The Quest for Perfection

It often strikes me, in the modelling and art photography industry, that most folks usually try too hard. They are always looking for the next best thing. Art photographers look to perfect their lighting, their technique, they are always dissatisfied with their work. They aren’t happy until they get the “killer image” in a shoot, the perfect shot that makes it all worthwhile. The one that is "real art". If they can’t create that, for whatever reason (and there may be many), they are unhappy with their work. Similarly most photographers I know spend inordinate amounts of time browsing online, constantly comparing their photographs to others – is someone else’s better? If so, why? How can I get better, dammit? I wanna be the BEST!

Likewise models are constantly and desperately striving to look thinner, more toned, more beautiful. They hone their posing, their technique, their makeup. They shoot with only the best photographers, and compete to get the best ports. They need to be better and cooler than other models - how else can they be a famous model? How else can they get to the top of their profession, get the big bucks, and be a STAR?

Now don’t get me wrong. Striving to improve oneself (whether you are a photographer or model) is a good thing. It’s human nature, after all. How else can you improve, and better your craft and your artistry? More importantly, how else can you support yourself financially? But the problem here isn't to do with earning a living. It's to do with the pressure in modern society, and in the art industry in particular. The unrelenting pressure to be better than your best. The never-ending quest for fame and glory. The constant nagging doubt that you are inferior in your craft, that you are inadequate when compared to your peers, and the inner craving to fit in with the best (and most popular) photographic creatives. This industry feeds off insecurity, and this is not a good thing.

“You know,” says Rich, “If only I could shoot as well as Sascha Hüttenhain, then I’d be happy with my photography.”

“Well, no you wouldn’t,” says I. “Nothing would change.”

Even photographers who are of Sascha's calibre, are constantly dissatisfied with their work. They are permanently striving to improve, just as fast as they can. The relentless pressure is still there. They are constantly pushing themselves to achieve a photographic utopia which exists only in their imagination. (Note, I’ve no idea if this applies personally to Sascha or not – I’m generalising wildly after spending way too much time observing professional photographers and models. Sascha may be deliriously happy with his art and think he's the bees' knees, for all I know.)

Although a certain amount of professional competition is generally healthy, I never understand with people, just why the compulsive need to compare oneself with others. And exactly what is the damn rush to improve so fast? By trying to cram in as many shoots as possible before Christmas, by staying busy, busy, busy, by entering goodness knows how many photographic competitions, by relentlessly pimping your art – exactly how does this help YOU, the person? How will driving yourself so bloody hard, actually give you a healthy working environment in which your creativity can flourish?

And why the rush to get to the top? Why is everything so urgent, so pressurised? Why do you constantly crave more and compare yourself to others? Why do you work so hard, and yet find yourself constantly wanting?

Because you’ll feel guilty if you stop, is my guess, because being in a constant whirl of competitive activity in modern society has now become a habit, a compulsion. It is considered “normal.” Shame, guilt and fear of inadequacy have won the day. You’re either constantly busy, constantly feeling you must create unique top notch art, or…or what?

What would happen if you simply stopped? Turned off the computer? Took a breath? Chilled out? If you stopped comparing yourself to everyone else in the industry, if you stopped browsing Model Mayhem, or the photography blogs? What would happen to your art then?

Go ahead. Step off the treadmill. Give yourself permission to chill. Try just doing nothing.

In the words of the wise Bishop Stephen Cottrell, "Learn to nurture your inner slob."

And I bet your art improves all by itself.

Here's to our amazing family, warts and all

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

Richard Bach - Illusions

Roswell Ivory, plus groovy fetish boots.
BTW, this is our 200th post :-)

The skies are falling! The skies are falling!

There’s a reason I don’t blog about work, money and economics. Generally after I’ve been talking about money, people decide they want to jump off the nearest bridge. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.


A big black thunderstorm is looming over the world’s economy.

Last week the IMF cut its predictions for world growth, and slashed its US forecast to a six year low. It warned of “a major risk to the global outlook.”

Things are getting worse in many differing types of markets. September housing starts in the US have slumped to a fourteen year low. Oil prices are off the scale. Corn prices are rising, as are those cheap Chinese imports which are no longer so cheap as Chinese workers cotton on to the fact that they should be paid a decent income. There are reports of several industrial market sectors already being in recession. Strong rumours are circulating that both US and UK banks are trying to hide their debts. Balance sheets are looking very poorly, profits are shrinking, and earnings are heading south. No it’s not just me being melodramatic - anyone who follows modern economic or business bulletins will receive new global-doom reports on a daily basis.

Everyone knows that US and Western consumption has powered the world for the past decade, but now the party’s over. The majority of US and UK consumers have run up huge debts, mainly by borrowing against increasing property prices. It’s been a classic case of “Buy now, worry later”. But now the burst of the US property bubble (and the new UK credit crunch) means that bank lending has tightened, and folks have simply run out of money. After all, they can’t keep spending forever. As Paul Krugman said, “unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.”

Both the US and Britain are in a mess. Sure, the UK is a year or two behind the US, as our property boom is currently at its peak, but the recent credit crunch has turned the tide. UK property prices (currently 40% overvalued) fell last month for the first time in years. Businesses are strapped for cash, and can’t borrow from the banks. UK banks are now no longer lending recklessly to companies or individuals - and so people just can’t borrow any more. Rising interest rates, plus huge taxes and runaway inflation over here (the unofficial "real" inflation, rather than the government figures, which mean diddly-squat because they are manipulated) mean that people simply can’t afford to manage their debt, and they can’t afford to pay their monthly bills.

The UK is on a precipice - it’s only a matter of time.

As for the US, many economists say it’s already too late, and a recession is inevitable.

