Welcome Teddie Fans

I've noticed lately that I get a small, but steady, amount of traffic from Teddie's portfolio page on ModelMayhem. She cleverly uses a link to all the posts tagged with her name, and lets visitors to her portfolio know they can see more of her shots and read all the nice things I have to say about her. A good way to expand beyond the 20 images they allow there... I'll continue saying nice things about her, except she's a little too far away. Just before her graduation, we'd made plans to schedule a shoot, even scouted out an interesting location, but between her finals and working and my schedule, we just never managed to find a time before she left. So, I'm hoping she'll find a reason to pay a visit down here, or maybe I'll finally make my long-promised Chicago junket a reality. Meanwhile, here's a few more shots of her to help melt the chill of winter.

Bending over backwards

Going to be away from the computer for most of the weekend, but wanted to check in and make a humble request or two...

First, this blog is approaching 200 entries, and I would GREATLY appreciate some more comments. I hear from a small handful of people on a regular basis, and I appreciate their efforts, but the other 99% of visitors haven't bothered yet. I know your returning visits are a positive comment of a sort, but would love to hear more from y'all as to what you like, what you don't like, what you wanna see more of...

Here's Teddie, bending over backwards to make an interesting photo for your appreciation. We're talking about another shoot soon that could definitely find its way into the "friends-only" blog, and you wouldn't want to miss that.

Teddie, bare...

Seems whenever I don't have anything in particular to say, I just post a couple of shots of Teddie, and it makes me feel better about not having much to say, because I know she's drawing all the attention away from whatever I write anyway.

Dirty Afterglow...

Well, quite the weekend, I must say. I'll discuss various details over the next few days, but I did want to at least log an initial report about The Dirty Show and such. Hard to know where to begin, so I guess I'll start with my images. These are the two selected to hang in the show -- the top one featuring Nemesis and Rob, the bottom featuring Teddie and her bruised knee. They hung the pieces in opposite corners of the gallery room, and they seemed to be getting some good attention from what I could tell. Neither piece had sold by the time we left Saturday, but the show was also open Sunday, and will be open the 14th and the 17th, so there's still plenty of time. Sold about a dozen of the 30 pieces I'd brought for the museum store when we left, so maybe a few more will move. Not a lot of the pieces in the show had the orange "sold" dots on them, but there were a number of theories floating around about that. Some said the museum store might be taking away from the show sales, others felt that the more serious buyers would probably attend Sunday afternoon, when there wouldn't be the crowd and noise distracting from the work itself. As Brooks Jenson remarks, the last place he will go if he wants to look at art is an exhibit opening party.

Overall, the quality of the work in the show was as good or better than the September Dirty 7.5 event, although there were a couple of things I noticed that I found a bit odd. One was the trend of a LOT of the painted and illustrated pieces having faces depicted in a style similar to the Br@tz dolls, with maybe a bit of the old Keane paintings thrown in. Another, which I was an unwitting part of, was I noticed a number of pieces composed similarly to my Whip photo, with a background subject seen through the legs of a foreground subject. Now, given the "dom/sub" nature of a lot of the images, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, and maybe I was a bit more sensitive to the resemblance than most.

I'm told that the work is a lot more polished than it was when the show started 8 years ago. I wonder if that's a reflection on the show gaining prestige, or more on the "state of the art" and the increasing mainstream acceptance of erotic and fetish art which is permitting more artists to stray into this territory? For photographers, maybe it's a reflection on the improvements in technology, the privacy that digital affords, and the falling cost of good quality equipment.

On to the name-dropping... Had the pleasure of meeting and talking with a number of outstanding photographers, including Johnny Flamethrower, Chip Willis, James M. Graham, and Lochai, as well as having the chance to catch up with folks I've met before. Also caught up with a few models I'd worked with, one or two I hope to work with, and chatted with a few random attendees including a few who were eyeing my pieces from the show. The hall was packed to the point where they were only letting people in when other people left, and they raised the entry price $5 for those without advance tickets. I'd say the folks running the Dirty Show will really clean up this time...

