I’ve been playing around with digital cameras for almost 25 years at this point. The first such device I ever owned was a Sony Cyber-shot compact point-and-shoot: after some digging, I think it was a DSC-P2 from 2001. I quickly sold it to a friend and bought a newer, more capable model about a year later, and then a year or two after that upgraded again to a 3-megapixel(!) FujiFilm FinePix 3800.
I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started taking photographs back then. I grew up in the film photography era, but I had no shutterbug friends or family members to spark an interest in the medium; if we ever needed to take a picture of something (and most times we didn’t), we’d reach for a disposable camera and get the roll developed at the nearest 1-hour photo joint.
It was the digital part that finally piqued my interest. You mean I can take a photo, plug the camera into my computer, and download it? and then play around with it in Photoshop? and set it as my Windows wallpaper? and host it on my GeoCities website? Sold.
When I look back on those earliest days of my digital photography, two recurring subjects stick out. One of them was cars. I converted to petrol-headism towards the end of my high school years, so as soon as I had a digital camera, I started making trips to exotic car dealers in the area just to wander around the showroom taking photos, which I’d then share with other enthusiasts on online forums (as was the style at the time).
The other was my high school sweetheart, and I don’t mean her senior portraits. It was far too long ago now for me to remember the details of how we got started shooting nudes. I mean it was definitely my idea, not hers, but how did I ask her? How long had I been thinking about it before I asked? Did she take a lot of convincing? I haven’t the foggiest anymore.
We were together for many years, into our college days, and she was always a good sport about it. It wasn’t something we ever did all that often, mind you – we might have averaged one shoot a year. Looking back, I think it helped that she enjoyed it a bit. Partly she was just humoring me, surely, but I can see now that she had good modeling instincts. She moved and posed without much direction, not that I could have provided any. And some of the pictures weren’t that bad, all things considered. Even in those early days, I was trying to get it right.
Fast forward five years, ten, fifteen, twenty. I’d occasionally approach other women to pose for me, and a few of them would, and I’d get a little bit better at it. Still, that kind of photography was never more than a rounding error on my total creative output in any given year. And so it has been, even though I’ve enjoyed shooting nudes as much as anything else.
It’s time to right this historical wrong and get serious about this woefully neglected side of my photographic life.
Why now? Why not a decade ago?
I don’t know, really.
I just feel ready now in a way that I never have before. Ready to become a proper student of the artistic nude, to work with professionals, to share that work with the world. Ready to be my own boss, to control my own destiny, to create the things that I want to create.
A quick pre-mortem1 analysis on this project, however, reveals no shortage of unignorable challenges. I am, for one, quite a serious introvert. The idea of meeting new people in most contexts leaves me in a state that’s some combination of anxious and annoyed. (I barely slept the night before my first paid shoot with a model.) I also have very limited experience and confidence in posing models. I have no idea how to run a small business. I’m trying to break into a new industry with no professional contacts or connections. I still have a full-time job that has nothing to do with any of this. I have no idea how to find and grow an audience.
I could go on.
What I can say so far, though, is that every deliberate action towards getting this project up and running – brainstorming names, hiring a logo designer, registering the domain name, getting onto Model Mayhem, shooting my first sessions – has been utterly exhilarating. The feedback, moreover, from the people I’ve shared this crazy idea with has been unanimously positive and encouraging.
It all just feels right.
So I’m going to try my damnedest to make this my life’s focus. If you’re curious to see what happens, subscribe. If you like what you see and read here, spread the word. I need all the eyeballs I can get to make this dream a reality, and I’ll be grateful for every bit of your support.
Thanks for reading.
I like your style of writing; informative and amusing. A winning combination. I am no expert on photography and struggle getting what I see onto a suitable medium so I feel for your struggle. It’ll be interesting to see how you develop your career.