Ravings of a Naked Photographer

Inhibitions, there wonderful things, we’ve had them programed in all our lives; they stop, or at least delay us; from doing some questionable things, but should we really have them when it comes to photographs intended to show the beauty of the subject?

Of course your expecting me to give a blunt ‘no’ to that question, but i think we should look at it a little differently. The first hurdle and often the most difficult is of course the decision to say ‘i am going to do this’ and to that my answer would of course be the afore mentioned ‘no’, from there on in, any inhibitions you have will guide you to achieve the result you want, without going too far. I often have to remind people that ‘The Naked Photographer’ is a creative and not a literal statement, I’m certainly not naked and i never expect my clients to be either, if they choose to be, then they want to be for their own reasons.

Not that i would usually tackle such a popular institution, but now that my blood has returned to it’s normal temperature i feel compeled to dish out some steam.

Like most parents we look forward to the 15 times yearly school photo coming home, Mrs. Naked Tog always feels compelled to part with an unnecessarily large sum of cash in a bid to buy the ‘top package’ of each of our children, and a group shot to boot, some get sent to grandparents whilst the others linger in the kitchen draw for six months until they get moved into the loft for storage. Whilst that may seem to be just a blatant waste of cash there is a plus, that plus is ‘discount’, theres a healthy brood at our house so when you have a ‘discount for multiple children/sets’ carrot dangled in front of you you usually bite.

So to the point, the school in their ultimate wisdom took it upon themselves to change from a perfectly reasonable; most of the pictures were good enough to buy; photographer who offered that all important ‘carrot’ to one that not only offers no discount but seems to have all the photographic skill of a wet mop, lets hope the schools getting a better commission rate, because someone needs to benefit from this disaster, and i really can’t see it being the parents.

So whats wrong with the pictures then? well lets start at the top with Mollie, i have to admit that Mollies picture is, apart from being poorly framed, OK although in saying that i feel the need to point out that it it absolutely impossible to take a bad picture of Mollie, so they had a foregone conclusion on that one.

Next we come to Thomas, now whilst Thomas can be a bit; OK a lot; of a so and so he can sometimes raise a smile and his previous school photo’s have been good, his picture is a disaster, it looks like he’s 40 foot from the camera; or maybe he shrank at school that day (those in the know will realise that’s probably a ‘thomasism’), and he was sat at just the right angle to make his ears look like a ‘flappy paddle gearbox’, nice.

Eleanor’s next, not usually a problem in front of a camera; and not bad behind it either; Eleanor’s hair is naturally curly but goes to school with her hair tied up, so why i wonder, when the nit nurse has been banned in schools, has someone untied her hair and brushed it straight then told her to fall asleep while someone took her photo.

And lastly we come to Toby, it’s Toby’s fist year at the school so it’s his first ‘school photo’, now Toby much like the others, is far from camera shy and will happily sit and smirk at a camera, but again it seems the school photographer has struck again, he looks less than impressed so much so that he’s not even looking at the camera.

So all in all a quite remarkable disaster meaning to satisfy the grandparents and the kitchen draw I’m going to have to re take them all.

Or how to ruin a perfectly good image, just because you can.

Whilst i would never purport to be the Photoshop’per of the century, and would go as far to say i probably use about 4% of the program features (it is widely reported that even the Adobe staff who build it have limited knowledge of the whole program) i do know my field.

Photographers use Photoshop in a number of ways, in my opinion it should be used to process an image, much like traditional film, and in some situations make small alterations to any imperfections (after all we are none of us perfect), there are of course situations where a larger amount of adjustments may be required, but just how far do you go?

A photographer will get an image right; or as right as possible; ‘in camera’ with lighting, angles and positioning; dull but true; this in turn makes the post processing a much simpler task, after all you can work on an image for hours, but if you put junk in you WILL get junk out.

You’re probably expecting me to show how wonderful / god awful i am with a ‘before and after’ type photo, but no, absolutely, never, I just won’t. Why? Because my clients come to me for beautiful images of themselves, they don’t want me to make them look hideous just to prove a point that i can operate a graphics tablet for my personal gratification, or for that matter a camera.

So next time you see a ‘i am a Photoshop guru’ – ‘look at what i did to xyz person’, just think to yourself, do i really need to know, or do i just want the best image of me?

Well yes actually, whilst that may seem a bizarre statement it would seem that it could well be a problem, personally i don’t see it, although the rise in ‘we are women’ within the boudoir photography trade would have you believe otherwise. Here’s the thing, just how many plastic surgeons do you know that base an advertising campaign on the fact they are female? ………………………… yes, just what i was thinking, what a stupid idea.

When photographing women for boudoir many will want the final result to be presented to a man; and as all women will know, we men come from a slightly different planet, so inevitably we see things differently, it’s like speaking the same lingo, what’s the point in speaking Latin when your audience barely speaks English?

What’s your fetish?

Both boudoir and burlesque are not really anything to do with photography as individual words, but the words inevitably conjure up images to the mind, so why shouldn’t they conjure up images in print.

So what’s the difference? dress code, boudoir can now be interpreted as just about anything that implies or gets near to nudity; or in some cases actually nude; burlesque is more about the flamboyant lingerie often associated with the burlesque act, corsets, suspenders, stockings, feathers and fans. Whilst the boudoir style seems to have been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century with modern props and accessories, burlesque is firmly cemented in history and tradition, the choice of styles as far as photography goes are fully interchangeable.

So just where does a boudoir photographer hang out?

Well thats going to depend on a number of factors, with the rise in popularity in ‘boudoir photography’ many togs are venturing into the field, with reasons mostly coming down to ‘a wedding client asked me to do….’ and thats fair enough, although is the client getting what they set out for ? probably, although do they even know what that is ? maybe not. Your average wedding and portrait tog has generally invested heavily in a very dull shade of Dulux over recent years, keeping up with the ‘lifestyle’ marketeers at our favorite high street studio; £25 voucher anyone?

So just how many boudoirs have the minimalist whitewashed look ? not very many, so why do some ‘boudoir photographers’ insist on using the ‘daytime decor’ for the boudoir shoots, beats me, tell you what, lets just go to venture and secretly whip off most of our clothes in the changing room, that should do nicely.

Welcome to ‘the blog of the naked tog’, the ravings of a naked photographer.

Lets start by clearing up the first thought that shoots through the minds of people that see ‘The Naked Photographer’ …….. No one’s naked, sorry to shatter that one, for the civilized out there (o.k. British people) think ‘chef’, its a creative statement not a literal one.