Three for the road

Probably no blogging opportunities for a couple days, so I thought I'd leave you with a few more from Teddie. Really need to shoot with her again... "after Dirty" like so many other goodies on my to do list. :)

"Now I wanna be your dog..."

The building where my studio is located is something of a hodge-podge of artist's studios, small businesses, hobby businesses, and a few informal hangouts. There's a couple down at the far end of my hall who are usually there when I am, and their dog, Dave, is pictured here with the boldly beautiful Teddie.

Dave has a knack for tracking models, especially nude or semi-nude, such as Teddie here. Sometimes I wander outside the confines of the studio proper, into the hallways, elevators, stairwells or outside the building, and it seems that at 80% of these shoots, I'll hear the sound of thundering pawbeats as Dave tracks us down to check out the model. While Dave is a pit bull, he is a very sweet dog, and the models usually melt when they see him and reward him with affection and attention. Generally, Dave's arrival precedes his owner, so that gives the model a chance to cover up, but sometimes, the models don't bother, as with Teddie here, whose self-confidence in the situation impressed me. On this occasion, the owner asked if I could take a couple snapshots of Dave with the model so he could show his buddies "what a player" his dog is. So, here's the proof. Sometimes a dog's life can be pretty sweet.

Under the Influence

Well, it only took 5 years... or 15 years, depending how you count, but the second season of David Lynch's groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks is finally coming out on DVD in April. I don't normally use this blog to comment on stuff like this, but I think it merits a few words just because the show did have a pretty big influence on me. Growing up in conservative Ohio, my sensibilities of beauty and sex had been largely formed by mainstream sources such as Playboy and even the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated. Even though I was late to the party, Lynch's Twin Peaks (as well as Blue Velvet) came along and let me in on some new ideas of art, beauty, and the (slightly) darker side of sexuality. In some ways it's a bit tame by today's standards, but at the time, it was pretty bold stuff. The influence shows up clearly in my work from time to time (like the shot of Teddie, below) but it's always there under the surface. Looking forward to taking a trip back to the White Lodge.

Tough Teddie

Here are a couple more from my most recent shoot with Teddie. While I don't often have this problem, one thing photographers do tend to gripe about are models being no-shows, or canceling at the last minute for the slightest reason. But I should give Teddie credit for just the opposite. The morning of our scheduled shoot, she was a passenger in an auto accident. Not just a sideswipe or fender bender, but enough to set off airbags, and leave a couple pretty serious bruises where the seat belt held her back and her knee hit the dashboard, along with a few other minor bumps and bruises. But she didn't cancel the shoot. We didn't have any concealer on hand though, so the bruises are pretty evident in some shots. I took them out of a few, left them in on others (like the top shot above). Thanks Teddie for being such a trooper!

On edit: If the "no show" problem happens to guys with the status of Don and Dave, I won't take it so hard next time it happens to me.

Trick or Treat!

Here's Teddie in a minimalist Halloween costume, ready for beggar's night.

For what it's worth, just noticed that my OMP Portfolio has passed 50,000 views, and almost 1000 click-throughs to my site (now directed to this blog). Thanks to all who stopped by to check out the work.

Ready Ready Teddie

A little different look for me, here's Teddie from a recent shoot.

Beginner's Luck?

Meet Teddie, a recent addition to the cavalcade of beautiful women who have been kind enough to pose for me. She responded to a listing of mine, and was interested in posing but was unsure because she'd never modeled, let alone done nudes before. (She says not even the "camera phone with the boyfriend" poses -- how rare is that these days?) She really wanted to pose, but was afraid that *I* would not be satisfied with the results, so I proposed an impromptu test shoot. We kept the setup to a minimum, and she had no hair or makeup stuff with her, so we just went for the very basics. Here are some of the many images I'm very satisfied with from the shoot... as far as I'm concerned, she passed the audition. And she has set up a second shoot with me, so I guess I passed the audition, too.