An obscure body in the S-K system
Part One: Lin
Zogi: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling Dale Arden, to be your Empress of the Hour?
Emperor Ming: Of the hour, yes.
Zogi: Do you promise to use her as you will?
Ming: Certainly!
Zogi: Not to blast her into space? [Ming glares at Zogi]
Zogi: Uh, until such time as you grow weary of her.
Ming: I do.
Dale: I do NOT!
Flash Gordon (1980)
Lin: I’m upset. Rich and I have had a row. Like all couples we have our moments, but this must mark as one of the weirdest rows that a normal, average, everyday couple has had. Why am I blogging about this publically? Well, this blog is supposed to chart our photographic journey together, the downs as well as the ups. I’ve always felt that others might be able to benefit from the story, others might simply find it entertaining, plus it’s a record for us when we look back in a year’s time and mark a turning point in Fluffytek.
So what’s this all about? Well, Rich is fed up with shooting studio nudes. He tells me that if he continues to shoot studio nudes, it will just be for me and the blog, not for him. He’s says that he’s finishing off his current commitments (two more shoots in the next month or so) but after that he’s going to photograph other stuff, you know…non-naked stuff. If nudes pop along occasionally, he says he won’t turn them away, but from now on things will be different. He wants to create images of other things (he’s not sure what exactly) but he says he’s done with photographing nekkid chix for a while.
I’ve been racking my brains to try and figure out if I’m responsible for this? O.K. My Darth shot was pretty bad, yes, but I don’t think it’s enough to put any photographer off the entire genre! And just because I personally wanted to model some non-explicit stuff for a while, that wouldn’t be enough to do it surely? It’s not as if I want to stop him shooting nekkid chix…quite the opposite. I always encourage him to shoot more, more, more, not less. I love and support his erotica. It totally rocks. And he’s just starting to get published, to get the recognition in the genre that he deserves. Why quit now just when he’s getting really good?
Weird. Scary. I don’t like change.
Just when you think you know someone and you think they’re blissfully happy, they go and turn everything upside down again. That’s artists for you, I guess.
To my knowledge I’m the only woman I’ve ever known who had a blue fit because her partner doesn’t want to photograph nekkid chix any more. It should be the other way round, surely?
Cheeky Lee
Part Two: Rich
The Emperor Ming the Merciless: Klytus, I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?
Flash Gordon (1980)
Rich: Lin is upset. I’ve decided to cut back on nude photography for a while. Truth be told, I’m not particularly fed up with photography or with photographing gorgeous nude women, it’s just that I want to separate the two for a bit.
I never started nude photography for the social aspect, and I certainly didn’t do it because I wanted to be in the same room as a naked woman. I decided on studio photography not only as a way of studying lighting, but also as a way of realising the pictures in my head (I hesitate to use the term creative vision, but you know what I mean.) I have a pretty vivid imagination, and the camera was an excellent way of making those pictures as real as I could get.
I will admit that I’m a bit jaded with studio photography. Once upon a time, not so long ago, only a few UK photographers did the studio nude genre with this type of lighting. Now this style has been dissected, studied, reverse-engineered and everyone’s doing it. It is no longer unique because every man and his mother does it. Look on Deviant Art and you’ll see hundreds of these every week. They’re all the same.
But it’s much more than the inevitable matter of it’s all been done before. Whereas some photographers live for the process of photographing a subject, the camera has always been just a tool for me. I don’t live for the process I’m afraid. I live for the image, the end result. To me it doesn’t matter if the picture in my head is painted with a brush, shot on camera or generated on a computer, as long as the finished image is what I feel it should be.
Just recently I’ve found that the camera can’t accurately express what’s in my imagination. The tool isn’t right and I’m left with a half-finished picture. Don’t get me wrong, photography has taught me exactly what I wanted it to: lighting, composition, form. I can do the above type of shots with my eyes closed, but I’ve learned to do the basics well and now I need more. It’s time to move on, and the only way I can really create the finished image that I want to create is via CGI. I’ve been experimenting with this relatively new tool for a while now, but last year the technology simply wasn’t advanced enough for what I wanted to do. However in the last few months there have been several new tools released which are the next generation in rendering, and they’re pretty cool, almost photographic quality, and the flexibility is now there such that I can finally do what I want to do.
But why CGI? Well, because I’ve always been a computer geek, it’s probably inevitable that I return to using the computer as my paintbrush. Not only is it a heck of a lot of fun learning something new, but it’s the only way I can create the images that really reflect my imagination. Lin needn’t worry. In due course there will still be lots of nekkid chix on the blog, but eventually some of them might be the cyber-chix rather than real ones. I’m not giving up photography, but I need to step back a little and wait for photography to tell me what it wants me to do. In the meantime, CGI is my new toy, and I’m looking forward to playing with it.
It's a nude Jim, but not as we know it
Labels: CGI, Cheeky Lee, Naked chicks
posted by Lin at 7:58 AM
10 Comments:
Rich,
Hand the camera to Lin, grab your chair and roll it up to the keyboard.
Create and be happy!