There’s a storm brewin’ folks. Next year, most likely.

Time to batten down the hatches.

Anyone wanna jump of that bridge yet?
I really should stick to talking about art ‘n’ nekkid chix huh?



Lilmummy, after talking to me about the economy.

R2: Rise of the Aggregator

“Anything scarce is valuable” (Anon)

You say: “Site xyz has featured me on their blog. I’m so honoured to be published by them.”

I say: “What a load of bollocks! That’s not being published - it has no value!”

Let’s wind the clock back to February 2003 when Michael Barnes started the Art-Nudes blog . It was, I believe, the first of its kind. A site driven by one man who wished to collect together links to what he considered the best in art-nude photography. A site which gave the viewer a new talent to examine and appreciate every day. It was an invaluable resource for anyone who was interested in the genre.

It was the first art-nude aggregator, and as such there was both a demand by the viewers for new images and by the photographers to be featured. Thus being featured on the blog was something that was considered valuable to the photographer as it gave coverage and publicity, and there was (and still is) a certain kudos if your work appeared there. As photographers were featured, many would link back to the blog in appreciation, thus increasing its value and fame.

Its value was in its uniqueness.

However, it was not a form of peer review. It was not selective of only the very highest quality because such a blog has a need to add new images. It would not be possible to run the blog showing only the work of the best 20 photographers, or even the top 200. This would have limited its diversity. So in practical terms it was very nice to be listed but it didn’t carry weight as actually “being a published photographer”.

Now you might wonder why I would say this. I’m certainly not trying to devalue Michael’s work, which we have on many occasions promoted. In fact we love his blog, and the passion and dedication to art-nude photography. However, as with most art, there has been a tendency to copy uniqueness, and now there are hundreds, nay thousands, of similar blogs from people who decided to copy Michael’s idea.

Nowadays, artists post all the time on their blogs whenever they get featured on any aggregator. They seem to think it is some form of review.



Let me say this again. There is no publishing value in an aggregator!

The internet is the ultimate in free publishing. It costs nothing to create a blog, it costs nothing to create posts, and it costs nothing to link to and show images from a photographers site. I therefore postulate that in this context, free has no value.

Of the thousands of aggregators that have sprung up imitating Michael’s blog, some are quite selective and rather good, but some are bad and feature any rubbish they can find. These sites have the same running costs, nothing. If the blogger chooses bad images there is no loss to them. If they close the site there are no jobs lost. They have no vested interest in making the best choices other than their desire to have a high visitor count. Thus being listed on one of these sites cannot possibly be counted as being published any more than having someone visit your site is considered being published.

Compare this to a magazine or book. If the images are bad then the publication doesn’t sell, so there will be no advertisers or subscribers and the magazine will go bust and the editor and staff lose their jobs. It’s a big difference and changes the whole focus of the image selection.

There is another kind of aggregator site which charges to view the images. These sites, for example Michelle7 charge their viewers. Thus their content must be good enough for the subscribers to pay and this enforces a selection procedure that imparts value to the act of being selected.

It’s this selection pressure that makes the inclusion have a value. There is a quantifiable loss involved in getting it wrong.

Now it’s easy to argue that a good aggregator will have value in that it will have recurring visitors and it is this volume of visitors that give it value. This is to some level true, but over time the rise of the aggregator sites and growth of them is becoming their own downfall.

Enter into this the site StumbleUpon. This is the ultimate aggregator. Anyone can create a Stumble account. Each account has a blog. You can add to your Stumble blog by right clicking an image and adding it to the blog together with a text entry. It’s the aggregator taken to its ultimate limit of ease of use, simplicity and mass market appeal. It is to photography aggregators what WalMart is to baked beans.

There are some good aggregators on Stumble, showing some remarkable work. But no-one in their right mind would shout about being added to a Stumble blog.

Stumble is the death through democratisation of the aggregator.

So please, if an aggregator features you, remember it has no value, it’s free and for every time you post a message about xyz site listing you, you have probably been Stumble-blogged many more times.

Finally. I want to be published some more, so please click the Stumble button below this post.

See - wasn’t that easy?!
How does it feel to be your very own aggregator?

(Your patronage is appreciated. We love you all.)




These photographs are of the lovely Pirate Maiden who is very much worth adding to your aggregator.

Hernia Fetish!

Time to attract all-new pervy readers (since we’ve offended practically everyone, we need to bump up the dramatic headlines a bit to lure people in!)

For a glorious few months earlier this year, we were the Number 1 hit on Google for “Hernia Fetish”.

What can I say? It was my 15 minutes of fame. If I get known for nothing else in my modelling career, I will be forever famous for being the world’s number one horny herniated model!

Yay! I’m a star at last!!!

Incredible isn’t it? Some strange people actually have a genu-ine fetish about hernias…The mind truly boggles! No I’m not going to be disrespectful and mock those that get their juices going via way of looking at bulging, irreducible abdominal sacs (although the temptation is very strong, I admit!)

But for those that have revisited this blog and my gorgeous groin area for a tantalising glimpse of the big juicy strangulated bulbous balloon-hernial-sac…Sorry, all that’s left is a rather unexciting scar. But you’re welcome to see a piccie of me clutching my seductively-named "hernia scar endometrioma", if that’s what floats your boat…




Is anyone getting turned on yet? Or have you all gone to throw-up somewhere else?

Duty before love

Yesterday I had a ten page letter from a close friend who lives a long way away in the north of England. Let’s call her Amy. Despite radically different backgrounds, education and class, we have been writing to each other for twenty-two years now, and we meet when we can. We tell each other practically everything, and we have acted as each other’s confident and shoulder to cry on for longer than I can remember.

