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.

AlexisSummers 974

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.

AlexisSummers 977

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!)

Post No. 300

Well the weekend issue was partially resolved. It seems that the Hogwarts father concerned didn’t tell his wife about our photographic leanings for some strange reason I can’t quite fathom (but I’m guessing we have gained another viewer – welcome dear bloggie reader!) Plus we appear to have been forgiven as my son has now been invited to a party there next weekend.

Rich is going to put our real names on the Fluffytek site, but will embed them in a graphic so Google can’t index them. Of course this doesn’t solve the problem completely, as we're certainly traceable if you try, but nevertheless it solves the problem temporarily, and all’s well that ends well.

End of drama for this month.

LouLou 661

Here's Lou-Lou.

Great heavens, I've just realised this is our 300th post.

Kiss my shiny latex ass

To those who actually noticed, apologies for being off-blog for a wee while.

Life has been better. Rich is working through the nights on the day-job software (and I miss him!) plus my head is really playing up and I am wackeroo with PMS. Gah! Get me to the nearest pub. I need alcohol and it’s only 1 p.m.

I'm swamped with day-job work too. It’s our busiest two weeks of the year, so I’m refraining from cruising the blogs (boo hoo!) or posting again until the stress eases off a bit. Lots going on behind the scenes photographically. And I mean lots. Some good, some not so good, some which I definitely can’t post here because it’s too photographically political (now that’s got you wondering eh?)

However Rich did find time at some ungodly hour of the night last night to put in a new groovy feature to the bloggie images, so when you click on them, they swoosh larger, rather than pop up.

Yes I know I’ve posted this image before but it has the dual purpose of accurately describing our week, plus also illustrates the feature perfectly.

Click on my ass and you’ll see what I mean.

L-von-B 457

Ass gets bigger.
Click again.
Ass gets smaller.
Click.
Ass gets bigger…
Etc, etc.

Kinda hypnotic after a while. Or it will put you off your breakfast. Either works for me.

Eostre Greetings

Apologies for being a little wacko this week. I suspect that 70 hour working weeks and radiation fallout don’t go well together. I’m not of this politically correct American art world. Different rules apply there, and sometimes I forget that when I'm tired. Plus the trouble with blogging is that, at some point, you discover that you’ve become lost in your own ass. Mr Wood has always maintained that if he wrote a blog it would consume him, and I’m beginning to realise the same problem.

Talking of pleasant posteriors, here’s another rather spiffing shot of the gorgeous IvoryFlame. This image sucks on my little laptop monitor and looks bloody fabulous on Rich’s groovy high resolution monitor (Synchmaster 244T.) This monitor resolution issue is really frustrating us both. You’ve no idea just how many kick-ass photographs we don’t show on-blog because most people can’t see the fine detail due to lower grade monitors like mine. The subtleties are just lost.

There’s different shades of black you know, and some are blacker than others. A valid statement about my moods this week, as well as about publishing photographs.

*sigh* If only I could show you the prints instead.



Incidentally, for those that don't know, Easter is primarily a pagan festival. Eostre was the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. She was supposedly reincarnated in the form of a hare, since it was widely believed that when hunted, the mother hare would sacrifice herself so that her offspring could escape. So that's why you get cute little chocolate rabbits everywhere at Easter. Easter eggs symbolise fertility because, well duh, life hatches from them. So basically (Christians please look away now) Easter is about spring sex.

Wishing you all a great Eostre, with lots of fertility rituals:-)

(For those that want to debate theology and the actual date of the death of Jesus, please do feel free to email me.)

Sadness

Just a quick one today.

If you haven't already done so, please do take a moment to visit Univers d'Artistes, and leave a supportive and appreciative message to Chris Saint James who closed his blog yesterday due to ill health. His excellent work will be greatly missed, and we all wish him happiness and hope he stays in touch.

Art, Conflict and Pot-Stirring

I sometimes get asked why I write about controversial issues, why I often invite argument or “stir the pot.”

“It’s what I do!” I reply. But I’ve been thinking about this, and the question deserves some sort of deeper answer.

