Eleven Words

If it’s worth copying, it’s worth protecting.

Most photographers know a fair bit about copyright law. Regarding the copyright of images, the law varies according to whichever country you live in, so I’m not going to cover that again in this post because quite frankly it is a complete minefield. Suffice to say, don’t copy other people’s photographs unless you have either asked the photographer first, or unless the image is listed as being under Creative Commons (and even then you should check which type of Creative Commons licence is permitted : Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivative Works or Share Alike.)

The situation gets even more complicated regarding copyright of the written word. Most folks realise that they may not copy large chunks from other publications, even if they credit the source and even if the information is “publically available” such as published in a newspaper or online. But how much can you copy before there is a breach of copyright? Here the law gets much hazier as there is no set limit for this in Europe. However, last summer a Danish firm called Infopaq was taken to court by a Danish newspaper body over its copying and reproduction of news articles. The case went all the way to the European Court of Justice who looked at this and held that copying and reproducing only eleven words of a news article would be a breach of copyright under EU law. (For those of you who are interested in reading the ruling – probably only Stephen – you can find it here. The moral of the story? Any copied extract, no matter how short it is, could be covered by copyright.

So if you’re intending to write about someone else’s work, whether it be in a newspaper article, book, blog post, forum, whatever, then be careful that you don’t inadvertently reproduce more than eleven words, otherwise you will be breaking the law.

However, as with a photograph, you can’t copyright an idea. So if your conscience permits (alas, mine does not - dratted ethics!) feel free to nick the idea but tread very carefully about how you express it.

Eleven words are all it takes.

HoneyB 1118

HoneyB

Living Photographs

From the stone age humans have had the urge to make pictures, to realise the miracle of making marks on a two dimensional surface which communicates to the viewer how we see the three dimensional world. Through the development of basic drawing and painting skills, and eventually through the use of a mechanical tool called a camera, man has followed his inner urge to recreate the real world on a sheet of paper, to simply record the truth of reality.

other 1296

A good photograph is one which LIVES. In other words it springs out at you, stirs your emotions and engages your imagination. It may be a technically imperfect snapshot or an amazingly composed and sophisticated piece of art – in fact this is a personal judgement because a photograph may be alive for some and dead for others - so all you can do as a photographer is to make images that live for you, and let that be enough. Even when you have become an accomplished photographer you will still produce fifty dead photos for every live one. But eventually you WILL produce an image which has a life of its own.

Something marvellous happens when eye, brain and camera (seasoned with a large dose of luck) fuse together to create a live photograph. Never ever throw your live photos away, regardless as to whether they are technically perfect or not. Your photo has stirred emotion, it has spoken to you and to your viewer, so it has earned the right to survive because it now has a life of its own.

There is only one route to becoming a good photographer: practice. All of us vary in our ability to co-ordinate brain, eye and camera and most of us struggle to learn composition and form. It doesn’t come naturally – photography requires many years of constant dedication and daily effort in order to perfect the craft. No-one can call himself a photographer unless he practises regularly.

Whether it be capturing the perfection of a beautiful woman, or recording something as mundane as an insect feeding on honey-water, I defy you to look around and find something which is not worth photographing. And as you continue to practice, your photographs will reflect both your developing skill and growing passion, so that before long your images will begin to achieve that special quality that marks the trained photographer: they will speak to the viewer. And very occasionally, for one perfect moment in time, you will create a photograph that will truly be alive in every way that matters.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

Brooks Atkinson

HoneyB 1121

Honey B

How Low Can You Go?

I’ve been reading some rather pretentious literary web sites which spend a great deal of time pontificating about “high art.” The terms "high art" and "low art" have always struck me as pretty meaningless. IMO, trying to classify art as “highbrow” or “lowbrow” seems an entitely subjective process and ultimately rather pointless in this modern day and age. We've evolved beyond such nonsense, surely?

The notion of brow levels came about in the early 1900’s when free public schools first started. The sudden growth of education and the spread of literature resulted in the creation of the first national newspapers, which caused great outrage amongst both artists and intellectuals who argued that all these popular rags did was to reduce literature to the lowest common denominator. Baudelaire even referred to newspapers as “satanic.” The arguments continued to rage until eventually English culture divided into two: highbrow and lowbrow. Each individual fell into one of the two classes, depending on his personal taste and choices in books, art and hobbies. If you liked popular “mass” culture, this meant that you were lowbrow. The chasm continued to widen until journalism and popular culture became poles apart from “high art” and literature, never again to merge.