Amy is wonderful, a kind and caring woman, hard-working and devoted to her four children whom she has raised single-handed because the four different respective fathers disappeared into the ether at the mere whiff of the phrase “child support”. Amy has had a long and passionate relationship with a beautiful, gentle guy of her own age, called Charles. He is her best friend. They grew up together, were childhood sweethearts and went their separate ways after finishing school, as kids often do. Twenty years later, she bumped into him, and the friendship re-started. It quickly developed into something else…lust became passion which became love, and most important of all, never forget that overwhelming friendship which bound them together so many years ago when they were children. They have been seeing each other for nearly eight years now and love each other very much.

Of course, the problem is that Charles is married. He has two kids and is a devoted family man. He doesn’t love his wife (so he tells Amy), their marriage is dead, in name only, for the sake of the children. Amy has put up with this for the last eight years, suffered through it, tolerated the wife’s jealous rages (and accompanying death threats), the pain, the ripping apart of the soul that comes with a love triangle like this. She is in perpetual emotional agony, craving with every fibre of her being to be with Charles. She believes his promises that he’s going to leave his wife, that he has only stayed with her for the children’s sake, that his snatched and secret nights with Amy are the only time he loves, the only time he feels alive. It is Amy he loves, he promises her. They will be together soon. She just has to wait that little bit longer.

I have had fortnightly letters detailing her love and trust for Charles for many years. His kids are now grown up, and have left home. But still he does not leave. He is still promising to be with Amy, making up different excuses each time (the latest is because his wife would take all his money….well, duh! That’s what divorce involves luvvie!) But Amy’s love is blind, and total. There is only Charles. He loves her and worries about her. They email and text all the time, and have snatched moments when they can. Eight years later, she is still waiting for him, and nothing has changed.

Now you’re going to say : why don’t you tell her to move on? Start again with another guy? Amy has no shortage of male admirers after all. Well, God knows I have tried to tell her, more times than you’ve had hot dinners, that he’s never going to leave his wife. She never believes me. She just thinks I am plain wrong, no matter what I say.

Any idiot can see Charles is never going to leave the wife. Why the hell should he? He has it all, a woman at home to look after him and give him a comfortable life, plus the illicit forbidden passion on the side, the devoted mistress (which is what we call the “other woman” in the UK) who can give him the emotional thrill that is missing in his daily boring grind. He loves them both of course, because it’s perfectly possible to love more than one other person. And I’m sure he feels guilty enough about Amy, he doesn’t like to see her suffer. He’s a decent and caring guy, and a good person. But he is torn between duty to his wife of twenty years, and desire for the new life with his mistress. Should he be true to himself and his desires, and be with Amy? After all, doesn’t he have a right to be happy? Why the hell shouldn’t he leave his wife? Be a fool for love? But what about duty? He is consumed by guilt, desire, and in the end he cannot choose, so he does nothing, and remains miserable.

This story is as old as the hills. Statistically, the hard fact is that in the UK 95% of partners never leave their husband or wife if they have an affair. Believe me, I speak from experience, although this was a long time ago now.

The problem is, which I discovered (and the reason I refuse to have affairs nowadays, other than the fact that I’m devoted to Rich!) is that there may be a real moral issue here. What about the innocent wife who has remained devoted and loving to him for so long, and who knowingly suffers the humiliation and torture of knowing her husband has a sexual relationship with another woman? Presumably the guy still at least likes and respects his wife, and has had many years of companionship and love with her, so what right does the “other woman” have to break that up and cause such emotional pain? In my experience (considerable, unfortunately), the husband often re-writes the history of the marriage in his own mind, ruthlessly excising happiness and companionship from memory, in order to rationalise the hurt he wishes to inflict.

Another point, and I’m sorry to burst everyone’s bubble here, is that nobody has any “divine right” to happiness, no matter what the new-agey self-help books say. If more people realised that, and if everyone stopped thinking of “me-first”, then our society might be a nicer place in which to live. In this particular scenario, the husband and mistress are just being selfish, and causing emotional wreckage and carnage that will mentally scar all parties for life.

Speaking from the experience of being “the other woman”, I learned that defining myself through selfish sexual desire actually resulted in such all-consuming guilt, that it threatened to destroy the person I always believed myself to be. So I got out, even though it was painful. I changed, became “true to myself” and true to what I knew was right. And as a result, I respected myself a hell of a lot more, and I would like to believe I became a better person.

It’s a pity I can’t communicate that to Amy.



Warm fuzzy on-camera chemistry courtesy of Syd and A.J.

Sunday's child

The last week has been crappy, as well as the one before it. This is partially health related, but mostly the fault of work, which is hell. Our stress levels are off the scale. So how do other folks handle this level of stress and still stay sane?

Well, some go to therapists of course (sorry, too broke for therapy), some rely on anti-depressants (sorry, I believe they make things worse), and a large proportion take to alcohol in copious amounts. However, since our lives turned mega-crappy, neither Richard nor I have touched a drop.

So why didn't we drink? If ever there was a time to numb the pain, to silence the terror, the last two weeks have been it.

Funnily enough I don’t think it has ever occurred to us. Sometimes, like now, life can be so unrelentingly grim that it brings its own anaesthetic. As physical pain causes the body to release endorphins, so extreme emotional pain can bring its own cocoon. And after the hell has passed, there is only peace and simplicity left. Nothing else remains.

Today nothing else seems important other than the bright sunshine streaming through my window as I type this. The pretty field outside, the intense brilliant blue of the sky, the hug from my little daughter as she tells me I’m beautiful. Life is pretty much perfect, right this moment in time.

I hope you have a joyous Sunday, whatever you're up to!



Rachel T - I keep coming back to the images from this shoot. I guess I think they're beautiful.

