DRAMATICALLY, even after this short time.

Your muse is ready and waiting FOR YOU!!!

ORDER NOW!!!

Product Warranty Disclaimer:
The Muse and accompanying materials (including instructions for use and manuals and CD Roms, if any) are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, to the fullest extent permitted by law. All terms implied by law, including without limitation as to satisfactory quality and fitness for purpose, which may by law be excluded or limited and liability in tort including without limitation for negligence and misrepresentation, are hereby excluded. No oral or written advice given by the Manufacturer shall create a warranty or be otherwise actionable and the photographer may not rely on any such information or advice. If the Muse is defective, the Manufacturer will not be responsible for any or all costs of necessary servicing, repair or correction. Because of the high stress of the artistic process, the Manufacturer recommends that you pace your relationship with your muse over time, and treat her kindly and considerately. Otherwise you run the risk of burning out her motor, and she’ll leave you pretty damn fast.

Naughty Noo-noo

O.K. I’ve really had it with talking about art and art photography.
No more angst. No more of the meaning of life and photography stuff.
In fact, I’m taking a break from photography-speak for a while.

Expect shallow, meaningless writing for the foreseeable future. (Doesn’t mean the photography will be shallow or meaningless though.)

If you want profound photographic writing, please go to Pretty Girl Shooter or Hotel Room Nudes, both of which knock my socks off (writing as well as photography) on a daily basis. Those guys are currently on major “creative burns”, and their writing is getting better and better. Honest, funny, sexy and introspective, I’d marry them both in a heartbeat, if I wasn’t happily married already, or in fact, if either of them liked the idea of marriage in the first place (which I’m fairly sure they don’t!) I’ve always felt men’s brains were incredibly sexy…intelligence is such an aphrodisiac.

As for me, I have decided to live a little instead. Enjoy myself, take a break, do some FUN stuff (for that read “drink too much chardonnay and shoot some dodgy porn” which I probably won’t show, but it’s great fun shooting it nevertheless!)

As for my writing, “Less bullshit, more meaningless drivel”, that’s my motto.

I’ll let Rich’s photography do the talking, which is what this blog is supposed to be all about anyway.




This is from last week’s shoot with the writer and model Roswell Ivory. This was (shock, horror) not a nude shoot. It was, however, immense fun, although the photographs are taking a long time to finish due to day-job and family constraints.

The official title for this photograph is “Incubus”, or just for Roswell, “Naughty Noo-noo”

Opportunities

It’s not the sort of thing you get to do every day!

I was asked to shoot the stills for an adult video today. It turned out that there was no payment involved, just TFP, and they get commercial use. Apparently “it’s a great opportunity to shoot a naked chick without someone looking over your shoulder.”

So they want me to shoot porn.
They don’t want to pay me for it but they are going to have commercial rights.
AND I get to spend some time with a naked chick.

Methinks they didn’t actually look at my website.

But in life some opportunities come up only once, and when they do you'd better be damn sure you take them or you can spend the rest of your life regretting it.

So I made the most of this Saturday's one-off opportunity …..
Priceless,
Free,
And a never to be repeated offer.

I took my daughter on her first trip to the zoo.

I am the luckiest man alive.




One of the hot models shot this afternoon who posed in a rather tasteful fur coat.

A man is only as big as the number of his pixels

We work from home, or more accurately, in a purpose built studio attached to the house. The bottom floor is dedicated to the day-job, a large open plan area where we (and our staff) sit and work, we can entertain clients, plus the three year old daughter can play (which actually takes up half the space, so the clients constantly trip over the Teletubbies). Upstairs the day-job servers are located (very noisy room, lots of servers, very loud, must be sealed during a shoot or it sounds like a wind-tunnel at 170 mph), and also our photographic studio, which is rather too small, and with sloping ceilings, which sucks, but hey, it costs $80K to move, so we’re staying put forever, O.K.?

