A week in the life of…

This week has been fairly typical.

In no particular order we’ve had:

1. A model digitally alter and publish one of Rich’s (kick ass) photos of her, despite knowing she was breaking the terms of her modelling agreement, despite being expressly forbidden to modify the photograph and after she had asked Rich never to publish it (and no, he still hasn’t.)

2. Rich was called a GWC by a second model who was asking for a shoot, plus I was called a perv who liked her husband to spend time feeling up other women, all because I politely pointed out that it is our policy not to let models’ photographer-boyfriends act as chaperones (largely because they invariably rip off Rich’s work, although I didn’t say that.) The photographer-boyfriend then proceeded to spam us, constantly asking for bookings with lurid descriptions of how his girlfriend played with herself. Did he think that insulting us would somehow result in us gagging for a shoot with his girlfriend? What kind of gentleman makes his living by selling his lady in that way? The mind boggles.

3. After putting up a fairly innocent picture of myself blogging nude a week or so ago, I have been asked how many times a week I have sex with my husband, asked to describe in detail varying intimate parts of my anatomy, two photographers have sent me explicit photographs of themselves naked, and one photographer has tried to trace where I live and where my kids go to school.

And do you know what?

THIS IS A NORMAL WEEK.

At what point did we accept this as typical behaviour? At what point did we learn to accept this at all?

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The utterly fabulous Alexis Summers

Lastly, despite not putting our real surnames anywhere on this web site but thanks to Google’s sooper-dooper new search algorithms which detail everything about you including your inside leg measurement, this blog has now been discovered by some of our day-job resellers. I’m now getting lots of flirty emails with kisses attached. Not quite the marketing tactic I had in mind, but hey, times are hard and we must take what publicity we can get. I’ve decided I don’t particularly care as long as they keep buying our software.

*****Welcome, day-job resellers!*****

We love you! Please visit more often! Pretty please? I promise to put my photos back up?!!! (Actually thinking about it, maybe sales will increase if I delete them all. Whatever works, you know?)

Michelle, Alexis and Susan

Congrats to Rich being featured on Michelle 7 this month, for his photographs of the lovely Alexis on the pouffe cushion. Yes, yes I know folks have mixed opinions about Michelle 7 (and thank you Mr S for your frank and honest opinion…don’t hold back now, ya hear?! Better out than in, as they say) but I’m so darn proud of Rich when he’s featured anywhere. Michelle 7 is no exception.

On a slightly less contentious note, I’m delighted to say I’ve finally finished reading Susan Sontag’s On Photography.

"Heavy" doesn't remotely begin to describe it. If Art and Fear was the photographic equivalent of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (jump off a cliff and you'll find your inner artist) then On Photography is more like a compacted version of Introduction to Metaphysics (the cliff is irrelevant -"art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.") This book was so darned difficult that I read it three times just to make sure I understood it, dictionary clutched in my hot little paw because some of the words were beyond the comprehension of my pea-sized brain. In fact some of the words were beyond the Oxford English Dictionary too, so I didn’t feel quite such an idiot, and I could only glean their obscure arty meaning by sending my ten year old son on a laborious language hunt in the bowels of several internet dictionaries (it’s good for him.)

Rich says I’ve been hell to live with whilst I’ve been reading Sontag.
“God, you’re not reading that bloody book again are you?” has become an oft used phrase in our house over the last few months.

Truth be told, it really is a brilliant book. If you read it (and you should), it will expand your mind (mine was slightly reluctant to expand though…probably due to it recently being basted in garlic butter and deep-fried) and it will turn the way you think about photography on its head. It is a masterpiece…Susan wrote every single day, eight hours a day for five long years, in order to finish it. She wrote, she re-wrote and she re-wrote again. The result is a tour de force. No wonder she’s heralded as one of the greatest American intellectual thinkers of all time. The only problem is that our dear late Sue was not a happy lady. I don’t think the words “happy,” “fun” or “joy” were mentioned in that book, not once, so in my (admittedly very simple) opinion, she has excluded a consideration of one of the most fundamental reasons why people photograph: Because it makes them happy.