As I’m writing this, not six feet away from me, my two sons are fighting again. Not physically fighting (although a certain amount of wrestling is normal for brothers) but I mean the usual type of yelling, disagreements and petty insults which are normal for a couple of young male siblings who are only three years apart. Rich and I recognise it as inevitable, but that doesn’t make it easy to live with, particularly because we’re normally such easy going parents, and we don’t like living in the middle of a war-zone (which is what it feels like tonight.)

So much of our everyday lives involves conflict, politics and disagreement. You can get overloaded with it just listening to the news every day, but there’s also conflict and argument at work, at home, and so on. So it’s natural that photographers and artists definitely want to stay well clear of politics in the art world, because they’ve had enough of it in everyday life. Photography is meant to be relaxing, it’s meant to be fun, it’s supposed to be playing. Why invite conflict by writing about contentious issues? Why not just publish soothing, calm, uncontroversial articles that make people warm and fuzzy? Why not stick to topics that don’t rock the boat? Or better still, Lin, why not just keep your big mouth shut?

Hmm…Well, let me draw an analogy between writing and another art form, by way of explanation. The same reasoning applies to both.

When you publish a photograph, whether it’s online on a blog or web site, or whether you exhibit it as a print, you are inviting viewers to judge your work. The same argument applies to a piece of writing. For every person that does like it, you’ll find two that don’t. Some people may think it’s a moving and innovative artistic statement, but there will certainly be others who disagree, who think it’s banal and average, who think they could have done it better, or who simply hate it for reasons of personal bias or because they have different tastes. So the process of publishing any type of art will invite conflict by its very subjective nature.

In some ways it’s easier to avoid conflict by not showing your work. I believe this is a mistake. “You are your art,” as my oldest son is fond of saying. It is the essence of who you are, your artistic statement, it is what you stand for. If you don’t invite controversy and conflict and you go out with the aim of never offending anyone, then quite frankly you run the risk of creating banal, meaningless art, or worse, you won’t produce photographs or write at all. Your art, by its very nature, begs an audience. It needs to be published because it invites discussion, stimulates the imagination, it teaches, and the controversy and discussion involved results in evolution of both artist and the viewer.

IMO, conflict is therefore a good thing. When my boys argue (tonight they’re actually arguing about who is best at CGI art, believe it or not! Yikes, our kids have become their parents already!) it means that at the end of the evening, they’ll either have come to a consensus, or they may well still vehemently disagree. But they will have learned something from looking at that artistic image, discussing it, and arguing like cat and dog about it. Their opinion of the process of art will have evolved.

Conflict is an inevitable part of the artistic process. It is a positive step. A process of growth. So don’t be disheartened if you feel like your photographs, paintings, CGI images, or even your written blog posts end up as a virtual war zone. This is completely and utterly normal, and it’s all part and parcel of being an artist.

“Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.”
John Dewey

(Oh no, I’m getting addicted to quotations…I blame Mr Wood...)



Syd, who is hopefully popping round for coffee and a shoot some time soonish.

Damn lies and statistics

For someone who is an accountant by trade, I’m completely hopeless at keeping an eye on our Fluffytek statistics. So it’s been about four or five months or so since we actually bothered to look at the bloggie stats, number of hits, regular readers and so forth. But I was feeling blue and at a bit of a loose end today, and I finally decided to crunch the numbers.

Holy crap! Where did all the people come from?! No I don’t believe in quoting figures, but wowee, do we love our lurkers or what?! Thank you little lurkers, from the heart of our bottoms. You certainly know how to cheer up a dodgy ol’ model. What I found particularly funny was the obvious huge spike in viewing figures after the day I posted my dodgy porn shots (sorry, I mean “tasteful art.” Of course it was. Whatever else could it be?) So, fellow nude bloggers, if you really want to boost those flagging viewing figures, nothing gives your blog that added "zing" quite like an extreme-close-up graphic shot of an old model’s nether regions.