Most of today has been spent expanding our downstairs office. There are no decent private printing companies in the UK which will cheaply and confidentially print nekkid chix to a decent A3+ quality, so rather regrettably, we have to do this ourselves. Likewise, medium format cameras remain a remote and erotic dream, because of our location. The poor chap goes to sleep fantasising not about beautiful ladies, but rather drooling over 16 bit colour depth (all hail the sacred Hasselblad!) but this remains a distant illusion because of the staggering cost of shooting digital in medium format. Alas we cannot shoot film here. The UK has very strict laws on disposing of poisonous chemicals such as those required for medium format film cameras, and we are on private drainage here, so it’s impossible to dispose of said horrible chemicals without feeding noxious goo into my vegetable patch and dying a violent death shortly afterwards. The only choice for us re medium format is to shoot digital.

The man eats and dreams a digital-back Hasselblad, which would set us back at least a year’s school fees at Hogwarts for the two boys (or four sets of breast implants – take your pick. And please do imagine what I‘d look like with eight very large perky rubber breasts) So medium format remains but a distant dream, and he sticks with his trusty Canon EOS5D and muddles through, despite that the spiritual Photographic Guru of the internet tells us that the camera is not important and that we should spend our hard earned cash on lighting instead (yes the Great Wise Guru uses the same camera as Rich, and yet, the laydeez don’t look quite as sexy under our watch!) To Rich’s mind, you’re ultimately not a serious art-nude photographer until you’ve got at least one book publication or one gallery showing with your big shiny medium format camera.

Anyway, we have decided that we are going to try to sell prints (Need money. Money = food. Please buy our prints oh wonderful browsers looking for porn), so we have negotiated at big expense a new A2 printer, the bloated Epson Stylus Pro 4800, which takes up a huge amount of space, hence the new expanded office layout to make room for this vast piece of equipment. I’m not sure if I’ll look better or worse printed A2 size, but it sure as hell shows a heck of a lot more wrinkles and cellulite. Poster size, it’s definitely enough motivation to put me on a diet! I look very big and old when I’m puffed up big, dammit!

On the bright side, we have now moved the office round substantially, so I have a much bigger working space, plus I don’t have to be driven completely and utterly crazy by watching him constantly biting his nails when he’s stressed!

Wonder what my bum would look like A2 size…

Stop press…..horrible result……hideous beyond belief….I look like a large lump of blubbery Jell-O….the stuff of nightmares…..Not even Digital Gem can save me…let’s not go there ever, EVER again…




Heaves a sigh of relief and returns to the youthful Jenvy, beautiful both in A2 or squished up tiny for Blogger.

A photographer is only as big as his equipment, don’t you think?!

"It is unavoidable. It is your destiny. You, like your father, are now mine."

The day job hasn’t gone so well in the last month. August is one of our worst months for sales anyway, as most folks are on holiday and email software isn’t top of the “Must Buy Now!” list. So we’ve been definitely edgy and pretty stressed lately. Lack of regular income will do that to you.

So last night we were wondering about the day-job, thinking maybe we should give up doing software, do something else for a living. Plus Rich was wondering the usual kind of angsty stuff, you know, "Is this all that I am. Is there nothing more? What am I meant to do with my life? Is there such a thing as fate and destiny, or is life just all chaos theory, and are we in fact tiny furry creatures living in a locker and worshipping a giant watch?”

Yes we all get moments like this, but unfortunately this was at midnight after I’d done a thirteen hour day, so I really just wanted to go to sleep. So instead of being a good wife and talking about it until 2 a.m., I muttered something soothing (but probably meaningless), said my prayers and promptly went to sleep. What I didn’t tell him was that, before I lost consciousness, I sent out a request to the cosmos : "God, the Universe, Great A'tuin, whatever you are, send us a sign. Tell us what we are meant to be doing with our lives. If there is such a thing as destiny, please let us know unequivocally what we are supposed to be doing? Now Rich doesn’t believe in a Higher Power, so you’d better make it a really GOOD sign. It has to be unambiguous. Send us an email. That should do it. Thank you God. Goodnight.”

Rich has his own religious leanings, but they are so buried in physics, that I don’t remotely understand them. He is a scientist, and he has no concept of simple blind faith. He’s not exactly an atheist, but he does believe God/fate/destiny/the man on the moon are all irrelevant. He thinks most religions are just a way of subduing the masses.