Nowadays most of us only know the differences between high art and low art by the reputation of the medium. Broadly speaking sculpture, painting, music, poetry, cinema and classic English literature all fall into the “high art” category, whereas tattoo art, children’s stories, comic strips, video game design and so forth would all classify as “low art.” Some modern art critics argue that with the growth of technology and the modern media, the distinction between high art and low art have now become permanently blurred. Some computer games, for example, can now be so sophisticated that they contain a detailed plot and character development, just like a good novel. At what point does the medium cease to matter, and when exactly does lowbrow evolve into highbrow?

IMO, nowhere do these abstract lines between high and low blur more than with the nude photographic medium, largely because it is very difficult to objectively catergorize images of naked women.

High art is seen to be spiritually moving, sophisticated and philosophically challenging, so when does a photograph meet this specification? Low art is a derogatory term which can be classified as popular culture which may be visually entertaining, but which is nevertheless intellectually sterile, nothing more than commercial pap to feed the masses. So what kind of nude photograph would satisfy this definition? Which type of nude image is high culture and which is popular culture? Is it really as simple as:

IvoryFlame 811

High Art? (B+W fine art nude, Ivory Flame)

vs.

HoneyB 1192

Low Art? (Colour erotica, HoneyB)

Which image is high art, if any? Which of the two is deeper, more exciting, more sophisticated and philosophically challenging? The medium is the same, so what’s the difference?

I would suggest that the difference isn’t merely to do with lighting and composition. IMO it largely depends on intent. What type of emotional reaction did the photographer want to generate? What was his creative vision? What market was the photograph aimed at? Or does it purely come down to personal taste? So if we use these criteria then the first image is more tasteful, non-sexual and more likely to stimulate the intellect and is therefore more towards the "high art" category, whereas the second largely stimulates the male groin, and would be lower - very low, in fact, which is a shame because I actually prefer the second above the first, although I can't for the life of me figure out why? Maybe I'm just a lowbrow kinda girl?

Frankly all this categorization seems like blatent snobbery to me. IMO, classifying a particular type of nude photograph as “high” or “low” is pure pompous elitism. Isn't black and white “fine art” photography nothing more than lowbrow with different packaging, nekkid chix re-invented and re-wrapped for the titillation of the very same supposed highbrow intellectuals and art critics who would otherwise condemn all nude photography as non-artistic?

Maybe we haven’t really grown that much in a hundred years after all.

The Price of Notoriety

A gripe, and a long, rambling hormonal gripe too. Live with it.

Apologies for the absence. I’ve been thinking. This is always a bad sign incidentally. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the process of thought which gets me into so much trouble. Writing these thoughts down and then publishing them on a public blog results in double trouble.

As I admitted in my comments to my last post, the problem is infamy. (And thank you Jimmy for spotting there was more to this than meets the eye. Your insight is valued, as ever.)

Bloggers write for an audience – we love it. The more readers the merrier! Indeed, over the last few years we have been fortunate in that this blog has gathered a loyal following (we love you all, no matter whether you come for boobies or the ramble, really we do) but it has also achieved a certain amount of erm…notoriety. For example, in the last year my articles have been plagiarised twice (that I actively know of) by UK national newspaper journalists and once by an economics magazine. Woo hoo! If I get talented folks like that reading this blog, then there’s hope for me yet. However the trouble is that because there are (gasp) naked people on this blog, real journalists apparently can’t quote it as a source. Major bummer. The nudes count against me in that regard. Still it’s nice to know that people visit at all, so I shouldn’t complain. Nevertheless I’m beginning to suspect that freelance journalists get their ideas from browsing round other (unconnected) blogs and nicking their ideas (sorry, I mean being inspired by fellow writers) and using this…ah…inspiration as a basis of writing about it themselves. Problem is…journalists get paid for the resulting article, bloggers don’t (growl.)