I’ve also been collecting personal opinions from other female readers with whom I chat. Kind of a survey about what readers like and dislike about the blog. Now please note that the survey is not of experienced professional models, I’ve instead been talking to average everyday ladies (some of whom are friends of mine), who just read and look at the piccies for fun, usually with their hubbies, and then want to try out the same sort of experimental photography at home.

It seems that my frequent apologies for our slightly more edgy pictures have also been unnecessary. Not only do women have a much wider comfort zone for erotic art (which is obviously NOT porn because it’s b+w, of course) than you would ever have believed possible, but it appears many of our female readers look at this blog just before they toddle off to bed with their beloved one. i.e. this highly tasteful art nude blog is actually contributing to people’s nightly steamy sessions in the boudoir. Now this might be obvious to many of you, but it’s news to us I’m afraid. Of course we naturally assumed that men read the blog for the big boobies, but it seems the ladies read it for the (rather infrequent) steamy bits. In actual fact, several confessed to really loving the images of some of the more adventurous models (not of me, thank goodness!) posing in a more…erm…seductive manner, so to speak.

Now you’ll appreciate that Rich is in seventh heaven about this. He loves women, pretty much all of them if we’re being completely honest. His greatest pleasure is making women happy. So the idea of there being a high female bloggie demand for tasteful-yet-slightly-raunchier pictures of women groping themselves, has really made our Mr Fluffy’s day.

He wants you all to know that he’ll do his utmost to…er…spice up your love-lives by dedicating himself 100 percent to shooting steamier pictures this year…He says that “tasteful erotic” must be his new calling. “Gotta keep the readers happy!” he says.

Thanks for that folks. I mean…thank you SO MUCH for giving my husband the perfect excuse to shoot dodgy porn in the name of art.

And that’s the last time I ever do a bloggie survey.

"Statistics can be used as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than for illumination."
Andrew Lang



The delightful Amy, our first "higher" model. Apparently not our last.

The Worm Turns

I appear to have been going through a mini-metamorphosis this week, particularly with regard to my writing. This could be to do with my impending radiation, but I suspect it’s more to do with photographic happenings around me. There has been an explosion of plagiarism (both photographic and written) in the last few months or so. Plus a rise in bitchiness, back-biting, censorship, and general under-hand tactics. In other words, typical politics in the photographic world.

IMHO, this greatly detracts from the ability to create. In theory, artists and writers should be able to shut out the world, ignore other folks being conniving and mean, and continue blissfully creating their own art to their heart’s content. But in practice, even the most thick-skinned artist or writer will be affected negatively by politics. Other people’s shit gets to you after a while, no matter how much you try to ignore it.

So I have spent an entire week thinking. Really THINKING about the photographic world, both literary and image-wise. I have been taking a step back, analysing the situation, looking at others’ behaviour on the forums and in the modelling world in general. What I have found is not good. Other than the friends I know and trust (which I am happy to say are quite a few), many people in this photographic world are nasty, manipulative, selfish. Worse, they are unprofessional. In the art business, and in the photographic art world in particular, I always believed in the higher ideals of professional courtesy.

As a qualified lawyer and an accountant, I have been a professional for over twenty years. I have become used to people sticking to standards of behaviour, both high ethical standards, and courtesy to others at all times. I expected the same from the photographic art world. From what I have seen recently, I can only conclude I was hopelessly naïve.

In the end it comes down to one simple question:

How do I develop a thicker hide?

(Apologies for the negativity folks. Clearly I need a vacation.)



This is Amy from last week's shoot. She really doesn't realise just how pretty she is, which makes her all the more charming of course.

Weird

In which our heroine answers her critics (politely)

In the last few months I’ve come under considerable fire for both my writing style and for the way we view our blog and the photographic bloggie community in general. This isn’t from folks who comment on-blog. No, it’s from people who don’t even know me, and sometimes only throw a cursory glance at the odd post on this blog, yet presume to judge me based on their view of how I should do things.

Now, despite the apparent assumption that I actually have no life outside photographic cyberspace, I must point out that I do actually have friends in the “real world” whom I meet several times a week, have coffee with, chat to, talk to, go out with. But I don’t blog about them. Firstly they have no interest in photography or modelling (although they know what I do), and secondly I don’t feel that talking about them here would be remotely interesting. I suspect that most of you wouldn’t be gripped by the banalities of my day to day existence.