He is used to my wacky faith and is very understanding, and treats me as if I’m some sort of unstable mental patient, to be indulged, tolerated and treated kindly. Clearly he thinks I’m out of my tree, and he’s probably right. But what he can’t deny is that my methods do work. One of the little-known facts about cancer survivors is that they are more in touch with the “great unknown” than other mortals – they just KNOW MORE. After going through that much crap and facing your own mortality, answers to big life-changing decisions now come easier. It’s kind of like having a direct line to The Great Spirit’s pet hawk, or whatever deity or wisdom you believe in. So when I send out my questions to the cosmos, I’m pretty damn sure I’m going to get an answer. It might not be the answer I am looking for, but there’s definitely something out there.

And so it was this time too.

When we got up and checked our business email inboxes today, there was nothing there.
*Sigh* Depressing but predictable.
In fact there was only one email waiting for Rich, in his photography inbox…

“Hi Richard,

I have an adult video shoot that I'm trying to pull together in Norfolk on Saturday afternoon and wondered if you'd have any interest in shooting the stills. If you are interested in discussing details please email me blah, blah, blah…"

XXXmodelling Studios


When I read this, I started laughing and I couldn’t stop.

The universe had spoken….God wants us to shoot porn for a living…

Well at least we know the cosmos has a sense of humour!

However, in the grand scheme of things, whether or not this is a genuine call from the cosmos or just the insane ramblings of a deranged old woman, this actually makes no difference. For every thing that happens to you (reality or illusion, it doesn’t matter), the important thing is how you decide to react to it. Whether or not something is fate or destiny, or just random farts of the cosmos, this is actually irrelevant.

For every occurrence that life throws at you, each perturbation, you can behave like you have no choice, that you are a born loser, that the universe is out to get you. Or you can behave like you have a choice, that you are a winner, and that the universe is neither for you nor against you but is a playground in which almost anything you set your positive mind to doing, can be achieved.

Ultimately, it is you who has the power to decide how to react.

This is your choice, not your destiny.





Alas I'm all out of Star Wars porn shots, so you're going to have to live with this one instead.

Masters of Fetish Photography

Last month I bought Richard the Fetish Photo Anthology Volume 5 for his birthday. O.K. I must admit that this was as much for me as for him, as fetish is much more to my personal taste than some other types of nude photography.

This epic volume weighs in at a staggering 1.82 kilograms, and is jam-packed full of the world’s best fetish photographs. Jürgen Boedt obviously put his heart and soul into collecting the images and publishing this book, and his hard work really shows. Incidentally, there are only going to be 2000 copies of this collection printed, so if you want one, you’d better move fast.

There are some truly outstanding images within this hefty tome. Photographs that simply take your breath away. It has taken me a month to write this because I’ve been too busy thinking about the pictures, admiring and drooling over the glossy art. This book just oozes good taste.

My unashamed personal favourites were Hans Gössing’s sub/dom shot on page 146, Scott Gerth’s pinwheel shot (page 136), Dennis Keim’s nude on a chair (page 207 – but was it fetish?), Hikari Hesho’s bondage set (page 210, but his name is spelled incorrectly in the index) and Christine Kessler’s head-brace shot (I think that’s what it is, page 217). These were the ones that rocked my world - but you’ll all have different favourites, I’m sure.

Congrats to everyone we don’t know who made it into the book, and also to those that we know and worship who do appear within. Rich knows the work of most of the featured photographers better than I do, nevertheless there are many famous artists that even “little ol’ me” has heard of. Of those we are actually more familiar with on a more personal level, my special congrats to John Tisbury (one of the undisputed champions of nude photography in the UK, and not featured nearly enough in this book, I might add), also Nad Iksodas and BT Charles who produced some stunning images, and their status as “Masters” is well deserved.

I was also delighted to see several familiar faces we know. I did love the images of Iris Dassault, and of Wescott (with whom we hope to be working shortly). I’m sure I saw some other models I recognise, but sometimes it’s very difficult to positively identify someone’s posterior or boob in close up shots, unless it’s Iris, whose fabulous curves I know nearly as well as my own rather un-fabulous ones, after devotedly following her blog for well over a year now.

However……
C’mon, this is me. When have I ever not had a “however”….

As with the Taschen’s New Erotic Photography, this collection can be judged as much by the photographers who weren’t featured, as by those that were.