HoneyB 1120

Please note I’m not blowing my own trumpet here. This happens to most bloggers at some point. I’ve seen JimmyD-clone articles popping up over the place and also several times I could swear major similarities between Stephen Haynes’ writing and subsequent publications elsewhere (no surprise – these guys are two of the best out there.) There is no real way to prevent this, unfortunately. Writing is no different from photography in that respect. Quality begets copies, and very rarely are the original sources acknowledged. (Note to fellow bloggers/journalists/writers: please LINK to your fellow bloggers if you are referring to them or quoting them. It really is hugely impolite not to. Growl.)

The problem with notoriety is that it’s a surprisingly small world. If you publish stuff out on the www, it WILL get eventually read by someone you know. Your identity will get discovered. I can guarantee this 100%, no matter how well you try to hide your identity and minimise your internet exposure. And if you thought being outed as a model was bad, the outing of your personal and private thoughts is even worse.

To give you a small example, this blog is now read by several ex-boyfriends, my father-in-law, four day-job resellers that I know of, one ex-employee and two fathers of my sons’ friends. It’s immensely creepy knowing your customers, ex-employees and your kids’ parents have seen your nether regions, I can tell you that (it makes for interesting-but-rather-amusing conversations at school parents evenings) and I try not to think about my relatives at all. At no time did I tell any of these folks that I was blogging, and I use an abbreviated version of my full name, so they would have to at least work a little to find me on Google. In addition, several “yummy mummies” have stopped talking to me (it wasn’t anything I said, so it was undoubtedly something I published) and a couple of day-job customers have confessed to me their secret love of porn (not that I’m ungrateful guys…but seriously, will it make you buy more day-job software? If it will, then I’m all ears. Honestly.)

Yes, yes, this is all my own fault. I am stupid. I have only myself to blame. But now maybe you see why I’ve cut down on blogging about my love-life and showing photos of myself. Clothed shots we have no problem with, but even Rich -who is usually very open minded- is getting a bit twitchy about the customers seeing the Finance Director nekkid.

My point? I see new photographic nude blogs springing up all the time. I want to tell these people: Beware! Blogging is a double edged sword. Doesn’t matter who you are – you will be found. So be careful what you write. Revealing photos might get you into a whole load of trouble, but words are far worse in this respect.

Broadcasting your innermost thoughts to the world is a great way to get your writing out there, but it will invariably get you into a whole load of trouble, and as your blog grows, it gets increasingly difficult to hide your personal life from the rest of the world. Even the most careful and enlightened blogger will reveal more about himself than he intends to over the course of time. Even if you try to keep your personality and private life off your blog, this is not entirely possible. Personal stuff will creep in eventually. This what draws your regular readers back of course. The more they feel they know you, the more they want to come back for more. Readers follow bloggers as they experience their lives, they feel for them when they suffer, they share the blogger’s intimate moments. Over time, close friendships are built, and over time communities form. This community spirit is ultimately what makes blogging so worthwhile, so rewarding, and why I could never give it up, even if I wanted to. For better or worse I have become closer to some of the folks I have met online than some “friends” or relatives I meet in real life. Such is the modern internet way.

Not wanting to get overly gushy about this whole internet thingy, but you folks (you know who you are) whom I have corresponded with and related to so closely in cyberspace over the last three years, you have all become an integral part of this blog. You are not only my friends, but also a way of connecting, a way of learning about human nature as well as a source of photographic and personal knowledge. Human relationships in all their glory.

And it is this (and only this) which makes the price of notoriety worth paying.

HoneyB 1158

Images are of HoneyB. I really like this one.

Pillage and Plunder

As we all know, I’m married to a Viking. My very own hunky barbarian is a very typical Norseman warrior. He’s big, hairy (?) and loves to drink and fight (the latter refers to activities purely confined to the dojo of course) and most folks wisely tend to avoid arguing with him. He’s also a mite too fond of the laydeez, especially after a few sups of real ale… he’s hardwired that way. Oh yes, the wild Viking genes are particularly prominent in our dear Mr Fluffy.

But the latest historical research on Viking history by Cambridge University tells me that I’m being overly harsh with regard to my dear partner. The Vikings have been misrepresented, so they say. In fact all this rape, pillage and plundering was a tad overdone….a simple case of misunderstanding as a result of a smear campaign against our dear Norwegian brothers. The Vikings were actually a peaceful people, concerned largely with trade and colonization. Apparently they were not only stylish trend-setters who were highly fashion orientated (flared breeches and horned helmets being their contributions to the Viking Vogue magazines of the time) but they were also gifted artists. Illustration and creativity were very high on their agenda, and they produced some stunning art in their time.