For example, I am a keen cook, I like gardening, sci-fi, reading and researching nutrition and life extension. But if I blogged about that, I’d send you to sleep pretty damn quick. Photography and art are what float your boat, so I try to keep the writing loosely related to these topics.
Mostly.
O.K. maybe not, but I do try.
I could be wrong about this assumption of course. So if anyone is interested in my last night’s reading about catecholamine excess and phaeochromocytomas in the Dutch population, then please do feel free to email me.

Besides my daily life, I must confess I do spend a lot of time online “socialising" with the photographic community. I count the people I “meet” online as my friends. Some of them I’d even call good friends, and I chat to them practically every day via email or MSN. I firmly believe that cyberspace can be as much an online community as a physical one. After all, it’s just another method of communication. Sure it involves a certain level of trust - many of you might indeed be mad axe murderers for all I know, in which case, might I say in all truthfulness, that I like you anyway. But on the whole, I do think people are honest, and why the hell shouldn’t I care about you, value your opinions, and what you think? Via this blog, I’ve learned a heck of a lot about life, photographic art, and most importantly, about PEOPLE.

However, despite the fact that I’m entirely happy having both friends in the “real world” and friends on the other side of the planet in cyberspace, some folks are crtical of this. Let’s take a snapshot of the last month, in which I’ve been called (off blog):

Weird
Unhealthy
Naïve
Screwed up
Desperate
Socially isolated

And that’s only in the last month.

O.K. running a fairly successful photography blog is inevitably going to earn a fair degree of the big greenies, but I’m not overly impressed at being judged by people who think they know me, but clearly don’t.

Yes, I expose my feelings, emotions and innermost thoughts on here. I believe that makes me a better writer, and for each post that exposes “the real me,” I have been rewarded ten-fold by the generosity and openness of complete strangers who have welcomed me as friends.

To those who criticise me for writing this blog the way I do, to those who don’t take risks in cyberspace, and who view exposing their emotions and thoughts online as a personal flaw, I say to you:

Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. The rewards far outweigh the risks, believe me, and I haven’t exactly been attacked by any mad-axe-murderers yet, although I’ve had my share of emails from perv’s (who tend to be incredibly polite people and immense fun.)

We have a good community here, folks. Which is every bit as valuable and valid as the one in the “real world.”

O.K. So I may be weird. But at least I’m in good company.



A rather old image I dug out of the archives today of Cheeky Lee.

Lost In Translation

I screwed up. Again.
Profuse apologies to Gary, who got the wrong end of the stick about my off-blog ranting.

Often I find writing on cyberspace can be SO easily misinterpreted, and things are usually made worse because of the language/culture differences between the British and the U.S. This probably just means I don't express myself very well, or it may be a inter-continental culture thing. I often appear overly sharp to Americans in my writing, when I'm a pussy-cat in real life (honest, guv!) I also have a very dry British sense of humour, and were you to meet me face to face, you’d know that most of my language is peppered with sarcasm. However, the trouble with sarcasm is that it’s often hard to translate it properly to writing, and especially across continents and cultures. Trying to translate British dry wit to American photographers is the hardest writing challenge I have EVER encountered.

I’ve tried to do the love-love MM politically correct type writing, where I say everyone is wonderful all of the time. The trouble is that I deeply suck at it. It sounds false, and unlike me. So I stick to just letting the words flood out as they appear in my head. Not the best writing technique ever, and the casualties of war have been high. People I care about very much but have nevertheless offended this year include Don (twice I think), Melvin (who is alas no longer speaking to me), Jimmy, Stephen and Dan (who all forgave me), and now Gary (as above)…and those are just the ones I know about!

Nowadays when I write a potentially contentious post, I’ve actually taken to emailing photographers or models in advance and emphasising the post is not about them, in case they misconstrue it. Does this make them overly sensitive, or me a bad writer? The latter I think.