I’m not sure how the selection process works for this book. I do know that photographers are invited to submit their work for consideration, so I guess if you don’t enter, there’s a highly reduced chance of being a featured artist. This might explain why some photographers were omitted from the book who really ought to have been in there, such as D Brian Nelson who runs what is probably one of the world’s most famous nude blogs, and if girls tied up and/or diddling themselves in hotel rooms isn’t a major fetish that appeals to the masses, then I don’t know what is, although he doesn’t do standard glossy fetish, so maybe that’s the reason?) And don’t even get me started on Johnny Flamethrower and Melvin Moten. A fetish anthology without them is like the state opening of parliament with half the royal family missing. These two really “get” what fetish really means – they feel the passion and live the lifestyle. They are both amazing photographers. Why on earth aren’t they in there?

Is self-submission the only method of entry? Does the editor also approach other (non-self-pimping) artists himself if he likes their work, and ask to feature them? Who selects the final line-up of featured artists anyway? Who says who makes the grade and who doesn’t? However I do feel for Jürgen Boedt. If it is him and him alone who decides who makes the cut and who doesn’t, then it’s inevitable to miss someone who should be in there. You can’t please everyone. And much will depend on the editor’s own personal taste.

There are two things I will say to Jürgen. Firstly, do please let me help you pick them next time! Although I suspect I’ll be at the end of a very long queue of volunteers. Secondly, for the love of all that is sacred in Fetish Photography, PRINT IT IN COLOUR!!!

Fetish photography is designed for colour. This collection of art is incomplete without it. Fetish is all about emotion, depth, vibrancy – the black and white fetish photographs are stunningly beautiful of course, and b+w is appropriate for some of the photographs, depending on the original intentions of the photographer. However many of the images are clearly designed for colour, but must have been converted to black and white for this book. IMO the de-saturation of certain photographs has killed the depth and emotion of some images stone dead, and this detracts from what would otherwise have been probably the best collection of fetish photography for a very long time.

O.K. I get it, the book is in black and white because this is cheaper. But cost should be irrelevant in art. Sure, colour is more expensive, but find a way! Sell your granny if necessary. The final result would be worth it.

As Gucci say, “Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.”



The image is by Ronny Thiele

Blurry is not artistic

(Caution! Offensive post alert!!! The following post is based on ignorant subjective opinion, and is not a criticism of anyone in particular. Overly sensitive American photographers should take this with a very large pinch of salt)


In the vast arena of nude photography, there are a heck of a lot of blurry photographs around nowadays.

From a purely personal point of view, I am a very big fan of sharpness. Rich is very used to me nagging him, “No that photograph is NOT finished – can’t you make it sharper?”

Some photographers like sharpness and some don’t. Chip Willis does some stunning images which are super sharp. I am guessing they go through a pretty heavy sharpening process before they are finished?

So why don’t I like the…um…softer edged images? Well, frankly I think they are sloppy, and unsuccessful art. (Tactful, Lin, real tactful!) However, I’m not a photographer. I’m an amateur observer. What do I know about what makes a good photograph and what doesn’t?

Well, hanging out with photographers does rub off on me a bit, so I’d like to think I’ve picked up a certain degree of understanding on the way. So please indulge me here, where I (rather uncertainly) try to understand how Grandma sucks eggs. And please do feel free to correct me when I get it wrong, and if (and when) you have a different opinion. This is most definitely a discussion, not just my subjective and ill-educated opinion!

As I understand it, there is a big difference between controlled depth of field and blurred. A very nice man told me once that (paraphrasing here) “A controlled depth of field involves using a wide aperture to selectively focus on a certain feature. In portraiture, this would typically be the eyes, where extreme depth of field will result in sharp eyes and a soft focus on all other features.”

IMO, Chip does this really well. Consider his shot of Brittany V which is a perfect example. The eyes are incredibly sharp, mesmerising even. The rest of the body is in soft focus. Rich tells me that this was taken using extremely narrow depth of field caused by having a very wide aperture of F1.4. The end result is just beautiful.

However, some photographers tend to stick Gaussian blur on a photograph to attempt to achieve controlled depth of field. The result usually looks yukky and fake, at least in the images I have been studying anyway.