If you don’t mind, since it’s Sunday and meaning-of-life stuff is supposed to happen on the Sabbath, I'm featuring an extract from “the Witches” by Anne Rice.

“Peace of mind can be obtained in the face of the worst horrors and the worst losses. It can be obtained by faith in change and in will and in accident, and by faith in ourselves, that we do the right thing, more often than not, in the face of adversity.

We are the only true moral force in the physical world, the makers of ethics and moral ideas, and we must be as good as the gods we’ve created in the past to guide us.

I believe that through our finest efforts, we will succeed finally in creating heaven on earth, and we do it every time that we love, every time that we embrace, every time that we commit to create rather than to destroy, every time that we place life over death, and the natural over what is unnatural, in so far as we are able to define it.

If any revelation awaits us at all, it must be as good as our ideals and our best philosophy. If that isn’t so then we are in the grip of a staggering irony. And all the spooks of hell might as well dance in the parlour.

There could be a devil. People who burn other people to death are fine. There could be anything.

But the world is simply too beautiful for that.”

Rant Number 1

Good morning and welcome to our new and exciting feature: Ranting Rich’s Friday Morning Rantathon. Our hero’s spicy and belligerent commentary on life, the universe and the meaning of Art.

I don’t get it!

I have often seen images that make me wonder what‘s wrong with people.

As an example I came across an image on Model Mayhem that reinforced this view. This shows a model perched over a toilet seat, wearing (supposedly) blood stained knickers with blood all over the toilet, her legs and toilet paper. The amount of blood is such that it’s not possible to think that it’s just the result of menstruation. So the viewer is left to wonder, has she been raped, has she had a miscarriage, is she haemorrhaging due to illness?

It’s obviously about pain and suffering, but its glossed up, well lit, and posed by a model. It’s not documentary, so I guess it’s about making a statement for the ‘Art’. Now I have had the misfortune of seeing a woman with that amount of blood and she did not look like she was thinking ‘oooh look at that’. Nor was she playing. She was clutching her stomach in agony.

There are a number of photographers and models who have commented about how fantastic this photograph is. It obviously appeals to them as an artistic statement.

There are also many ‘edgy bondage’ sites that show bound women being tied, beaten and bundled into the back of cars. Of course it’s all in the name of art and its harmless right? (Please note that I am excluding the erotic bondage sites from this description).

Well, let’s look at another class of image (bottom of this post), something so extreme and distasteful that MM won’t show it, Web Models won’t show it. It’s beyond the pale of what normal decent people could look at.

This could not be listed at any online modelling site I know of. It’s considered porn. There is no blood, no violence, no statement on society. It’s just about erotic self stimulation. And I suspect that my even showing this on the blog will shock and horrify models and have them cancel bookings with me in case, God forbid, I should ask them to do something like this. And if the image were a man and woman touching each other, OMG, how awful would that be?

So we have a situation that means that images which represent death, serious illness, abduction, kidnap and pain are acceptable, but the ones that represent erotic play and the one act that is required to create every living person on the planet, are taboo and frowned upon.

“I don’t do porn!” says the model, but I’ll show myself as a victim of rape, or suicide or anything that’s ‘arty’ but God forbid I shoot be shown as an erotic creature of love and desire. How twisted is that?!

This is reflected in so many ways in society, and in the art and media community especially. Consider Reality TV or some of the British soaps, which focus on the bad in society. I guess blood and gore have more interest, like driving slowly past a car wreck to see if you can see a body. But don’t even mention sex, unless it’s prostitutes, druggies and rape.

I do understand that the problem here is me. I would expect people to want to be represented by life, beauty, eroticism and sensuality, not looking like the meat on a butchers table. But I guess I’ll never understand the mentality of someone who won’t do erotic photography but will happily shoot or praise a photograph that makes them look like a train wreck.

Since when did bloody and violent glossy art become more publically acceptable than erotic art, and what does this say about the values of the society we live in?

Seasonal Fluctuations

‘Tis the Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

I love the autumn. This is actually my favourite time of year. The leaves slowly fall, the conkers drop, the house gets cleaned thoroughly, the chimney swept, winter logs are brought in for firewood for the stove, the duvets and curtains get changed for snuggly winter weight, the autumn blackberries, apples and elderberries are harvested and frozen down for winter.

And women get horny.

Yup. It’s definitely the season for rampant sex. According to my friends, this is an entirely normal female seasonal fluctuation. Women get randier in the autumn. I’m not entirely sure why this is. Maybe it’s the drop in temperature that makes women want to snuggle up with someone warm ‘n’ sexy for the winter. Maybe it’s an inbuilt nesting instinct. Maybe it’s the leaves. But this…er… hormone blip is very real. Most women go entirely off the rails for a period of about six weeks. After that we settle down for Christmas, but in the meantime, crazy-sex-mad-laydeez rule O.K.

Females cannot be responsible for their actions at this time of year. Mood swings, irrationality, craving for chocolate, general nuttiness, and a heightened desire for retail therapy or wild partying (in lieu of sex if not available).

Rich of course, loves the autumn. There is a reason that my three kids were born at the same time of year (about nine months hence). After all, if the poor man only has sex for two months a year, it’d better be good right?

So I would like to point out that I cannot be held responsible for the next six weeks’ blog posts. We chix are not ourselves. Instead, we are ruled by hormones, and this means that our parameters of…er…”what is art?” may have a significantly wider personal comfort zone than normal. Today for example, I have spent an inordinate amount of time talking with two female friends about sex, corsets, designer fetish heels and love dens, and the best ways to be photographed in them! So you see, I may be a rampant and deranged middle-aged sex-vixen, but I am not alone.