In fact, the Cambridge researchers assure me that far from being illiterate warring thugs who were obsessed with fighting and dragging off pretty women, in actual fact Vikings were part of a highly advanced society who were deeply concerned with integrating into community life. Apparently even their womanizing ways were just a result of bad publicity, and in truth they were dedicated family men who rarely strayed away from their wives and never so much as looked at another woman.

Yeah right.

HoneyB 1434

Our resident barbarian and his adoring HoneyB

And in case you’re wondering, yes I’m afraid that I did indeed shoot this. Truly I am a numpty of biblical proportions, not to mention a terrible photographer.

Critical reviews of this astounding piece of high art from beloved friends and family range from “Mine eyes! Mine eyes!” to “That’s just nasty.”

It’s at this point when a woman must face the unvarnished truth and realize that photography is not her defining gift in life, and she should really just stick to writing about it instead.

Nude, naked and everything in-between

“To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen by others.”
John Berger

“Is Richard photographing naked women again?” asked my mother-in-law disapprovingly a couple of weeks ago. She asks this question periodically in the vain hope that he’s given up photography.

“Yes he is, and by the way, the ladies in question are nude, not naked,” I corrected sternly.

She looked at me blankly. “What’s the difference?” she asked.

Hmm. Good question. We talk about nudes a heck of a lot in the photographic bloggie world. Technically nude and naked are synonyms. They both mean “without clothing.” However there are fundamental differences between the two, depending on how or when you use them. It’s all dependent on your state of mind, you see.

HoneyB 1143

HoneyB

In common usage, nude is used in an artistic context. I don’t advertise myself as a naked model because that would sound vaguely rude. I would describe myself as a nude model. The implication here is that nude has no lewd connotation. It sounds classier, innocent, untainted by sexual intent. A nude is seen by others as a beautiful man or woman who exudes confidence and self-knowledge. If you pose nude, you are sure of yourself, at one with your natural body shape, you are not ashamed of being unclothed. Au contraire, you revel in it, you are using your beauty and confidence for the higher purpose of creating art. Nudes are therefore elevated to a higher level, a representation of immortality. In ancient Greece, nude statues of Goddesses did not represent ordinary females, rather they depicted super-women. The emphasis was on perfection and form rather than an individual’s characteristics or physical sexuality.

On the other hand naked has more of a personal edge and implies a more carnal element. If I left a note for Rich saying, “Come upstairs, I’m nude” he’d assume I was in the studio waiting for a shoot, but if instead I wrote, “Come upstairs, I’m naked” he’d zip-up to the bedroom quicker than you could say “hot, nekkid and juicy.” See what I mean? In this context naked has a more erotic feel to it, a naughtier and more forbidden element. It certainly doesn’t imply art.

Whether or not we sexualise it, I do think that the word naked can be somewhat disturbing because it reminds us of our own mortality and our limitations. Used in a non-sexual and more innocent context, it reminds us that we were all born naked, vulnerable and frail, not only physically but psychically unprotected too. Think of the phrase “the naked truth” which means stripped of bias or exposing the reality of a situation. When we are naked we are laid bare, the mask is taken off and we are our real true selves.

Now let’s consider another example:

This afternoon I may well go outside to do some gardening. As it is warm outside, I will doubtless be weeding the garden whilst stark naked. As I’m not currently in the best ever physical shape, I’ll be letting it all hang out. It won’t be pretty. Later on I might take a shower, pour myself a glass of chardonnay and hopefully nip upstairs to the studio for a shoot. I’ll then point my toes, suck my stomach in, assume a sultry expression, try not to drool, and pray that Rich is genius enough to rustle up a photo which portrays me as the gorgeous nude model L-von-B which I’m certainly not “in real life.” At no time will I be wearing clothes, but both scenarios are very different because both the context and the intent are different. The first scene is the truth (me in the garden, naked, personal, the individual body stripped bare), the second is a manufactured fantasy image, almost inhuman, where I am just a model, an object of art rather than a person, a mere tool used to convey an artistic message of light, form and (cough) perfection. Thanks to the photographer’s abilities, I am transformed from an ordinary flabby mother of three into something other than I really am.