Alternatively the braver photographer might have a stab at a very long exposure shot, intending to show motion blur in the image. Rich says this is a different thing entirely. But to me this often doesn’t work too well either, unless the photographer is extremely experienced. Iksodas has shot an image which shows the technique rather well. However long exposure shots are VERY hard to do, and even if you get the technique right, you still have the challenge of getting emotion across in the image. With long exposure shots, I actually think photographers understand them better than us plebs. To an experienced photographer’s eye, the image might be really clever, because they admire the technique. But to some of us ordinary mortals, the resulting image sometimes just looks like a fuzzy blob.

There is a big difference between soft focus and no focus. Unless they are done properly, blurry images have no focal point. They don’t draw the attention or suck you into the photograph. They have no inner message to communicate, other than the photographer wasn’t terribly good. Yes everyone has to experiment, to learn. How else can their abilities grow? But what annoys me is when photographers make these mistakes, and then tout them as finished art.

To my inexperienced eye, blurry is not artistic. It’s just plain bad photography.

But what do I know? I’m just a piece of meat, right?



Rich doesn’t do blurry very much (which is kind of a shame because my body would look a heck of a lot better under the camera in a blurry shot than a sharp one). As I understand it, you can’t do controlled depth of field under studio lighting conditions, only in natural light. Although please do feel free to correct me on this. Truth be told, I’m rather reluctantly getting interested in photographic technique, dammit. The bug of “how do they do that?” is beginning to bite…

For the record, Rich definitely does NOT endorse this post, and finds it rather offensive. Discussions on this subject are most definitely “ongoing” in our household.

Oh dear…

(BTW, these are the mesmerising eyes of Miss Roswell Ivory, with whom Rich will be shooting again next week.)

In which our intrepid heroine rants against ageism and goes a bit “Dorian”

I had a tag on MM from a very nice photographer yesterday, who complimented me on my port and said “Thank you for helping to prove BEAUTY is AGELESS.”

Blimey, I can’t tell you how unbearably OLD that made me feel.
After I finished turning the air blue with a colourful rant against photographers who make a model feel like a fossil, Rich pointed out that the poor chap in question was only trying to be nice.

“Then he should be more bloody tactful, shouldn’t he?” I snapped.
I can imagine how understanding the MM community would be if a photographer said “Thank you for helping to prove BLACK is BEAUTIFUL”.

Humph.

Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
And age related comments really push my buttons.

Changing the subject before I get all hot and bothered again…

The image below is from today’s shoot. Yes, this is indeed the sculpture I was talking about in my last post. According to the sculptor, it is made from clay, glazed and fired with a special process which produces the crackling effect. If you could actually see it close up, it really is a stunning piece of work. It is also immensely heavy.

Because this image is squished down for the web, Blogger doesn’t do it justice. Close-up, it is incredibly cool…or at least I think so anyway.

After seeing this, my twelve year old son, who is halfway through the last Harry Potter, has now decided to call me “Voldermother”…

Strange Coincidences

Life is full of strange coincidences, weird tricks that the cosmos plays on you.

You suspect they mean something, but you’re damned if you can work out exactly what.

During my teens and twenties I used to be into art in a BIG way, but not the tasteful pretty fluffy art that we do, and which is linked to the right of this blog. Nope, I went to the dark side. My passion was for twisted art, horror, psychologically damaging, the really mind bending stuff that screws you up if you think about it. I cut my milk teeth on Giger and it was downhill from then on in. Dark art has always been my passion, specifically images involving masks (I have a big thing about masks, in case you hadn’t noticed), and depictions of scarring and images where half the face and/or skull is missing. The skull missing images turned into an obsession. Always with the right side of the head missing. I had no idea why, but I began to collect them. Paintings, sculptures, photographs. Gruesome stuff.

I always thought I was really screwed up. I mean it’s not normal for an eighteen year old to really like this stuff, right? And I was just a normal middle-class girl from the suburbs with a stable upbringing, so why the obsession, the scouring of the art-galleries and books for horror and deformity?

“Do I need a shrink?” I often thought. “Maybe there is something wrong with me.”

Well I should have listened to that voice telling me that there was something wrong, shouldn’t I?

