March 09

Took some pictures of Wolfe last night before going to bed, I love being on the photographer end of the camera.  I'm looking forward to doing more pictures of Aya now that she's bald, and I'm hoping to shoot Angelle tomorrow.  I also have some other models lined up.  Happy happy!  I like the new camera, but I'm still getting used to it, it's different from our old beast, and I'm slow learning when it comes to tech of any kind.  I'm having problems getting my pictures in focus with this camera, and it also tends to give more of a red tint to non-flash pictures than my other camera as well.  So I have to figure out what it is I need to be doing differently, because I'm sure it's me, and not the camera. <smile>.  

Though if the camera does just love red, that's okay, because so do I <laugh>.  Yummy, makes everything look, well, rosy.  It doesn't help that I have a lot of walls painted red, so there is lots of 'red light' happening with reflection.  I tend to extremes when it comes with images, I love high contrast, I love monochromatic schemes, I love a lot of shadow and light.  I like images that have a lot of movement and drama.  When I was shooting Wolfe I really enjoyed playing with a side lamp as a spot to cast shadows on the wall.  I also often like the spatial distortions that happen sometimes with distance and with shadows.  Though there's always the risk of going overboard, and over doing it.  I've had some people just not 'get' my photo shopping choices, especially in the context of adult images.  Some people are accustomed to looking at very glossy, very multicolored busy images with little shadow.  

I think it's because I want the best of both worlds, I want the 'artistic' factor, and I have a background in traditional and modern fine arts.  I have a trained eye, and that means that I can't ignore background and foreground, positive and negative space, movement, balance, light and shadow when I'm taking a photograph.  I also want to produce 'porn' at the same time, I want high sex appeal.  I want erotic images, with good scale and weight and movement.  Then, I also want to create... intimacy and arousal not just from the subject matter, but from it's placement and context as well.  There's the duality in me from wanting spontaneous not overly posed, natural, images, combined with wanting to embrace a myriad of elements within each image.  In a shoot, I usually have a way of working that for me, seems to facilitate as much of those elements coming together as possible.  I start by trying to give my model as little direction as possible.  I like to set up a 'field'

The ground that is going to set the scene and the flavor of the shoot.  Something that is going to compliment and not detract from the model, from the subject matter.  A lot of the time, I like to use our bed, I like the organic shapes and movement that is created by the sheets and mattress, I like the way they give and form around the people, It gives it a landscape feel, like sand or water, the organic, intimate environment of the bed.  I've literally bought sheets just because I want a sheet that colour to shoot on.  Then there are other times, where I want specific objects or items in the shoot, to give it more of the feel I want it, like when I was in my cheerleader outfit, I knew I wanted a matching pom pom, a matching blue plastic cup with cola in it, and a bowl with popcorn in it.  The cheerleader outfit was a men's football jersey and white panties, as soon as I bought the jersey I had the scene in my head, cheerleader slut, hangs out with boyfriend, has sex, wears his jersey, tousled pigtails, jersey panties, snack food - popcorn or chips and cola.  Evocative of in front of the TV fondling gone out of control.  Usually though I want most of the accessories to be on the model.  I like to keep it as simple and uncluttered as possible.  Real people, being genuinely sexual and genuinely erotic but in an environment and way that shows it off to its best advantage. 

It's why I tend to shoot people I know, or people who I feel are really getting something out of the experience of being sensual or sexual or engage in acts of BDSM or fetishism in front of the camera, because that, passion, that real pure enjoyment and energy, is what I want to relay in the image, and well, faking it, just isn't as satisfying.   Like Aya's head shave, everyone that night, had a -very- good time, and that gives the whole experience, and the images that came from that, a beauty and charge and intensity, that the best lighting and planning and photographing could never create on it's own, it can though, help share it with others, hopefully, to it's best advantage.

That's it for me, we spent the day out at Wolfe's parents with our doggies visiting with their doggies, and I'm bushed, I had to get up before 1pm today!