So folks, if you wanna lure the babes, now is the time to strut your funky stuff. If you are thinking of expanding your family, autumn is the most fertile time to explore your wildest fantasies as often as inhumanly possible (really kinky sex every day for a month gets optimum results, I promise!) If you are in the northern hemisphere and you need to spruce up your photographic erotica portfolio, now would definitely be the best time to extract the most from your modelling subjects.

As for me, believe me, I will really TRY to keep the blog as clean and pucker as possible. After all, I don’t want the models and clients to cancel, I still want my friends to continue speaking to me, and I really do want the blog to remain at least slightly artistically highbrow (yes, I know, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that ever happening!) I just don’t know if I’m capable of rational thought. Maybe I should just hand the blog back to Ranting Rich until deepest winter arrives. Hmm…

Must…..keep…repeating……it’s all about the art……it’s all about the art……it’s…definitely nothing to do with art…..if it’s black and white it’s gotta be art…..oh dearie me.



The Glass Nipple.

A Fresh Start

A fine Monday morning hello to our remaining five readers!

Greetings five readers! Good to see you here, now that my dear husband (defender of my honour and integrity) has scared off everyone else by yelling at them (and you wonder why I try to keep him away from the day-job customers!?!). Yes yes, I know many people didn’t comment because they didn’t know what to say - silent sympathy and all that, but rightly or wrongly, bad news means people need support from their community, which in my case, is “you lot”! So thanks to those that took the time to contact me.

O.K. now that our readership is somewhat smaller and cosier, we have decided to make a fresh start, change things round a bit.

I fully intend to forget about this crappy disease as much as possible. Photography and Art both help me do this. They are good therapy, as is my writing. Without photography, blogging and my occasional stories, I’d go completely crackers.

We did seriously contemplate deleting this blog and setting up another one instead, but since Rich has scared off all the readers anyway, there’s no need. However the blog will change. We are thirsty for more, much more. We must modernise, re-build, re-conquer, fight for a new and greater glory, etc, etc.

The good news is we will continue to blog about art, and show beautiful art nude photography.

The bad news is all the other stuff we are going to include.

From now on we are going to be less concerned about writing only what we think will interest people, or what will titillate your taste-buds, so to speak (with the emphasis on “taste”).

From now on we are going to write about what the hell we like. Art and photography is included in this of course, but not exclusively. We have lots to say about our lives, our society, politics, relationships, philosophy, religion, sex – oh yes, I have plenty to say about sex, but have never done so before because it’s “not the done thing, what?!”

In short I have decided to give myself a real bona-fide mid-life crisis. I’ve worked hard for it, I’ve earned it, and I’m damn well gonna have it. So you can expect some dippy behaviour (and accompanying dodgy photos) from me, and if that horrifies friends and readers, well c’est la vie. I do not intend to take life very seriously, and I definitely intend to have a heck of a lot of fun.

And Rich is going to post whatever writing (or should that be “ranting”?!) and photographs he feels like posting, even if the photographic genre is sometimes not classic fine art nudes, and consequently puts off the models (which is very highly likely, I’m afraid).

In short, we are drawing a line in the sand.

Starting again.

Hope you still decide to stay with us.




Clayre McKinnen, also thirsty.

Honesty.

There is a reason why I don’t have many friends. It’s called honesty.

I tend not to pretty things up for people, I’m blunt, I call it how I see it.

The friends I do have know and accept this, and understand that if you ask my opinion then you had better be damn sure you want to know the honest truth because I won't dress it up.

I don’t often tell people my opinion without being asked. It’s not polite.

I have spent most of this week angry.

Angry at the injustice of a world that in one week would make Lin sick, break my children’s arms, give me a two day migraine headache, and then have a competitor in our day job phone all our resellers to slag off our products and try to sell theirs.

Most of that has passed now. But I’m still angry.

Not at the world. After all, the world just rolls the dice and sometimes you win, and sometimes you loose. It’s neither fair, or unfair, it just is.

But people, there’s the rub.

People have a choice. People can decide to be good, bad, indifferent or anything else. People can care or not give a damn. As I grew up I had great faith in humanity. That people were on the whole good and cared for others. Sympathised with them and on the whole wished them well. As I have grown up I have come to realise that I was wrong. That those who you would call your friends often don’t give a damn. They want only what you can give to them, beyond that you are not of interest.

I think that this week the last vestiges of my faith in humanity died and I am again angry.

I’m angry at 598 people.

That’s the number of people who have read this blog, since Lin posted her comments about having a bad week and being diagnosed with cancer, and were so indifferent that they didn’t leave a comment, didn’t post a message, email or anything else to offer Lin their best wishes. Shame on you.

You are the reason I have no faith in humanity any more. It's difficult to have faith in the whole when only 0.6% of the world live up to your expectations. But I doubt if you give a damn.

Here is a pretty picture to sooth your brow after that, I doubt if you care who it is as long as there are tits in it and I don’t mention the C word.

I expect that this post will lose me 598 readers. Well I don’t care. I would rather take my photographs and write the blog for the 5 people who gave a damn, than the rest of you.

The Happy Place

According to the Urban Dictionary, a “Happy Place” is defined as “The mental state achieved when one wants to avoid the unpleasant or uncomfortable. Everyone's happy place is different, and usually consists of the things that make them joyous.”

The last seven days have been really awful.

In order of occurrence:

1. My middle son broke his finger on his left hand. His right arm is also in plaster from breaking it three weeks ago, so now the poor chap can’t use either limb, although he is soldiering on bravely.

2. Rich is working frightening hours on the day-job, as the next software patch is long overdue, and the customers are getting pissed. They also won’t part with hard cash until the bugs are fixed, causing no small about of worry for me, the trusty company finance director.