Because unbeknown to me, at the time, a small tumour was growing inside my brain, which got larger and larger until it was so big it devoured a quarter of my head and eventually nearly killed me. And yes, it was on the right side of my head. Courtesy of a team of amazing brain surgeons seven years ago, I am still here, but now a large chunk of my skull is missing, and half my face is paralysed.

I have become, quite literally, my dark art. The scary sculpture with the half-missing face on my wall is now actually me.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not depressed or upset about this at all. I find it ironic, amusing, and possibly a bit profound.

Was it just a strange co-incidence? Or was my slowly dying brain desperately trying to communicate with me in the only way it knew how?

If I had really listened to my art, could I have understood what it was trying to tell me?



Rich shot with a gorgeous model last week called Rachel T. After chatting over lunch, it turned out that she was a qualified lawyer (like me), half deaf (just like me), and she had scarring and balance problems (again, as I do) because…wait for it…she had a brain tumour when she was younger, in exactly the same place as me. She even had the same pass-mark in her law degree as I did, and a passion for red platform fetish shoes in the same shoe size! Fate had come full circle - what was the statistical chance of me meeting another version of myself, but twenty years younger?

The moral of the story? Maybe these coincidences are not chance happenings. Maybe there IS a reason.

My message to you?

LISTEN to your art. What is it trying to tell you?

The universe exists so you can photograph it!

A common school experiment which everyone will have seen is the interference fringes experiment. A light is shone through two slits and appears as series of light and dark fringes on paper or photographic film on the other side of the slits. This was first observed by Young around 1800, and we are taught that the pattern is due to the wave nature of light,caused by the waves interfering with each other and being reinforced at the bright fringes and cancelled out in-between.

But what happens when you turn the brightness of the light down continually until only a single photon passes through the slit at any one time? Say, one photon per second. Common sense would say that as there is only one photon at a time, there would not be any interference and you should get a random spread of light on the film. However, that is not what we observe, what we actually see is the same interference fringes. Spooky! So each photon that goes through the slit appears to be telling the other photons that come later, which one it went through and where it is.

Now another experiment is to use a photon detector to determine which slit the photon went through and its exact trajectory. When you do this, the interference patterns disappear and you can indeed detect the path of each photon. So now it appears that the photons are no longer talking to each other. Our change in experiment has changed the results.

This wave particle duality has puzzled physicists since it was first observed. Experimental techniques have improved and different methods have been found to test how well it holds and whether there are any violations. One of the most interesting experiments involves setting up the screen to detect the wave pattern in the normal way, but then placing a photon detector behind the screen. The results are startling. If there is no detector there is a pattern, if there is a detector, there is none.

So even more spookily the photon can talk to its own past and change its state.

To explain this you have to consider that the photon exists in a superposition of states throughout time, and it is the act of observing the photon that causes its state to become defined. Basically it is both a wave and a particle at the same time, and choosing to detect is as a particle forces it to be a particle throughout time.

Now there is train of thought which states that all particles are in this superposition of states until an observer causes the state to become fixed. Experiments in quantum mechanics have shown this to be true. If this is true then it is not unreasonable to assume that at the very moment of creation of the universe, all the particles, and the entire state of the universe existed as a superposition of all possible states, and that all that was lacking was an observer to force the universe into a single state.

The spooky thing about this is that one of those states of superposition would include a photographer looking through a lens at a particular scene, and if the nature of the universe allows the state in the future to influence the state of the past, then the simple fact of your ability to exist and observe the universe would cause the superposition of states to collapse and create a universe in which you will exist and take your photograph.

Maybe this is why the universe exists in a state that you can see, it’s simply because you can exist to see it. You are, in fact, the creator of all that you see.

It just so happened that last week the universe’s wave state collapse resulted in me photographing Rachel and I thought I’d take some glamour style shots. So here is one of them. Please Jimmy, don’t cringe too much.

Models: Meat or Muse?

“When are you going to finish those damn photographs?” I said to my dear photographer this morning. “What is it they say on MM? I need fresh meat for the blog!”

He looked at me sternly. “Models are not meat. They are subjects.”

“Subjects?” I said, bristling.”Hang on a minute. I was kidding, you know. A model isn’t just a subject. Nor is she meat. She makes the art too!”

