So you want to be a fine art model!

Ever thought you'd like to be a nude fine art model? If you have you should check out The Women of Avalon blog. This group of ladies explore their minds as well as their bodies in various collaborations with fine art photographers. They manage to turn the act of modeling into an art form of its own.

Any form of fine art photography involving people is always difficult. For a photographer looking for models, the difficulty is finding a model who really "gets it" and has an understanding of what the final goal is. A fine art photographer who shoots people, is nothing without a model, who not only understands the concepts being portrayed, but understands the process of getting the image. The old term "Making haste slowly" springs to mind. Working towards a final image is often time consuming and for the model physically demanding. Stretching, forming shapes and holding poses for extended periods in often uncomfortable surroundings, isn't everyones cup of tea.

For a model wanting to get into fine art modeling, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to find a photographer, who is not only technically proficient but who also has a similar mindset to the model. There are hundreds of photographers claiming to be fine art nude photographers, but only a small handful who are producing anything above cheap mindless smut.

Winter

Canon 1ds III , 16-35mm f2.8 lens

Seems the winter slow down for photographers hasn't started yet. Two weeks ago we fitted new all terrain tyres to the Troopy, not knowing that we would in the nest couple of weeks test those tyres on a wide range of surfaces. Highways, freeways, sandy dirt trails, snow covered mountain tracks and muddy back roads we've been over them all.
Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that the outback photographer doesn't love variety, because I do. The problem is getting back to the studio and a huge backlog of work . Not to mention emails, boy do they mount up if you're not on top of your game.

The shot above is photographed on a mountain track in Southern Victoria, in an area that is generally below the snow line and was recently ravaged by bush fire. Talk about mother nature handing out punishment, many of the trees along this road had been burnt badly during summer and are just starting to make new growth only to be covered in snow and ice and buffeted by gale force winds.

Desolation

Hasselblad 500cm with f4, 50mm lens, Agfapan 400 film

Wow today has been the coldest of our winter so far. A great day to run out of gas. So how come the outback photographer is posting a fine art nude today of all days. The answer is really simple... I wanted to.

This shot was taken a few years ago, just for fun and as part of a private project which is entitled "The Naked Landscape". Simple concept really, take a naked human and add them to a landscape urban or natural, try and get interesting images using just available light and the environment for inspiration. Funny thing is though, when I find a great location that I really want to shoot, there isn't a model anywhere to be found. By the time I find a model willing to get their kit off way out in the middle of the Never Never, the location has change, or the light no longer works there because of seasonal changes. On the other hand when you have a willing and able model or models, inspiration and locations seem to be hard to find.

What should have been a 12 month project has dragged on and on, but when our weather warms up I'm going to get right into it. That's my mid winter resolution. Well the New Years resolutions I make never happen so we'll try Mid Winter instead.

Our model Rachael was brave enough, or maybe she is just plain adventurous by nature and allowed me to drag her out into the middle of absolutely no where for the above shot. She wasn't fazed by the old derelict car body riddled with high caliber bullet holes. The chill of cold steel should have put her off, as I'm fairly sure that naked flesh pressed against cold, rusty, paint peeling steel, couldn't be all that pleasant but no she took it all in her stride.

The only interruption to the shoot was a bus load of Japanese tourists who drove up an old dirt road just behind the car. That event saw Rachael taking cover behind our bullet riddled car body and left me standing out in the centre of a million acre paddock trying t look as if I'm casually snapping pics of said car. Had they only looked closer!

Now people turning up on location isn't unusual, I've had a mother bring her three young teenage girls to look at a hot air balloon that I was shooting. Problem was, by the time I spotted her coming, I only had seconds to organize a diversion to steer her and attached children around to the other side of our partially inflated balloon. Right away from the five very naked men who were the subjects of the shot. Knowing the lady in question as I do, I'm reasonably confident we would have had to brush up on our CPR skills. But back to the bus load of tourists. I mentioned earlier that we were in the absolute middle of no where. Black Stump 500K's South, back of Burke 800K's North and no place between. How do these people manage to arrive on set on time?

Art and pornography

Here in Australia there has been much debate about the works of an artist who's work has been removed from exhibition from a Sydney gallery. I like many, and in fact I suspect most of the informed commentators on this subject, I have not actually seen any of the artist work in person. So I will not pass any judgment on its content.