IMO, this profound charge between these two states is primarily a psychological development. As Donald Kuspit said in The Troubling Nude, the transformation from nakedness into nudity is “a spiritual change…the naked body conveys the state of the soul before the change, the nude body conveys its condition afterwards.”

If by now you’re getting a bit bewildered by all of this, don’t worry, you’re not alone. This highly important and life-changing debate has been discussed by the finest minds for centuries, and modern scholars are still arguing about it. Nude v. naked sure sounds easy enough when you consider my garden/art-nude scenario above, but sometimes it’s not quite as clear-cut as that.

Now let’s all take a moment to consider the following vaguely glamoury image of the boobalicious HoneyB.

HoneyB 1429

Honey's Beautiful Boobies

(Aside: yes I know you’re all shocked right out of your chairs right now, and I do understand your amazement as this is clearly not our resident artiste’s usual tasteful B+W fine-art style, but Rich did take it I assure you. What can I say? The man has hidden depths. Or not, as the case may be.)

Now if you can tear your eyes away from Honey playing with her…er…mighty mammaries, let me leave you with this burning question. Bearing in mind the relevance of context and intent, is she naked or nude?

The Fluffy House of Amityville

I woke up this morning, went downstairs and discovered the walls were bleeding alien blood.

No kidding. Bright green goo was leaking out the electric light sockets and dripping down the walls. This resulted in me rushing around the house at warp speed screaming, “The house is possessed! We’re all gonna die!” (I must admit I’ve always harbored a secret desire to do that, so it was strangely satisfying.) The kids were unmoved, and Rich ignored me. Alas, yet another normal day in the Fluffy household.

Anyhoo, Rich dissected the sockets and discovered that our prehistoric wiring was coated in some sort of ancient insulating glue, which was slowly dissolving and leaking down the walls.

I’m not convinced. It’s because I stepped inside a church for the first time in three years last Sunday. It’s a sign, I know it’s a sign.

Of course the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) gets turned on tomorrow. That might have something to do with it. Coincidence, or are we all doomed?

Maybe we’re all gonna get sucked into a black hole, as Stephen suggested.

If indeed the end is nigh as my walls seem to prophesize, I'd just like to say that it’s been great knowing you folks! So long and thanks for all the fish. I’m gonna spend my last night on earth getting drunk and having sex.

HoneyB 1164

Toast and Honey are the condemned man's ideal final meal

(Rich says he’s not going to dignify this superstitious nonsense with an answer and he’s refusing to be associated with such utter tosh. Apart from the sex bit – he seems quite keen on that.)

See ya tomorrow.

Limbo lower now

HoneyB 1132

Honey doing the limbo

I’ve decided to stop modelling to “higher.” The whipped cream shot in my previous post will be the last you see of my “bits” for a long while. Cries of relief all round, I’m sure.

Don’t get me wrong, these shots were a lot of fun to create, and mucking around in the studio with Rich at weekends with a bottle of wine was immensely relaxing for both of us. And the images were kindly received which was a pleasant ego boost for me too (not that I needed it - my ego is supersized already), but…there is always a butt…

I didn’t shoot pussy shots to get comments, I didn’t shoot them to shock, or arouse others or be “out there” and I didn’t shoot them because I thought they were art either (I have no idea if they qualify as art and frankly I don’t care.) I didn’t need adulation (although that is always nice, but I’d much have my ego stroked for my writing thanks, not my groin.) So why did I shoot nothing but erotica for the best part of a year? Did this photographic genre reflect my personality? To some extent yes, I do have a saucy British side, and I can be incredibly rude (naughty-rude rather than verbally offensive although no doubt I’m guilty of that too) but horny porny Lin is not really who I am (unless you get me completely plastered in which case all bets are off and BTW I totally deny everything.)

If I’m being completely honest with myself, the real reason I shot erotica was a psychological reaction against my cancer. It was a rebellion, a way of fighting it. Porn was my weapon. Exposing my ass (literally) to my disease was my way of saying “fuck you Big C, I’m going to beat this, and there’s nothing anyone or anybody (especially my crappy body) can do to stop me.”