Writing is a difficult art form, and IMO a more powerful one than visual art. The keyboard is mightier than the camera. Certainly it is much easier to offend via writing, than via a photograph.

Despite my constant emphasis that my writing is usually not about any individual, readers continue to personalise the blog posts or comments because it is human nature to relate to observations about relationships, emotions or personalities (my favourite topics.) Rich says this is a good thing, and a sign that I am getting better at writing. I’m not so sure.

Good writing personalises the message to the reader. The better the writing, the more readers are moved by the message. The trouble is, when the message that appears in the writers head, goes onto computer, across cyberspace, and is interpreted by someone else’s head on the other side of the planet, the original intention of the writer, the mood, the (attempted) humour, the nuance, often gets lost in translation. Kind of like most art really – it’s a subjective interpretation.

Let me emphasise I’m a beginner at this art form.

Maybe I should take up photography instead? It’s gotta be easier, and that way I wouldn’t upset those I care about.



Pretty Lou-Lou, from a shoot earlier this week.

The key to good photography is composition

I’m reposting a comment from the learned Grommit - one of only a few of us who has actually had formal artist training, comes from a family of exceptionally talented artists, and has a psychology degree to boot (never say our readers aren’t highbrow!) He very kindly shared his words of wisdom on the Weston veggie shots a few days ago. It’s interesting because a) I can’t write this sort of arty language for toffee, and b) because he says what all photographers already know of course, but it’s news to me because I have about as much understanding of composition as Gordon Brown understands the UK economy.

You can read Grommit’s full comment here (scroll down) but I’ve repeated the critical bit below.

"It's odd, I've followed many of the links to other photographers mentioned on your blog and tried to come up with why some work for me and many just don't. Often, it comes down to 2 principles.

Can I see with my own eyes the person to person connection that existed between the photographer and model, or subject? This is not the same as what the photographer thinks is a connection. S/he might believe that there was a great vibe on the day of the shoot. My question is can *I* as an external viewer see and relate to that connection? Without that, the shared understanding of what passed between the two is lost to me as a viewer. The performance of the moment is gone and all that is left is a sculpture, or worse still a dead shape. This is most prevalent when the model just doesn't look "present" at the scene. I am always drawn to the face and body language to see if the model seems to be actually into what s/he is doing.

Second, does the photographer have any sense of 2d space within the 3d photograph? Does s/he understand composition and the need to think in both 3d and 2d at the same time? I've seen many a picture and thought "for heavens sake, take an evening class in the theory of design and you could transform these". There is a reason why fine artists have study art theory throughout the centuries - it works. The same rules of balance and form apply to not only paintings but any form of visual layout, from magazine design, typography to - most certainly - photography. And I really think that's a vital step in the transition between amateurs and professional status - moving beyond understanding the physical technique to a mastery of aesthetic technique as well, until it become instinct. A very few people have that aesthetic understanding naturally (lucky bastards). The rest of us have to work at it.

So to answer your original question as to why the first image works and the third doesn't - it's all down to success in the composition."

Richard’s comment on this: “Yep! I told you this last month, but you never listen to me.” (smug bugger)

My comment: “Dammit, I wish I could have said it that well in the first place.”

Incidentally Grommit, if you want to see some exceptional fine-art photography where the model really “engages”, go look at some of Dave Rudin’s work , particularly his shots of Sarah Ellis. They knock my socks off! (Actually Dave Rudin knocks my socks off because he really is gorgeous, but let's not go there.)

On another, totally unrelated topic, I’d like to introduce bloggers who haven’t tried it yet to the (now very old) Gender Genie. This was developed many moons ago by Israeli scientists and claims to be able to tell you, with 80% accuracy, whether a piece of writing has been done by a man or a woman. (I’m guessing that our resident psychologist, Dr Grommit, will make mincemeat of this program.)

Needless to say, after extensive analysis of our blog posts, my writing is predominantly male, and Rich’s is predominantly female.

Rich’s comment: “That’s because artists and engineers think with different parts of their brains to most people.”