Anyway, 'nuff said about Susan. I feel like a dried out shrivelled old husk after reading that book three times (or maybe I’ve been looking in the mirror too much.) I have many, many more photography books to read, but alas I’m philosophied-out, so I’m following the recommendation of a good friend, getting a life and reading Erma Bombeck instead.

I predict less grumpy photographic rants and more insane rambling for a while. Who wants to be lucid anyway? As our dear Sue said, "Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics."

Quite.

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Alexis and the Pouffee Cushion

Insomniacs Anonymous

“Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants”
Jessamyn West.

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This is gonna be a long-assed day. Despite desperate efforts to get back to sleep, I’ve been up at 3.30 am for the last five nights in a row. Insomnia has made me her bitch…again.

Being a long term insomniac and uber-early riser, I haven't really found anything that really helps, other than sleeping pills which only knock me out until 5 a.m. and even then they doesn't always work. I don’t have a problem getting to sleep, but if I awake prematurely (each morning I wake with the dawn), I'm screwed and can’t get back to sleep until exhaustion takes over.

Sleep is as essential to humans as food, air and water. When we don’t get enough of it, our bodies malfunction. Insomnia can be caused by many things: stress, a change in diet, alcohol, smoking and various medical problems. It affects young and old people equally, and whereas it isn’t life threatening, insomnia can be upsetting, exhausting, depressing and if you have it for prolonged periods, it can make you feel like you’re going crazy. As Tom Wolfe rather gruesomely put it, “The feeling of no sleep starts turning the body and the skull into a dried-out husk inside with a sour grease smoke like a tenement fire curdling in the brain pan.” Yep, I know that feeling exactly. (BTW, nice image that quote conjures up, don’t you think?)

My own personal insomnia is caused by an over-sensitivity to circadian rhythms. Basically my incredibly efficient internal body clock automatically detects when it’s dawn and my brain switches into “must get up” mode, not unlike birds I suppose. My youngest son has it too, so presumably this early-rising thing is genetic. We’re often both up at the crack of dawn huddled round tea and hot chocolate, and are wasted and irritable by lunchtime. People in many other parts of the world operate these hours as a matter of course and wake with the sunrise and then go to sleep when it gets dark, but no, that doesn’t fit in with Western society’s habits I’m afraid (unless you’re a farmer) and try as I might, I just can’t seem to reprogram my body to more conventional hours. Of course sometimes what keeps me awake is simple frustration from not being able to fall back asleep, sort of a loop effect. Once you know you’ve got long term insomnia, it’s impossible to get back to sleep because you know you’re not going to.

On the bright side, at least it gives me quiet time to catch up with the blogs and read Susan Sontag (very difficult book, needs peace and quiet) and judging by the time I receive some of your comments at various ungodly hours of the morning, US time, many of you are incredibly early risers too.

I wish I had some sort of profound words to offer you, some scientific advice on how to help us all get some shut-eye, but alas I’ve tried it all, and none of it bloody works, trust me on this. Black-out curtains, warm baths, vitamins, melatonin, herbal tea, herbal tablets, soft music, milky drinks and hiding under a pillow don’t help. Meditation, counting sheep, reading, fantasizing about David Hewlett etc are supposed to help, according to sleep experts, but I find this actually just makes me more awake because it triggers the desire to write. For those that wonder how on earth I come up with blog posts, well now you know.

Anyway, in the interests of my long term sanity, if anyone out there has some foolproof solution to what is a very common problem, please do share…’cos I’m totally and utterly knackered, and I need some sort of solution before I go completely barmy and start tearing my hair out in frustration.

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Alexis, clearly also an insomniac

TIA Everyone!

(Just so you know, that’s “thanks in advance” rather than other commonly used abbreviations “Terrorism Information Awareness,” “Tactical Interface Adapter,” “Tobacco Institute of Australia” or my personal favourite “Tortilla Industry Association.” Don’t say I never teach you anything.)