3. Rich’s photography was rejected from an agent as not being distinctive enough, and because it is too much like much of the material they have already. He thinks this is a valid criticism, and he also doesn’t know which direction he is going in the future. He has felt the need to change photographic direction for a while now - he’s always said he wouldn’t shoot the fine art nude genre forever. So he’s musing on this, and I am being suitably musey (which is fun!), and no doubt varying experiments and results will appear in due course.

So the week is not so bad so far, huh?

Well, number four came earlier this week.

On Tuesday morning I was approached by my first real local professional model agency, asking me to join them. I was so excited!
And then the twist of fate.

On Tuesday afternoon, my annual MRI results came back. They were not good. My tumour is growing slowly but steadily, wrapping itself insidiously around my brain. It is inoperable, and radiation resistant. When surgeons start to use words like “incurable”, “wait and see”, “containment” and “quality of life” you get a horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that just won’t go away. The good news is that it can probably be contained long term - they are going to nuke the tissue around the little critter next year some time (long waiting list for gamma knife machine), which should in theory prevent it from expanding further.

Number four has resulted in me being a bit of a basket case for a couple of days, not least because the treatment will herald the end of my modelling, not to mention I will now be forever unemployable. This it has been, shall we say, “a bit of a blow”. However I do feel more positive about this now. After all, I do get to live! Hurrah!

Now you’ll all be pleased to hear that I have no intention of whinging on about cancer endlessly - in fact I didn’t intend to mention it at all, but I thought it might help explain why I have been so, um… “moody” recently (I’m really sorry about that Captain James D).

So, most importantly, how does this affect the photography? Well, Rich wanted to give it up. He was concerned that I would get upset about him photographing gorgeous naked chix when I am “unphotogenic” in the future (no he doesn’t think I’ll be unphotogenic - but I know I’m going to be, for treatment reasons I’m not discussing here, but Melvin knows what I mean).

Well I’m definitely not letting Rich quit his photography. Oh no siree. Quitting is not an option.

Photography is our happy place. It makes us feel better inside, gives us the warm fuzzies.

Art is in our blood now. We can’t go back.


"What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears continue; those who don’t, quit.”

Art and Fear, page 14.




This is model and artist Clayre McKinnen from last week’s shoot

No more Fetish Anthologies?

Remember the review of Fetish Photo Anthology Volume 5 I did a while ago? You can re-read it here.In it, I asked a lot of rather impudent questions. Well, yesterday Jürgen kindly replied. His words make interesting reading, and reveal just how much hard work, dedication, passion and investment went into producing this most excellent book. Thank you Jürgen for taking the time to make this post. I have reproduced this here in full:

"Jürgen here...There are way too many questions here to be answered in just one reply. Why some are selected and why others are not? That's quite simple; if I receive a CD or DVD with the pictures and if they are any good, I select what I like and I've been doing that for the last 17 years. Remember that I do all of this alone, from research, contacting the models, photographers, layout, boxing the books, going to the postoffice... well, you get the picture. I don't have the time anymore to look on the web for new talent. So yes, anybody who knows great, new talent, just inform me.

I was delighted to read the comments and I resist to answer on the errors written here, but I can now say that this will be last Anthology I will make. Sadly enough. But I'm proud of what I did all these years.

Again to come back on the participating photographers, some didn't send in their work or simply refused to participate when I asked them. The color issue is financially impossible for me... that being said, this volume has pushed me to the limit of my finance and the futur of the magazine is also hanging on a very thin tread. So no, financially I'm not successful, but I love every second of what I do. Black & white photography is my life. Showing off new artist who "make it" after that is my success. (Gilles Berquet, Trevor Watson, Chouraqui, Barbara Nitke and many, many others) Also, I've looked at over 10.000 pictures to select what is in this book. In between I also make the magazine and produce other books like BOUND with David Lawrence and SHIBARI with Master K, run a fetish store with my wife and have 4 kids, who all need my attention. So yes, I admit, I make mistakes. And yes, names are missing. Some photographers sent in their work and I forgot to insert them in the layout! Can you imagine that!??? It's not easy, I can tell you. Well, that's just a small answer to all the many questions posted here. If you want to know why this or why that, just email me. OK? So IF I was to make another volume, I accept the help.

Jürgen"

Lyrics

I am always boggled by the number of lyrics that appear on blogs. James Graham (musical background) and Lela Rae are but two examples of most excellent nude-photographic-art-related bloggers who constantly use lyrics as a method of expressing their thoughts, their mood, and trying to teach their readers about how they think and feel. They both use lyrics to communicate their art.

Music is the universal language. We humans express ourselves best through music and also via poetry. Of course, poetry nowadays is deeply untrendy. But when it’s put to music, to really GOOD music, it conveys wisdom and enlightenment to the reader. This applies to all types of music – including country, pop, rock and especially opera.

In the movie Dangerous Minds, a schoolteacher (played by Michelle Pfieffer) in an inner-city school finally reaches an impossible class by getting them interested in poetry. Poetry?! Yes, poetry. The poetry of lyrics. Bob Dylan to be exact. The poetry of rock music. This method of teaching has in fact been used all over the world, to great effect, by innovative English Literature teachers. The best way to teach kids, and to make the poetry to stick in their minds, is to use the powerful medium of music. Poetry and rhythm inexorably intertwined are a powerful combination which sticks in your mind and can touch your soul.

Once upon a time, I memorised the first few opening bars and the complete lyrics to every British top 40 single between 1980-1985. No I’m not kidding. What can I say? I loved music with a passion, and I had a heck of a memory then. Plus it was a darn sight more interesting than learning physics. As a result I learned a lot of fantastic rock/pop/love poetry off by heart, but I know nothing about the origins of the universe. However, it’s a useful party piece, and I can impress the kids when they test me (big kudos in the “Clever Momma” stakes.)