My comment: “Girlie! Girlie! You’re a big Girlie!”

Rich’s comment: Unrepeatable!



The amazing Syd, engaging with Rich rather intensely if you ask me.

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.

ArtNudes.blogspot.com

Michael Barnes, the delightful chap who runs the famous Artnudes.blogspot.com has been through absolute hell with Google recently.

Firstly the poor guy had some member of the public complain about his site, resulting in Google putting up a page whereby visitors are warned about the content being possibly objectionable. All visitors now have to click on the “I wish to continue” button before they can view the blog. Then the mighty Google de-listed it completely. As a result, all of the hits disappeared.

Although Google appear to have re-indexed it for the time being at least, this cannot have been the most pleasant of experiences. Our day-job web site has been de-listed on Google occasionally due to screw ups by the Google-bots or changes in the spider algorithms. To say it was stressful would be something of an understatement. At the time. complaining to Google about the incident merely resulted in a stony silence.

After a traumatic few weeks, Michael has, quite understandably, been thinking about quitting the blog, after five years of dedication and effort. Please visit his blog, urge him to continue, and if anyone has any technical suggestions on how to get rid of that pesky content warning, please let him know. If the warning page remains, visitors to his site will be down substantially, as people will incorrectly think that such warnings indicate offensive content (i.e. porn).

All because of one prude, somewhere on the internet, who has a hang-up about nudity. This twerp, whoever he or she may be, has thus deprived thousands of people of one of the best collections of fine-art in the world. As Dilbert said "Since when did ignorance become a point of view?"

May I very strongly urge all fellow bloggers, and any readers who love Michael's site, to publicise this incident to the fullest extent, and bump up the ArtNudes.blogspot.com link to the top of their side-bar. This will show support for Michael, plus hopefully push his links and hits up.

And before you think, "Mmm, nice idea, I'll do that later" and then never get around to it, just remember, it could easily be any one of us next.



Claire-Louisa.

Bloggie Birthday

It's our birthday! This blog has been going a whole year today!

It’s certainly been a rollercoaster ride. Many times I thought I’d delete the blog (Rich threatened me with divorce if I did!), many times it has been immensely painful and frustrating to write. Other times it’s been immense fun! We have shared our personal journey through the first year of photography with many thousands of complete strangers, and in the process, made many friends and found out many new things about each other along the way. Plus, IMO, Rich has created some groovy art and discovered his true vocation (shooting nekkid chicks!)

We always planned to keep the blog going a year, and then decide whether or not to continue it.

From a personal point of view, even if no-one read my ramblings, I’d still have to blog, no matter what. Ideas for potential posts regularly drag me out of bed at 4 a.m. to kick my scrawny ass onto the laptop. I get no peace until the blog entry is written. Richard, on the other hand, often finds blogging stressful. I always tell him to blog more, simply because I think he’s a great writer. But he always says he’s not a writer, he’s first and foremost a photographer, and he’s happier concentrating on his Art.

So I guess the bulk of the writing will be continued by me (I am after all, the Queen of Waffle, and I do love talking about anything and everything), with sporadic posts now and again by Rich. He says he’s only going to post when he has something he wants to write about – other than that, his work says all he wants to say (Now who does that sound like, Mr Moten?!)

A year ago today, this blog started as a way of exploring what Rich and I were creating together (photographically speaking), and to reassure potential models that we weren’t a couple of pervs. Now blogging has become a way of life for me, almost an addiction. It’s made me realise that writing is my passion. Plus it’s given us both a whole new online bloggie social circle, some brilliant friends and it’s been a great show-case for Rich’s artistic endeavours.

Thank you for staying with us for a whole year.

I can’t promise that this blog will still be going in a year’s time, although that is certainly our intention, but I can promise you that we will be blogging and photographing, somewhere, somehow.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to celebrate a year’s blogging with a bottle of Chardonnay, a shiny black cat-suit, and a pair of giant rubber lips (don’t ask!)

These are the top three most popular images from the last year, in order. The Kate montage, Cheeky Lee’s “Submissiveness”, and the beautiful Roswell Ivory.