**********************************
Lin,
Take the camera, take pics of naked chix, take pics of the flowers in the garden, whatever you want to shoot.
Create and be happy!
********************************
Use what you have learned from Rich and your own research and put it to use. From what I understand, you are looking for a creative outlet and this might be it. Maybe?
The blog continues, the photography continues, the creativity continues, just in a different direction.
Stiff Man
Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'm a terrible photographer. I'm no Don, I'm afraid, I can't do both. I love to study photographic art and write about it, but any smidgen of creativity that I have goes into the written word.
I love the quotes from "Flash Gordon." That movie was a classic, and I find Queen's "Flash!" completely memorable along with the witty dialogue in the film.
I sense an epidemic of change-itis among many of us. Perhaps it is the best of human nature to quest for challenges. I have become quite fascinated with computer simulation through my current project with AJ Kahn and Vaizzado.
Although I do a lot of studio work, I don't like to. It is the same old same old. There are only so many poses you can put a model in. There is only some many ways to light the model. I do it because it is damn cold here in the winters and it is the only thing I can do for seven months. Spring through fall I will work out in the rain before you will find me in a studio.
Artists need to follow their own path and not some else. The wife is always trying to get me to use props in my work. It is not me, and I feel like I am doing someone else work when I get talked into it.
Although I will miss Rich's studio nudes, I am behind him 100%. I have little interest in his new found love of art, but that doesn't matter. He is not doing it for me. He is doing it for himself. ANd more power to him for being true to himself.
I wish there were more artists like that.
Wow! Can I relate! I'm so tired of shooting pretty naked women I can barely rise out of my bed on days I'm scheduled to shoot them. But in my case, my livelihood depends on me getting up and shooting naked chick pics.
I want to shoot so many other things. Unfortunately, I want to get paid to shoot all those other things. I spend almost zero time on the web looking at what other photographes are doing with pretty nude women. (This blog excepted, of course.) Instead, I spend almost all my time looking at what others are shooting, i.e., those others who are shooting what I want to shoot: editorial, commercial, art photography that doesn't include naked women.
In a sense, Lin, ;you have become Rich's client. You do most of the blog writing while Rich, your staff photographer provides the pictures to accompany your stories. Now, suddenly, your staff shooter wants to quit... well, not quit, but he wants to change the editorial content of the pictures he provides.
You, Lin, are trying to convince Rich that he's changing course just when the pre-charted course seems to be bearing fruit. (Recognition, publication, and all that.) Is that the entire reason you are resisting and arguing against his new direction?
Rich, it seems, doesn't care about pre-charted courses. He wants to follow his own path and that path is headed in a different direction: A different direction that isn't one that his wife particularly approves of, it seems.
Well, I certainly have no solutions to offer other than people have to be true to themselves. Although people who are together sometimes enounter bumps where being true to themselves conflicts with each other, I'm betting somehow it will all come out in the wash.
All this could be worse: your livelihoods could be at risk over this sort of decision. But they're not. So... as Tim Gunn says on Project Runway: "Make it work."
Sorry if I've rambled.
If I might add another thought since this thing touches home so personally with me...
Once someone's passion for doing something leaves them, well... that's all she wrote. (Sorry, American idiom.)
In my case, it doesn't mean my future pretty girl pics aren't going to be any good. They will. I can shoot that stuff with my eyes shut. (I think Rich mentioned that as well.) But, and this is a BIG "but," they probly aren't going to be any better than anything I've already shot. I simply don't have the passion to continue to grow as a shooter of naked chick pics, to expand my pretty girl shooting conscioiusness, as it were.
Lin, do you really want Rich shooting what he has little or no passion to shoot?
Once an artist becomes a mechanic, as in my case and Rich's, the job can still get done but it's suddenly a "job." And that sucks, i.e., artistically sucks.
Of course, passions can sometimes be rekindled. But that's a whole other thing.
Wow. You guys are scaring me. Who is going to shoot us nekkid women????
Thanks Jimmy.
Rich said, "Yes!!! Jimmy gets it!"
Your words hit me personally right between the eyes, but you're absolutely right. Thanks for the kick up the ass.
For many years I did social documentary photography. I photographed the homeless, the hungry. I shot urban decay and poverty. I was very passionate about it. I felt as if my work would change the world somehow. Maybe it did and maybe it didn't. I'll never know for sure. Then one day my work began to look very cliche. There was another picture of a bearded man in a soup line, or another wide eyed child staring into the camera. I could no longer do the work. Technically the work was good and people would say it was "beautiful" So a picture of a hungry child is beautiful? That's when I stopped.
Now I like to shoot beauty, whether it is the beauty I find in nature or a beautiful woman, - which in itself is part of the beauty of nature. That's where my heart lies. One has to follow their heart. If I tire of this work or if it becomes cliche, then I will again move on. One must be true to their inner voice, even if that means the inner voice is in conflict with public opinion.
By the way, this is my first comment on your blog, and I must tell you that it is excellent an always thought provoking.
Thanks for the wise words Joe. (And truly delighted to see you here at last!)
You're quite right about listening to one's "inner voice." I really do try to, although sometimes I have nasty habit of ignoring it!
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