Him: “Models aren’t the creators of the art. The really good ones can make your life as a photographer much easier, but ultimately you have to tell them what to do, in order to create the image you have in your head.”

Hmm.

I ruminated on this, and ruminated a bit more, debated about whether or not to tell him where to stick his photography, and then decided to put it “on blog” instead.

Despite my poor attempts at humour, I find the idea of models being referred to as meat (or indeed just subjects), as rather offensive.

I firmly believe that a model contributes more to the shoot than just being a pretty slab of flesh. Sure, some models are easier to work with than others. Some models only ever aspire to be just pretty girls prancing around. A lot depends on the personalities of both photographer and model, their attitudes, their expectations, their mutual chemistry. Motivation is critical. Working with a girl who is only “in it for the money” must be a fairly dispiriting experience. I can’t imagine how hard it must be trying to create art with a disinterested model.

Likewise, it’s a very unpleasant experience shooting with a photographer who clearly just views the model as a sex object or slab of meat, who doesn’t communicate properly with her, who is uninterested in her as a person but only sees her as a real-life Barbie doll to pose as he wants. How can this possibly create art? You’d be better off investing in a life-doll, at least then you’d get a malleable tool that bends entirely to your will.

But this is not how good models work. They are human beings, with brains and personalities as well as boobs. They bring so much more to a shoot than just the flesh. And the more they work with the artist, the better it gets.

If you work with the same photographer enough, you instinctively know which way to move, which are his favourite poses, you even get to know what he wants from a pose before he asks for it. You develop a kind of synergy with the photographer, where the ideas flow back and forth between you. Where the model works with a trusted photographer enough, a relationship develops. Friendship, an intellectual connection, often more. Each knows the other, the way their mind works, what the photographer wants from an image, and how to turn this idea into better art.

An experienced model knows a photographer’s lighting styles, she will know which way to pose to get the looks he wants. She even knows what he is thinking before he does. She can picture the image he is seeking in her imagination. If she thinks that his artistic idea isn’t going to work, then she will say so, suggest something new, suggest ways to improve the idea. They work together almost as one creature. It’s an artistic, erotic connection, almost spiritual in nature. Both artists are creating something higher than themselves, more than either could produce individually.

I’ve seen this happen many times. Combine one exceptional model with a talented photographer, introduce friendship, season lightly with a bit of chemistry, stir up, and leave to rise for a bit. What do you get? Better art certainly. A kick-ass image which is the result of two minds working together. Could the photographer get this shot with any model? No. It’s wasn’t entirely his idea. It is a combination of talents, of each person’s art.

This is not meat. This is a muse.

Or am I just kidding myself that I contribute to the art?

Is it all him, or is it me as well?

Or am I just meat?





“We will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat"-a comment by Larry Flynt, after posting the infamous “meat-grinder shot” on the cover of Hustler magazine in 1978. Although intended as self-parody (Flynt had just become a born-again Christian), such irony was clearly beyond the general public, and it provided great ammo for the anti-porn movement.

Not the best grinder shot I’ve ever seen, but this was certainly the first.

The Grand Experiment

We would like to extend our profound thanks to Pretty Girl Shooter very much for his honest and thought-provoking advice on my searching questions (O.K. more of an interrogation – sorry Jimmy!) about whether to develop the commercial side of our photography i.e. Rich getting paid for private portfolio and other work. Thanks too for all off-blog comments from other folks and (not just photographers) who had a view.

The unanimous vote ? If you shoot to commercial demand, and you do it all of the time, and you shoot only what the customer wants, there is a very real risk of getting disillusioned with nude photography. Apparently this happens with all types of art, not just photography. Even a musician warned us that “Familiarity breeds contempt for the art.”

I must admit that potentially ruining what has become our main passion in life, sounds a pretty horrible prospect.

After much discussion we have decided to let the commercial side of Fluffytek respond synergistically to public demand, and for us to develop a more holistic approach to marketing the private portfolio side of work (I’ve been doing waaay too much marketing this week on the day job!) This is marketing bullshit for we’re doing to do sod-all regarding paid advertising for our private-portfolio photography business, and just let it develop as it currently is, i.e. by word of mouth. Unless of course, the day-job software bombs, in which case we will pimp Richard’s funky photographic stuff as much as inhumanly possible. For now, Rich has his hands full of software anyway. Aggressively marketing a second business would only result in much greater stress on him, thus increasing the threat of killing the passion for his art. A very real risk, according to everyone I have talked to.