But then I got nuked and took six months off modelling. Incapacitated in hospital, and then at home, I had nothing to occupy my mind and so I started to study photography and the reasons behind it, and consequently I changed. I’m not saying anything as corny as “I grew”, but I did discover new and exciting reasons why photographs evolved, why photographers thought as they did and the reasons behind the creation of their art.

My lifelong obsession, my raison d'être if you like, has always been a fascination with people, who they are and why they think as they do. Nude photography (and indeed all photography) is fundamentally about people. A photograph (good or bad) will tell you way more about the creator of the photograph than it ever will about what the photographer thinks he is showing you. You just need to know how to look. My six months off modelling, which was largely spent reading about photography, really gave me a good kick up the ass and made me re-evaluate who I was and what my priorities were. It taught me as much about myself as it did about the photographers I was studying, probably more. And most importantly, along the way I learned to really see a photograph. And that new understanding fundamentally changed the entire way I looked at the world. It changed Lin, the person.

Do I regret that explicit modelling phase, most of the results of which you’ve never seen and now probably never will? Not for one moment. For one, the making of them will make good stories. Secondly they were fun, as well as a way of losing myself and forgetting the psychological and physical crap I was going through. Thirdly they tested the limits of what I was prepared to show of myself to the world, and if you don’t experience your limits, explore that side of yourself, how are you ever going to know what makes you tick?

But I don’t need that weapon any more. I don’t need to fight my disease because I’ve accepted it as part of me. I’ll always love modelling (particularly the wackier stuff) and I’m still going to do it because helping to create photos (note I’m not using the word “art”) is a lot of fun, and it makes Rich and I happy to spend time together mucking around with a camera. But my desire to model no longer goes deeper than that, I’m afraid. Fun should be enough of a motivation, at least for me.

For me personally there are more important things to do than use my dodgy modelling as therapy (although it does work) and there’s much more to life than showing my hairy old crotch to the world. I don’t have time to be ill. I have more important things to do: Living (one day at a time), breathing (in and out), writing (little and often) and most importantly, loving. I’m rather good at that last one, even if I do say so myself.

HoneyB 1148

You can never have too much Honey.

Erotica: The thinking Person’s Porn

Too often, I have found that people label what they find offensive or crass "porn," while anything they find sexy gets the more romantic label of "erotica." One person's pornography is another's erotica!

Sage Vivant

HoneyB 1128

It’s taken me a whole two years, but I’m finally persuading Rich to dabble in the dark side. He’s finally having a bash at shooting erotica (with models other than me, I mean.) You’ll note that I don’t use the word “porn” because Rich says he doesn’t do porn, and he gets VERY annoyed if I refer to his work as porn, which I do, frequently, because frankly I don’t see much of a difference. What’s in a label? If a photograph turns you on, does it really matter what it’s called?

Well, apparently it does, according to Rich. He says that it’s like looking at the difference between implied nude and real nude – erotica implies the sexual act rather than shows the sexual act. It’s all about getting the balance right between fantasy and reality.

On the other hand I would describe erotica as high-class porn, shot with dramatic lighting and lots of visible emotion and sensuality. It’s sophisticated porn, but with a story, feelings, a psychological element, although the purpose is the same: to get the viewer hot ‘n’ juicy.

By now most of you will be asking, does anybody actually care whether an image is classified as erotica or porn? Well yes, most photographers DO care very much. They want their images to be erotic so that they are perceived by the general public to be photographers not pornographers. It’s all about photographers being concerned with themselves, how they want to be seen and how they see themselves, whereas it should be about what they shoot. Many photographers are too concerned with how they appear to others (they must be thought of as “respectable photographers”) and not enough with using their skills and imaginations to push their boundaries and realise their erotic creative vision. Is it edgy? Can I shoot edgy but not porn? Is it classy? Does it show too much? Not enough? Is it tasteful? And so on…too much worry about the self-image rather than the end-image.

It makes me wonder what would happen if photographers just stopped thinking about their self image for a moment, and let their emotions fly? If they stepped outside their personal comfort zones, indulged their imaginations and see what happens? Personally I would love to see the results. I suspect the photographs produced would be awesome.