If you go to a neuro-linguistic programming class (I have been to several) often they will use music and lyrics to help you remember things. Lyrics are a very useful memory technique. I used to make up lyrics as a method of learning my chemistry periodic tables, and I swear I got full marks every time.

But lyrics are more than that. The good ones are profound. They express mood, teach you a message, and most importantly, because the song is catchy, you remember and identify with them. They are the most powerful teaching mechanism in the world, and I truly wish school teachers would use them more often to engage pupils.

Unfortunately, because I am half deaf nowadays, I tend not to search out new music in the same way as I used to. As a result, I miss out on a heck of a lot of modern artistic thought and enlightenment.

Musicians are poets of the modern society. They teach more than studying ever will. Ignore lyrics at your peril.

And to James and Lela…keep on blogging lyrics! At the very least they introduce me to some grand new tunes every day (‘cos I look them up!), and teach me some fabulous new poetry !



BTW, for those who are interested, my favourite lyrics of all time are U2’s “One” which always makes me “well up” whenever I listen to it. Besides applying to all human-kind, of course, I swear they were written as a sort of psychic predictive wisdom for a good friend of mine because they apply to a particularly rough time not so long ago. Of course, the poetry means nothing without the music (and if you don’t know this song, which rock have you been living under for the last sixteen years? I insist you go download it now!?!) To do this justice, please only listen to when you're feeling melancholy and after at least one bottle of really good red….

Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame
You say
One love
One life
When it's one need
In the night
One love
We get to share it
Leaves you baby if you
Don't care for it

Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without
Well it's

Too late
Tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We're one, but we're not the same
We get to
carry each other
carry each other
One

Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus?
To the lepers in your head

Did I ask too much?
More than a lot.
You gave me nothing,
Now it's all I got
We're one
But we're not the same
See we
Hurt each other
Then we do it again
You say
Love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love is a higher law
You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl
And I can't keep holding on
To what you got
When all you've got is hurt

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters and my
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

One...




Regular readers will remember the beautiful Rachel T.

This post contains strong language!

This is being typed in a rare moment of access to the internet. Nowadays I take internet access where I can find it and make the most of it.

About ten days ago Rich bought me an early Christmas present: a beautiful shiny new laptop to replace my very old and ailing machine. It was gorgeous - fast, silver, sexy, with a trendy aluminium pouch on the case so I could insert my favourite nude photograph into the laptop cover. It also had large and sparkly flashing orange and red lights all over it. I kid you not! You turn this baby on, and it lights up like a Christmas tree! With a nude photograph in the pouch, it actually becomes a nekkid-chix-yuletide-wonderland-sex-tool. Completely divine! The only thing missing is a pink furry mouse (and I’m still working on that - my cat brought me a real one today, but alas it appeared to be broken.)

After admiring and caressing the loveliness of my beautiful chick-tool, it was time to actually use it. I had recklessly elected, nay, actually VOLUNTEERED (in a moment of madness) to put Microsoft Vista on it. Rich cautioned against it - he said, “Stay with XP. Vista has got bad reviews.” Silly me, I should have listened. I thought I knew better. I thought I could cope. I thought I was invincible.

Needless to say I fell flat on my face. Since my Fucking Vista Laptop (henceforth to be known as FVL) has arrived, our day-job server network has crashed on average at least twice an hour, every hour of the day and night. The DNS has gone down every twenty minutes for ten days straight. Photographic clients thought I had freaked out in a jealous rage and forced Rich to give up photography. Day-job customers thought we had quit software. Rich has lost hours and hours of code. I have lost too many blog entries to count. Doesn’t matter how much we try to fix it. Nothing works. Richard is the cleverest and most advanced computer geek I know. If he can’t fix the FVL then no-one can.

I have no remote internet connection from the house, so the only time I can go online to blog is to sit alone all evening in a very cold office next door, attempting to go online by stealing someone else‘s PC, although the network is so poorly that it’s frankly almost impossible to do anything. Tonight it has taken me over two hours and countless attempts to order online my organic vegetable box for next week. Needless to say - I have failed in this Herculean task (FVL crashed, and the DNS went down), and the family is living off beans on toast for the foreseeable future.

I have now finally admitted defeat. I will therefore be off-net for a while (no change there then) whilst my FVL is wiped clean and XP is restored to it. So I lose some very pretty graphics, but it’s a small price to pay to get my life back. Rich then has to pick up the pieces of the network, and try to restore calm to a very upset computer network and an equally psychotic wife.

In the meantime, I am very cold - there is no heating in the office at night, so please do picture me, a little ol‘ lady (white-haired and nearly bald), wrapped in blankets, typing frantically over a lone keyboard under a single light, with only the cat (and accompanying mouse-guts) for company.

I am cybernetically paralysed.
I have PMS and Vista.
I have run out of chocolate.
I am not a happy woman.



The evil Vista vanquishes the helpless maiden.

(Actually Diablo and Jenvy from last year).

The Frida Cult

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is now regarded as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century.

I have had a crush on Frida for some time. She’s really big in the States – you can buy Frida cushions, Frida curtain material, Frida bags, even Frida crucifixes, you name it. It’s a cult. At times, I wish I was in the States, as Frida is almost unknown in the UK. But elsewhere in the world, she is huge. In fact her position as a globally recognised cult figure has become so powerful, that at times it threatens to overshadow her art.

If you’ve never heard of Frida or seen her art, then may I recommend the movie “Frida” where Salma Hayek plays her. So good I cried, and I really don’t cry easily in movies. If you don’t like movies, try her diaries or any number of her biographies.