Mmm…tortillas…yumm…

Experiments In Light

Note to readers: Sincerest apologies but this post is strictly off-limits to anyone called Dave. Go on, shoo! It's for your own good, you know. Please do return to this quality internet publication on Thursday, when the normal Adoradaves Service will be restored. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

Stephen Haynes once asked me why Rich never photographed nudes in our garden. As some of you will already know, we have a woodland garden which has been beautifully landscaped by yours truly and looks pretty bloody marvellous, even if I do say so myself. Photographers who have visited here in the past have often declared they would gladly kill to have such a beautiful natural habitat in which to shoot nudes, and they often try to encourage Rich to go forth into the woods and make art. They’re wasting their time of course. I think he’s only ever photographed me in the garden twice, and even then he took his studio lights. Truth be told, Rich doesn’t do nudes ‘n’ nature. So the question you’re no doubt asking is: why does he limit himself in this way?

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One problem is time. In order to create a natural landscape shot, the natural light is either correct for the best shot (time-of-day and weather permitting) or there’s no point in taking it. However Rich works such long hours that he simply doesn’t have time to wait for the lighting conditions to be right, and so he prefers his studio where the lighting conditions are always perfect because he creates them. This may change with my purchase of an off-camera flash for his birthday, and I may yet be able to drag him outdoors, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. One off-camera flash is no substitute for the vast light show with which he usually operates, and let’s be honest here, for Rich photography really is all about the lighting, so much so that the subject (very nice though she is) is pretty much secondary.

Rich is a control junkie, it’s his nature, and so he maintains strict (almost obsessive) control over all aspects of the shoot. He doesn’t let the model free-form and then run off a series of shots hoping that one of them will be perfect. Rather he shoots carefully, precisely, and thus each shot takes ages to set up. His style is not that dissimilar to Edward Weston in that he photographs by carefully recreating a preconceived image in his head and spends ages moving the model ever-so-slightly in order to get the correct shot, even if this means shooting less photographs per shoot than other photographers seem to. Each shot must be as close to perfect as he can get it before he will press the shutter. Because he originally trained as a physicist, his thought-patterns are very precise and ordered. His photographic style therefore reflects the way he thinks and the way he creates his art. Each shot is a controlled experiment in light, a recreation of the picture in his head.

Secondly there is also the matter of personal taste. Rich does love capturing a beautiful landscape, but (and I would like to state categorically that I do not agree with this) he likes the viewer to be able to drink in the beauty of a scene without the distraction of a naked woman in it. He feels that if he photographed a nude in our beautiful woodland, for example, the focus would be on the nude. She would be the focal point of the image and the landscape would be secondary, a background, whereas Rich feels that the scene itself should be primary in a landscape shot. One of his favourite expressions is “Why ruin a perfectly good landscape by sticking a nude in it?” Incidentally, this is also deliberately designed to irritate both me and his favourite nude photographers who shoot outdoors (dry British sense of humour you see) so don’t rise to the bait, folks.

To Rich, nudes and landscapes are two different genres. For him, they don’t mix. The beauty of the nude form, another example of the wondrous talents of Mother Nature, is best reflected under controlled conditions so that the fusion of light and form create an art-piece in itself, without distractions like a background scene. The blank setting of a studio creates a psychological distance and removes the requirement for a background story. The only story which matters is the light itself as it caresses the perfect form. Nothing more is necessary. No emotion, no deep meaning, nothing more complicated than the beauty of light on flesh. Such images seem to resist psychological interpretation and yet the sensuality of the light itself does reflect a certain depth in the same way that Weston’s pepper wasn’t just a pepper because Weston’s use of light transformed it into so much more.

Rich seeks the mastery of light one day, to bend that light to his will and thus create beauty. To him, this is the essence of what his art is about. This may sometimes seem to others to be a rather narrow interpretation of the wonders of Mother Nature, but who are we to argue with a photographer’s creative vision?

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Images are of Alexis Summers, posing very elegantly on our pouffe cushion.

Justify My Art

Congratulations if you manage to make it to the end of this marathon epic and stay awake. Verbal diarrhoea or meaningful discussion about photographic art? You decide.