How do we get more comments?

I frequent about fifteen of my favourite blogs every day (any more than that and I end up getting no work done at all). Some are photography blogs, some are nutrition blogs and some are anti-cancer blogs. A good smattering of all my interests.

I always read the comments on these blogs – they say as much about the personality of the blogger as the blog entry itself. Comments build community and friendship between the blogger and readers. If you follow the links from commentators (and most bloggers always do) you find out what type of person reads your bloggie ramblings, plus you discover many hidden internet gems – many commentators have outstanding blogs in their own rights. Through getting to know your regular commentators, over time they become valued friends.

Of course, blog comments give you valuable feedback on your writing and photography. You learn what style of blog entry will trigger a comment, and which ones are guaranteed to trigger nothing but a deathly internet silence. With some of our posts, you can practically smell the waves of boredom and/or disapproval coming off the computer screen.

For example, if we blog about general contentious photographic issues, such as photographic laws, pornography, or make some amazingly arrogant (and usually incorrect) observations about the psychology of a photographer, then we are guaranteed comments. The more contentious the issue, the more comments, providing our opinions are argued relatively eloquently, and we're not being total idiots.

Comments are essential to blog writers – they let us know that people are reading (and hopefully liking) the writing style. They give valuable wisdom too. Who needs a therapist when you have hundreds of people regularly reading your blog every day? If I blog about a personal emotional issue, I am lucky enough to guarantee that some kind soul out there will express their opinion, impart their knowledge, offer support, or more often than not, tell me I’m a complete idiot, and need to think again.

The type of images you post are also critical to the number of comments you receive. A blog is target-audience dependent. Readers of this particular blog want to see nudes (although many will tolerate my attempts at fetish, if only for the humour value). They want to look at the nekkid chicks, and because we deliberately put the image at the bottom of the post, we make sure than they have to work for their boobie-fix by reading our waffle before they reach their reward, the eye—candy at the end.

If we post some of Richard’s other photography at the end of a post, such as a landscape, or an animal, no matter HOW GOOD the writing, there will usually be one comment at the most. The reader is subconsciously annoyed because he has read through all our drivel, and he didn't even get his yummy carrot as reward. So nudes it is, I guess. And of course they have to be women. I can only imagine the deathly silence we would get if we posted a nude image of a man (apart from the readers who are female models – yey girls, let’s get some man-flesh to ogle!)

People who leave comments here are mostly photographers. This gives the false impression that all the readers are photographers, and I know for a fact that this is not the case. Many models read this, but they lurk rather than post comments, or email me their opinion instead. I am guessing that this is because they are shy.

Often the off-blog emails that we receive are more frequent than the on-blog comments. Many readers email us instead of commenting, because they do not want others to know they read a nude blog, or because they don’t want to let others know their opinion, or because they have internal political issues with other regular commentators. We have between five and ten regular readers who would rather email us with their comments rather than posting a public response on the blog. Not that we mind, but sometimes the blog does give the impression that because there are too few comments, that not many people are reading it. This is not the case, thank God.

If I blogged about diet, nutrition and cabbages, then I’d probably get between 10 to 20 comments a day. . I know one anti-cancer blog that gets between 25 and 85 comments every single day (I’m madly jealous! But it’s well deserved as she is an awesome writer) Of course, if I blogged about nutrition, I’d go slowly insane from boredom, but these blogs get more comments because a) The commentators are mostly women, and women post more than men, and b) because cabbages are not secretive, hidden, or remotely pornographic in nature, then it’s safe for the lurkers to post.
The bigger blogs, with 10+ comments a day, also have word verification turned off. So if we also did this, we’d certainly increase the comment quota too, but then we’d spend half our day being spammed into extinction, so we’re reluctant to take that step.

In the end, I guess it really doesn’t matter how many comments you get, it only matters that people keep coming back, day after day. There must be some reason they like it, other than the chix…

Congratulations for making it to the end of this long and immensely boring post.

Here’s your carrot:



Claire Louisa. Rich was one of the last photographers to shoot her before she retired from nude modelling.