Unfortunately there’s no chance of Rich doing that (just yet anyway) as he’s rather shy, and truth be told, he’s taking it slowly because he’s new at this genre and (by his own admission) erotica requires a completely different photographic puzzle to solve. With Rich, it’s forever about lighting above all-else, and he says that’s something he needs to develop over time. It’s easy to do the dramatic single light from the side of course, but trying to induce a more sophisticated emotional mood through light, without crossing the line into porn (which for him is unacceptable) is proving a consuming challenge.

It’s not all about lighting of course. The pose and expression of the model is important, but it’s also critical to think about the story. A successful photograph is about the message above all else. This is where it gets complex because viewers may perceive erotica and porn differently according to their own subjective opinions and personal tastes. In particular, men and women view erotica differently because they think differently. If women get turned on by ideas and more psychological elements of the scene, men are more visual, so the secret is to ensure your story appeals to both. In order to achieve a powerful erotic photograph, all these elements have to come together at just the right time, for that split second, in order to create that image which will push the right emotional buttons of your viewers. Erotica is all about stimulation of the mind rather than the body, and leaving that viewer desperately wanting to see just that little bit more…

One thing is for sure, if photographers stopped obsessing about what is acceptable and tasteful so much, they'd get a lot further with their erotic photography. Ultimately the classification attributed to your photograph is unimportant. What is important is that you stop worrying about what others think of you because all that will do is get in the way of your creative vision.

Let your mind go and your photography will follow.

HoneyB 1129

Images are of HoneyB of course. Rich isn’t sure if he "crossed the line" into porn with that last shot. Personally I think he worries about lines too much. Just keep shooting, and the rest will take care of itself.

Cropping Conundrums

Apologies if I come across as an idiot newbie in this post, but that’s exactly what I am, so I’m relying on you splendid chaps to put me straight.

It is one of photography’s fundamental truths that most photographs do not appear at their best straight out of a camera. To make your photos look better, they usually require some element of “fiddling” before they’re finished. Now fiddling fascinates me, the photographic type I mean.

Rich reckons I’ve developed a dangerous mental condition known as “cropping obsession.” Alas, no whipping involved, I’m talking about the compositional kind. I’ve been fascinated with composition for a while now, and have been analysing it in excruciating and torturous detail (torturous for Rich, not me, because he has to answer my endless questions) and my life is now lived so much according to The Rule Of Thirds that it’s creeping into everyday life. I’m even placing the focal point of my cakes off centre [birthday candles must never go in the centre of the cake, as this shows lack of imagination and a bland composition. As the primary focal point of the cake, the candles should appear off centre at one of the line intersections, but don’t forget to carefully crop your cake for maximum compositional effect. My kids were not impressed. Their cake was wonky.]

HoneyB 1116

Anyway, in order to study how best to crop my photographs, I’ve been studying everyone else’s (i.e. yours), and asking Rich to explain why the photographs in question have been cropped in that way. It seems to me that cropping is of critical importance because it controls what the viewer sees. Cropping shifts the focal point of the photograph and thus changes the whole mood and subject of an image in order to convey to the viewer the message you are trying to achieve.

Now I thought good composition was simply a matter of cropping the subject to fill the frame, plus cropping out obvious distractions, and that was pretty much it. But alas it’s not as simple as that. Cropping is an art-form in itself, as important as the compositional rules you follow when you are actually taking the shot. Get the wrong crop, and the photograph is ruined, the message is lost, and what could have been an outstanding piece of art becomes something I look at and think “what exactly is the point?” I guess I simply don’t understand why some of you learned photographers out there decided to crop your photographs that particular way. Although it is perfectly possible (in fact it’s highly likely) that some of the more “arty” of all your cropping techniques which I’ve been moaning about recently are, in fact, correctly cropped and I’m just so darn stupid that I’ve missed the entire message of the photograph.

As to the eternal question “why crop that way?” there appears to be major online debates as to whether you should follow the Rules of Cropping, and indeed, whether or not those very rules exist to start with. As with all aspects of photography, there are times to follow the rules, and times to break them. I just wish I knew what the bloody things were in the first place. I’ve got to learn to follow them first, before I can break them. When is it O.K. to amputate a leg, and why is it acceptable (even preferable sometimes) to chop the top of a model’s head off? Shouldn’t the viewer be able to see the whole head?