One of the most common accusations in the photographic world is that fine art nude photographers do not produce worthwhile and evolving photography. Many opponents argue that fine art nudes have no place in modern photography, that fine art is cheapened by the inclusion of a naked woman, that it is not “serious photography.”

It is a generally accepted concept in fine art photography (so Brooks Jensen et al. say anyway) that in order to constitute a good photograph, an image should be powerful. It should stimulate some sort of emotional response in the viewer, enlighten him or teach him a new truth. In short the photograph should mean something.

However, the objective of a fine art nude photograph is not necessarily to arouse an erotic reaction in the viewer. The purpose is to idealise and create an unattainable vision of beauty, a goddess, a vision of perfection, captured for one moment in time. An emotional response is not guaranteed. Thus it is argued by fine-art purists that mere admiration and objectification of beauty is insufficient to qualify a photograph as fine art. The purists maintain that fine art nudes are meaningless because they don’t enlighten the viewer nor do they produce a deep emotional response. A b+w nekkid chick isn’t exactly as psychologically profound as Pepper No 30 or Moonlight over Hernandez, now is it?

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Further, it is argued that there are simply too many fine art nude photographers nowadays. If you Google “Fine Art Nudes” there are tens of thousands of hits. Because of the growth of the internet and cheap digital cameras, b+w nudes are considered too overdone, too predictable. There are now so many images out there in cyberspace that they all look the same, and the topic has become boring, trivial and irrelevant. The genre is exhausted.

Lastly, we should consider the motivations of fine art nude photographers. Do nude photographers actually believe in art, or is it just an excuse to be in the same room as a naked woman? Nowadays every middle-aged bloke wants to be a fine art photographer. It allows him to get up close and personal with a naked chick and justify it as Art to his wife. Whether or not this means a photographer is a GWC or a fine art photographer is a moot point. Some guys don’t actually want to have sex with a woman, they just want to be in the same room and worship the perfect unattainable female from a distance. They want to create that image of Venus in every model they shoot, to bring out the inner Goddess in each woman. Does this make the photographer a GWC or an artist? Is the classification of whether or not a photographer qualifies as a proper fine art photographer simply a matter of whether he is technically any good at lighting and composition? Can the lowly GWC be a fine-art photographer if he is skilled enough, and do his motivations actually matter?

Moreover, if a photographer concentrates exclusively on shooting the female nude, doesn’t this result in variations on the same theme over and over again? Sure the lighting and model may vary, but the message is the same throughout. Every model is the same goddess, just with different skin. Is the photographer who repeats himself over and over again actually achieving anything? If he is conveying an emotional message that women are divine and unattainable, then O.K. what happens once he has done that? Now what? Sure the photographer has to develop his lighting and technique, and he becomes a better photographer, but that is a technical exercise. How does the message of his photography evolve? How can he continue doing the same thing for years and years without going completely nuts?

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Now before you all go and throw your Hasselblads into the nearest swamp, I want to tell you a story told to Rich by a well respected nude photographer whom he met recently.

The photographer concerned used to be in the armed forces when he was younger. Because he had some photographic training, he was allocated the terrible task of photographing and cataloguing the dead bodies for identification. Now personally I can’t imagine a worse assignment for a photographer. The level of horror and carnage that he was exposed to must have been unimaginable. The photographer didn’t go into the gory details, but clearly the experience had scarred him emotionally for life. Anyway, when the photographer returned home from his assignment, he resigned his commission and although he remained a photographer, he vowed to only ever photograph what was beautiful and good in the world. For the rest of his life. And what could possibly represent beauty, goodness and purity more than a naked woman?

As Ansel Adams said, “it is just as important to bring people the evidence of beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a document of ugliness, squalor, and despair.”

Ultimately nudes are like a beautiful landscape, where the subject is flesh rather than trees or a rock. Just as you can never grow tired of shooting different breathtaking landscapes, the beauty and infinite variety of the nude form can never become overdone or monotonous. It is the goal of the photographer to discover that unique individual spark within each woman, and if he succeeds, if only for a second, then that single moment captured by the camera is surely the essence of what photography is all about.