Frida Kahlo was an amazing woman. Her life was filled with immense, unrelenting pain. She endured more in her short life than most people will ever have to face, but she never let this defeat her.

In 1928, when she was 21, Frida embarked on a relationship with Diego Rivera. Diego, then aged 41, was Mexico's most celebrated artist, famous for politically motivated murals. Ironically, she has become better known than him, practically an icon. Unlike Diego, Frida was a self taught painter, but a good one. She used personal symbolism mixed with Surrealism to express her suffering through her work. Although many folks thought she was a surrealist, she rejected this and considered her art to be “realistic not surrealist”. She painted herself and her life, no holds barred.

Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

Probably the most influential event in Frida's life was the most tragic one as well. When she was eighteen, she was in a bus accident that wrecked her life. Her body was almost destroyed. Both her spinal column and pelvis were broken in three places when she was impaled by a metal handrail that entered her hip and exited through her vagina. She was not expected to live. After the accident, bed-ridden for months, Frida began to paint. She painted to pass the time, but art also became an essential therapy for her emotionally and spiritually. Because of the accident, Frida was never able to have children. She had several miscarriages, which caused major depression, and the only outlet for her sorrow was her art. If you examine her work, her paintings were very passionate, albeit violent, bloody, and upsetting, but they simply represented her actual life and the truth of what was happening to her both physically and emotionally. Most of her paintings were self-portraits. She said, "I paint self-portraits because I am the person I know best. I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other considerations."

Frida is my heroine – she was true to herself, her sexuality and her art, and to hell with what anyone else thought. An unashamed rebel, she was bisexual and had affairs with as many women as men. She drank like a fish, was wined and dined by the artist community (including Picasso), and appeared on the cover of Vogue. Her fashion was very Mexican, very unique, and a whole fashionista cult has built up in the States and Mexico, influenced by her personal style as well as her art. Even though life was against her, her spirit was indomitable – as illustrated at her one and only exhibition in Mexico in 1953. At this time, Frida's health was very bad and she should not have attended. But this didn’t stop her, and she insisted on being carried from home to her exhibition in her bed. She was placed in the middle of the gallery, and told jokes, entertained the crowd, sang, and drank the whole evening. The exhibition was an amazing success, and she had the best evening of her life. That night she really LIVED. She didn’t let her body beat her, she chose to live on HER terms.

I judge Frida to be a woman of strength, talent, humour, and endurance, a real feminist. Everyone finds something different in Frida’s work, but for myself, I personally really identify with her portrayals of pain, something with which I also live rather too much, and which also influences how I view and value art. No matter how much pain and how many operations she suffered, she still endured. Perhaps that’s why I admire her so very much. She is an example to me, and a personal inspiration.

My favourite quote from her writings is her final message before she died:

"I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return".

Sums me up nicely too.

The Broken column by Frida Kahlo, 1944.

The Photographers Eye

Rich was talking to our oldest son’s art teacher at Hogwarts last week about the dreaded scholarship and the ongoing photography v. art saga. During this conversation he let slip that he was a photographer.

“Ah," she nodded sagely, “You have the Eye. My father was a photographer. I have the Eye too you know”

Our twelve year old son was rather boggled by this. He had visualisations of a giant Photographer’s Eye floating around in space, watching everything. He even did a quick sketch.



O.K. It doesn’t scan so well.

So my son later asked his father, “So what exactly is The Photographer’s Eye?”

Rich explained that it is basically the ability to see good composition and form.

Mystery solved, right?

Now I’ve been reading about this, and it seems to my uneducated mind that there’s a lot more to it than this.

In my opinion, the Photographer’s Eye is an ability to visualise not just the photograph, but a way of looking at the world around you. It’s natural instinct, and it’s innate to photographic creatives.

Artists and photographers seem to have a unique way of thinking and imagining. They are different from us ordinary mortals. They see everything in terms of light and texture, and as a result, their art is a way of exploring the way how the nature of light changes the visual world. Positive and negative space, colour, black and white and scales of grey - they are ways of looking at reality and illusion through the medium of light.

This way of seeing the world is different and apart from the average person. It’s almost magical in nature. Because of this, I don’t actually think this quality can be learned. It’s either in your nature, or it‘s not, pure and simple.

Ever since I’ve known Rich, he has talked about life, physics, art, philosophy, religion, you name it, in terms of light and darkness. It is a metaphor he uses constantly to explain the way he perceives life. After so many years, I’m now completely used to this way of speaking. Light is a different language really, and you don’t begin to understand it until you’ve lived with a photographer or an artist.

The art photographer exists because of light, and his reason for “being” is to explore it, to try to capture it in a single moment in time, in a single image. Can he transfer that magic to the viewer? Can he unravel that mystery and visually communicate the way he imagines the photographic subject? In a way, he is educating the blind to really “see” with his eyes.

Sometimes, when driving along, Rich will just stop by the side of the road. I’ll see him pause, go silent for a few moments, and then he’ll quietly point out the way the light falls on the trees, the shadows, the texture of the bark. But it’s no good, I just can’t understand what he’s getting at. I can’t feel what he feels as he looks at the tree. Words aren’t enough. I don’t see with his eyes. He has to make me understand what he feels through some other medium of communication.

There is a well known saying in art that “imagination is the eye of the soul.” If this is the case, then it is only when the photographer picks up the camera, can he really capture and compose what he is imagining. Only then can he communicate the way his soul sees the world through the language of light.



Pirate Maiden, from a few weeks ago.

Rich’s comment on reading this “Hey, you can’t post this! Everyone’s going to think I’m a really pretentious idiot. Can’t you just tell them I have no eyes and I’m just stumbling around in the dark?"