I do find a number of thing interesting about the media storm that has followed. Undoubtably many newspapers have sold and many hours of radio and television has been devoted to the subject and many millions of dollars have be made form the coverage of the story.
I find it interesting that the artist has been able to hide this "absolutely disgusting" work, this "pornography", for such a long time. Apparently according to some reports, one of his "poor innocent models" is now in her forties. You do the maths, 13 when the shots were taken, 40 now... been a while. And exactly how did this monster of a man manage to keep this atrocious works from our view and that of the law? Obvious really... you hide them on the walls of art galleries around the world. No one would ever think of looking there.

As a photographer this is an area where I would choose not to go myself. But I don't believe, as has been suggested that the only motivation an artist could possibly have for creating images of the naked human form is sexual. Whether the images are of minors or adult in the nude there are many motivations for creating art images that have nothing to do with sex. Shape, form texture the fall of light, the sheer beauty of the naked form all great reasons to create art images.
Once many moons ago after shooting some art nudes with a beautiful young lady on location, I was packing my gear away, she dressed and walked back to where I was, still buttoning up her
top as she approached. Which is the exact moment I chose to say what I thought. "You look so much sexier with your cloths on." It was the truth but let me just say to all you budding photographers of the nude, not a very wise thing to tell any model. BIG MISTAKE, but you learn from your mistakes.

Great Ocean Road.

Canon 1Ds 100-400 4.5-5.6 IS USM lens

After 3 days of really enjoyable exploring the landscape around Lorne, a small tourist resort situated on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria's South West, the outback photographer is back in the office tried to a computer trying to get a backlog of images processed. I have to tell you that if you ever have the chance to spend a couple of days near the Victorian coast... take them.

Apart from the incredible drive along the Great Ocean Road, through a variety of very different coastal regions, from sandy surf beaches to rugged cliffs all clearly viewable from the comfort of your car. you have the very pretty Ottway Ranges, with countless waterfalls and picnic areas to keep your sense alive. Further west along the Great Ocean Road and you'll find the world renown Twelve Apostles also well worth a visit.

Todays image is a pre-dawn shot of Split Point Light Station, which is at Aireys Inlet, a little east of Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. If you would like to see more of the Great Ocean Road images click here. Have a great day!

Days end.

Canon 1D II, 100-400 f4.5-5.6 USM L

After walking through a a beautiful temperate rain forest for most of the day, I couldn't resist the temptation to head back to a beach to finish off a great day. For anyone who knows me it will be no surprise that I chose to shoot some blurred motion images of waves rolling in. Of all the things I shoot, waves are the most difficult, because they are unpredictable and really need great light to give them that fluidity I try to capture.

Tonight mother nature decided to give me only about a minute of interesting light before fading into flat, colourless and decidedly uninteresting twilight. This frame was the first of about a dozen. I can't wait to get back to my studio MacPro and 30" Cinema display to work some of the files created today. Laptops are great for managing images on the road, but there is no way I can finish files on this little road machine.

Slow days shooting...

Canon 1Ds II with f2.8 16-35mm USM lens.

This morning while hunting for some fine art images along the foreshore at Marengo a small bay just west of Apollo Bay in south western Victoria, I came across this interesting little rock formation. Just above the high tide line, this rock seems to have been sculptured by strong winds and sand. The lighting gods weren't all that kind this morning with low cloud hanging around for most of the morning and then through the afternoon, showing itself late in the afternoon and then sneaking behind clouds again before sunset. Hopefully tomorrow morning will be better, because I'm getting really desperate to get a few good shots real soon.
We are currently based out of Lorne a small tourist town on the Great Ocean Road, while hoping to shoot some coastal fine art and stock images, we're also looking at the nearby Ottway Ranges for some interesting locations.

Carmille Seaman

Lets be honest with ourselves... Photographers all fancy themselves as fine art photographers, well maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. However along with the title professional photographer it seems to be one of the most miss used labels in the industry. My favorite is people who label themselves as "Fine Art Nude Photographers", then you see their work and you quickly realize that their images may be of the nude form, but are neither "fine" or "art".

I digress however, the real reason for this post is to point you to the work of a real live fine art photographer. Her name is Carmille Seaman, she is about to have a showing of her work in the USA and has some images on her website. Title "The Last Iceberg", you really need to have a look at this work. Here's the link.