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I thought we'd have a Fine-Ass theme this time (as opposed to Fine-Art...oh never mind...)

The Private Dancers

"I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money, I'll do what you want me to do.
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money, and any old music will do."

As we gradually shoot with more and more models, we are increasingly coming across models who approach Rich for a shoot, but who want to know what is going to happen to their images.

Now this is an entirely understandable question, and I approve entirely. Every model should ask it. We are only too happy to explain that the finished images will be used for prints, and will be displayed on our web site and this blog. I also make sure I send them an advance copy of the model release, so we can go through any questions they might have before the shoot and I can make sure that they are happy and comfortable working with us. This is important because our model release protects not only the photographer, but the model too. Plus, with newer models in particular, some are understandably rather nervous and need a little reassurance that Rich is a legitimate and honourable photographer, and that I’m not a jealous axe-murdering wife (only when the moon is full, in case you’re wondering.)

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But the strangest thing is starting to happen. We are increasingly coming across models who are initially keen to shoot with Rich, and they want to be paid handsomely for it too, but they stipulate up front that the images are not to be made public at any time. In essence, these models do not want to sign a model release, and they want the photos only to be seen by the photographer and no-one else, in case they are recognised. “Shooting for the photographer’s private portfolio” it’s called. In other words, there is a growing industry niche for models who will only shoot with GWC’s (That’s Guys With Cameras for new readers.) When Rich gently explains that a model release must also be signed, they demand loadsa extra cash. When I politely explain that the images are to be published on our blog and possibly elsewhere in the future, they run screaming for the hills.

To some extent, you can understand the attractions of shooting only for GWC’s. The advantages are that models get paid very well, they know exactly what is going to happen to their photographs, they don’t have to sign any legal documents (and thus the photographer is therefore guaranteed unable to publish or use the photos for commercial purposes) and they don’t have to worry that their own families or day-job employers might find out about their little cash-making enterprise on the side. Anonymity is assured.

These models are not professionals (although I suppose it depends on your definition of “professional”) nor do they want to shoot with professionals. The fact that some guy is tossing off over photographs of them nekkid, doesn’t phase these women at all. They prefer it. The audience is one, not thousands. Not every model wants fame. Not every model does it for art. Sometimes it really is just for the money.

I’m not sure of an appropriate label for this type of model. Rich has some ideas, but they’re not that polite I’m afraid, so I’m just going with “private dancer” from one of my all-time favourite Tina Turner hits.

As for us, sometimes life would be a lot easier if we were simple pervs and we just did photography to get horny. For some reason some folks find that easier to comprehend than the concept of photographic art.

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Alexis Summers, a completely professional model, and a joy to work with.

Furious about Fuel

Petrol (that’s gas to you Yanks) is set to tip £1.30 a litre this week. That’s approximately $11.70 USD an imperial gallon in US-speak. Gulp!

As my favourite economist Merryn Somerset Webb wrote this week, each litre of petrol sold in the UK is taxed at a flat tax of 53.65 pence per litre (for US currency, that’s $4.83 USD per gallon) which is one of the highest fuel taxes in the world. On top of that, we also pay VAT (sales tax) of 17.5% when we buy fuel, not just on the cost of the aforesaid fuel but on the tax too. So we pay TAX ON TAX! Of course, we are paying out of income which has already been taxed twice (income tax and national insurance, which isn’t insurance at all, it’s just another tax.) So how many times has my tank of fuel been taxed? Three or four? (I’m losing count.)

In the UK, people are cutting down on car trips, and in rural communities such as ours, people can’t afford to heat their homes. That’s O.K. at the moment because it’s summer, but what happens when winter bites? Last month our village was riddled with thieves stealing heating oil from domestic oil tank stores. People are getting desperate.

Fuel costs are affecting folks all over the world, of course. Everyone is suffering, so we’re not alone. And it’s causing food prices to rise too. Our major supermarket Tesco is rationing rice this week - in the U.K.!?! Astounding. But everyone knows things are getting bad. This is not news. This is reality, and as the saying goes, deal with reality or reality will deal with you.