The up-side is that we won’t be turning the blog into an advertising forum, and we will continue to be as outspoken, honest and direct as ever. In fact we may get worse. Even if it offends some photographers, models and deters potential clients. A blanket apology to all in advance.

Richard will continue to shoot whatever style he damn well pleases, and may even horrify the odd private client or two, by sneaking in some experimental “dodgy” stuff. He will also sell selected prints.
Although not of me, because I have forbidden it.
Not that anyone would want to buy them anyway, but I just thought I’d mention it. I’m not for sale. (Unless you're a tall geeky computer-nerd/scientist with a singularly dry wit, in which case I am available at a bargain price. Or for David Hewlett, I am free.)

But, for now, anyway, we remain enthusiastic amateurs! As I say to potential models when I ask them to shoot with us: “We make no profit from what we do. We do this because we love it. We do this for Art.”

O.K. So our view of art isn’t the same as everyone else’s. Way too tame for some of you, and too pornographic for others (boggling, but apparently true!) But as long as the Grand Experiment of making Art remains fun, who cares?

‘Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.’
— M. C. Escher




The lovely playmate Lynx, in another super-dooper-flexy pose that would definitely give us old 40+ models excruciating cramp if we tried it.

P.S. Do please read BT's treatise on Art, posted as a comment to our last post below. A blog entry in itself, provoking much thought.

Photographic art

It wasn’t in the model,
It wasn’t in the pose
It wasn’t in the lighting,
It wasn’t in the focal length
It wasn’t in the aperture
It wasn’t in the film or digital
It wasn’t in Cannon, Nikon or Hasselblad
It wasn’t in the eye

It was all in the mind,
Which looked with the eye,
Through the lens to the model and the light,
And created what was seen in the mind before it existed in the world.

The nature of art is hard to pin down.

The traditional artist is not constrained by the physical world in that they can create on their canvas anything that they choose. The photographer has the constraint that in order to capture an image, he must first create it as a physical representation. Can you imagine creating Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” in camera?
As photographers, do we simply take what is before us in the form of a model or panorama and take the best photograph that we can, or should we strive to create that which would not exist except for the images in the mind?

I have many shots of figure studies and they have often been referred to as art. Indeed, the whole genre is generally referred to as art-nude. However, I would contend that it is not true photographic art. Whatever the art-nude photographer does, he is still only capturing what is placed in front of him. He may be guided by the appearance of the model and may create some outstanding images, but they are not true art, just as the same way that those students drawing still-life figure studies are not truly creating art.

True art is that which comes from inside the artist, that which speaks of both the artist and the viewer. It should elevate and challenge the mind; it should speak of the soul. It is not for everyone, it is a private message between the artist and the viewer.

Wise words to live by

Iris has written a lovely post which mentions some of the words from one of my favourite passages by Father Alfred D'Souza.

It's probably not the same as your poem Iris, but since you asked, here's the story I know:

DANCE LIKE NO-ONE IS WATCHING

"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin.
But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."

This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

So, treasure every moment that you have. And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time ... and remember that time waits for no one ...
So stop waiting until you finish school ...
until you go back to school ...
until you lose ten pounds ...
until you gain ten pounds ...
until you have kids ...
until your kids leave the house ...
until you start work ...
until you retire ...
until you get married ...
until you get divorced ...
until Friday night ...
until Sunday morning ...
until you get a new car or home ...
until your car or home is paid off ...
until spring, until summer ...
until fall ...
until winter ...
until you are off welfare ...
until the first or fifteenth ...
until your song comes on ...
until you've had a drink ...
until you've sobered up ...
until you die ...
until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy ...

Happiness is a journey ... not a destination!!

Thought for the day:

"Work like you don't need money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
And dance like no one's watching."

__________________________________________

It's basically a variation on the mantra "Live every day as if it were your last".
Which I do, of course.
Every single day.
As does anyone who has kicked cancer's ass:-)

Sirensong, who really reflects the spirit of this post.