So it appears that it’s all subjective (quelle surprise!) You can crop any way you want to make the composition look its best, but what you classify as your “best” is not necessarily what I would have chosen. To put it in terms that a writer like me will understand, cropping is like writing a sentence that's too long. Do you want to edit out a few words without changing the meaning of the sentence? Or do you want to use the very editing process to change the original meaning because removal of certain words results in a completely different story?

Anyway, I’ve now become so lost in my own composition that I’ve become mightily confused by the whole thing, and I’m now getting very cranky. Rich is getting so fed up with me analysing his photographs and suddenly appearing over his shoulder when he’s post-processing pictures, that he now hides when he’s finishing off his work, and last week a model told me that he’d deleted some pictures on camera as “Lin will have a go at me if I’ve chopped part of your arm off.” Oh dear. Clearly I am a Cropping Monster, and my enthusiasm is bordering on scary.

So if anyone else wants to volunteer as guinea pigs (not gerbils) for me to…er...pump them for their secret cropping techniques…all willing victims/advice would be greatly appreciated (by Rich as well as me.)

HoneyB 1114

To crop or not to crop? That is the question.

Images are of HoneyB. Rich was kind and patient enough to explain the reasons he cropped them this way, largely because I refused to give him any chocolate cake unless he complied. The new Photographic Learning Tool: Photography by Blackmail.

What Price Your Soul?

How do you decide what price to sell your prints for?

Well, generally you look around at the prices charged by your peers, and you pick a figure not too dissimilar from theirs. If you decide on an aggressive pricing policy, you may decide to charge less than your competitors, so that potential collectors are more tempted to choose yours over theirs. Or you may decide to sell your prints incredibly cheap, on the Ebay-style philosophy that you can bump up the shipping costs and make your profit margin that way. Or…as I have been taught, you always, always price your product over and above your main competitors. A higher price tag means that your art is automatically worth more because it has that aura of upper-market exclusivity. If you make it expensive and glossy, and pimp it as such, then people will want it more because it’s perceived as a luxury item. If you can get someone to (positively) review your piece of art, even better, because that adds even more exclusivity to the piece.

Sounds easy doesn’t it? In fact, you all know this basic stuff already. End of post. Or maybe not, because artists are humans, not autonomous pimping machines. The problem comes when you bring personal feelings into the whole monetary marketing process.

For example, how do you choose which photographs to sell? Collectors generally only buy pieces that they love, so how do you decide which ones are the right ones? After all, you can guarantee that the images your potential client loves will be different from your choice. There are many of Rich’s photographs that I adore, and he won’t even finish because he sees flaws that I don’t. These gorgeous photographs will never see the light of day, and yet I’m sure they’d sell if he would only trust my instincts. But he’s a man of principle, and he won’t finish (let alone sell) anything that doesn’t speak to him, or that he considers less than perfect in his eyes. He is limited by his perfectionism, by his emotions for his art, and like many photographers, he has absolutely no clue as to what price to put on his work.

You make a photograph because you have seen something that is beyond price, a glimpse of something beautiful, true and perfect which can’t be put into words. So it becomes tremendously difficult put a real value on such a glimpse of the infinite, because how do you price truth? You are blinded by your subjective feelings for your art, and yet you nevertheless have to assign a cash value to it. How do you put your personal feelings aside and view your work commercially, objectively and dispassionately?

In my own personal opinion, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of you being able to view your own work objectively, so don’t even try. You could ask the advice of a trusted and experienced photographic friend with commercial experience, who will help you choose the optimum images which are more likely to be commercially viable. However if you don’t have such a person close at hand, you’ll simply have to choose those images you love, and from that shortlist, guess which ones that will sell. Bearing in mind that a photographic artist puts a small piece of his soul into each and every image, you then have to literally put a price on your soul.

For Sale on Ebay: One Selenium Toned Soul on a 16"x20" Silver Gelatin Print, Printed by Artist, a bargain at $100 plus shipping.

Being both an artist and a businessman sucks, huh?!

HoneyB 1052

HoneyB from this week's shoot. This shot has been described as "a bit too out-there" so I'm guessing it's unlikely to qualify as suitable for print sale status. But Rich loves it, so what the heck, I'm posting it anyway.