So what does this have to do with photography? Well, the oil situation probably might not affect many of you yet, but for us personally, like many other U.K. photographers who shoot for fun, we have young to feed and we’re perilously low on dosh. Putting it bluntly, we are self-employed, and we fund Fluffies from our spare cash. We do it 'cos we love it, and we adore making art (or trying to make it anyway.) As it stands today, we have two more shoots booked. After that our photographic reserves run out, and there will be no more new nekkid chix gracing this blog unless some kind laydeez decide to lend their beauty for the higher purpose of creating Art. Failing that, you’re stuck with my ass, I’m afraid (the rest of my body has left the building.)

Oil is predicted to top $200 a barrel by Christmas. As Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica says, “We’re completely fragged. Where’s it going to end?”

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More Alexis from a couple of weeks ago.

A Winogrand Whine

This mess is so big
And so deep and so tall,
We can not pick it up.
There is no way at all!

You know that feeling of when you have fifty rolls of film to develop, and yet you can’t seem to find the time? Doesn’t that film just sit there in the corner, pointedly waiting to be developed, day after day, just weighing down on you? That niggling, unsatisfied feeling that you ought to make time and just get on with it, is constantly in the back of your mind. You don’t feel free, and you resent the day-job for getting in the way of valuable hours you could be spending developing and scanning your photographs. And yet, when you do get the time, you’re just too damned exhausted to get on with the process of creation.

So your unfinished art just sits there, in the corner, nagging at you. And it grows. The pile just keeps getting bigger and bigger, until finally it becomes so huge that suddenly you’re Garry Winogrand, who was so behind in finishing his work, that when he died he left 2,400 rolls of undeveloped film, plus another 6,500 rolls of developed film which had not been proofed. He left personal and photographic chaos as his legacy. Whatever he was looking for in his work, he never found it because he never finished anything. That sweet, elated feeling of release you get when a photographic project is completed and printed, always eluded poor Garry because he never followed anything through.

I exaggerate of course, but you take my meaning. And writers have the same problem as Garry, believe me.

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Just as photographers constantly see pictures everywhere, I see stories in everything around me. All the time. On the plus side, I’m never short of inspiration. On the negative side, I’m drowning in words. Literally. My house is filling up with hundreds of magazine clippings, articles printed out from the web, groovy quotations that might come in handy one day and arty musings that have caught my fancy. They usually end up clogging up my in-tray or clipped into vast reams of bright pink Playboy files (no idea why I chose pink. Maybe pink = fluffy? Who knows. I hate pink, although I will admit that Playboy has its arty moments.) Anyway, I fully intend to write a separate article about each and every one of these inspirational topics one day. Each thought, each note stored, is the idea for an article or story. And some of it might actually result in some decent work, if I ever get off my pudgy ass and just write the damn stuff. I want to do it, I really do, so much it hurts. If I don’t write, I’m bloody foul to live with. It’s a compulsion, a passion and an obsession.

If only……if only I was better organised, better disciplined, had more time, more willpower, if only that pile of half-created writing wasn’t so damn big. The problem is there’s so much of it. Where do I start? If I wrote for seven hours a day, every day, then I might just clear the pile after…oh, say a year or so…

Writing is like sex. When you finish a cracking article, it’s like a rush, then a release and you can finally bask in the warm and satisfied afterglow. (No I’m not a sex-obsessed nutter, well not today anyway. I’m betting some of you feel the same way after a successful shoot and you’ve nailed the shot.)

So, if writing is like sex, and knowing that I love good sex, I really do…the question I have to ask myself is why don’t I do it more often?

Anyhoo, why are you reading this? You should be developing…go on, get thee hence! There’s only one way that you’re gonna get to that warm 'n' fuzzy satiated-afterglow-vibe, and that’s if you actually reach for your artistic climax.

I’ll see you in the dark room.

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Images are from last week's shoot with Alexis Summers, who is stylishly modelling my favourite new italian designer belt. I don't look remotely like this when I wear it, oddly enough (although I'm sure Rich rather wishes I did!)