Revealing a Two Year Secret
For the past week, my mind has been focusing on photography. Reasons? Because I had an event this past week teaching about the impact of photography, finishing up photographs for a Delorean International Fan Club Calendar Project, and that I tend to be dreaming about new ideas for continuing my study for photography. While dreaming of new ideas, things I have done in the past always pop in my mind. One of my last photo shoots I did towards my personal learning and studying of photography I had kept a secret for the past two years. I have finally come up with the courage to expose this secret. Why would I keep a photography project of mine secret for so long? People can be so judgmental these days based off activities one may partake in. I hid this secret because I was afraid of being accused or treated differently. Now I should make a note on the reason why it was kept a secret. This project was kept a secret not because of the field of photography, but because of my subject matter.
If you were to examine the human body in it's natural form, over time you begin to realize how beautiful the human body really is. Today's society revolves around sex so much, that people tend to be very narrow minded when it comes to seeing a nude person. Here in America, we are so involved into personal space, that many of us seem to be afraid of our natural form. Not sure how, but that is a truth. Over the past five years, I began thinking about the human body as a beautiful thing, and I began thinking of using my photography to capture that beauty. I got interested into artistic nude photography. Every once in a while, I would browse the internet to look for stunning examples of artistic nude photography, and began thinking of ideas of different ways I could capture a nude person as a subject. As time moved on, I would learn about different times of artistic nude photography, and at that point, I really wanted to give it a try.
There are two big issues when thinking of shooting artistic nudes, especially for someone who wanted to keep it on the down low. First came a location, which I had found a place to shoot. I will not mention this location in this post. The next and toughest issue was to find a model. For many good models, you had to pay for them. Being a poor college student had some limits. My first goal was to find a college aged female model. Over time, I learned it was hard to find a volunteer of a female model to take off their clothes for you and let you take photographs. I expanded my search to any model I could find. After slowly looking for about three weeks, I had an offer for a volunteer and I took it. Now we get to the part which is the main reason why I kept it secret for so long. The model was a 20 year old male who lived just a few streets away from my house. At the time, I then told myself to keep this a secret, for I didn't want to get people thinking wrong about me. I was mainly afraid of people claiming of me being gay for wanting to shoot naked guys for my photography. Now before your mind gets angry, I want to say that there is nothing wrong with being gay. I support those who are, I just don't like that lifestyle. As I write this, I start to question why I would fear this, especially today when the world is becoming more accepting of things? The most logical thought is that I am afraid to give people reasons to make fun of me, for as I was growing up I was made fun of at different times through middle school and high school. It is interesting how fellow peers treated me over a decade ago can still have a physiological impact of how I treat certain things today. One small example of why we need to help to stop bullying in schools.
Anyway, I had talked to the male model, and he agreed to volunteer for the shoot. Because this will be my first time, I told him that I would have no clue what to expect, and that this will be a go with the flow shoot. I had so many different ideas, and wanted to try them all. I know many professionals would examine their body before hand, for they want the perfect body, but I was happy just to get a model, so that thought did not come across my mind. The photo shoot happened at one location for about three hours in November 2009, the weekend before thanksgiving. At the start of the photo shoot, we both were quite nervous, for neither of us had done anything like this before. First thing that occurred was legal business. I had him sign a document giving me permission to use photographs to post online, to sale, and to keep. There was also a section where he had to sign to confirm he was 18 years of age or older. Along with that, I checked his drivers license to confirm the age. After the paperwork was complete, we went to shooting.
I had tried many different ideas. Some came from inspiration from photos I saw online, and others came from the top of my head during the shoot. It took a good 15 minutes to get fully working. This photo shoot had pushed me and the model out of the comfort zone, and I had a challenging subject. The biggest thing I wanted to make sure I was not doing, was making this look like it was a porn shoot. This was fully an artistic style photo shoot. Over half of the things I tried didn't work. Partly due to the models body type, lack of lighting support, and time. After the shoot, I had told him he was welcome to have any of the photographs I had taken, in case he wanted to build up a model portfolio. After the shoot, I didn't touch the photographs for a few months, then as I had free time, I slowly looked through them, picked the ones I liked, and edited them on photoshop. It took more time to edit, because I had to wait until the house was empty. Didn't want my parents to find out what I was doing.
I really wanted to share my good shots to people to get feedback, but I was afraid to do so under my official photography media. I created a new deviantart account to post all my good nude photographs. After about half a year, I had some amazing feedback from the shoots. I left them their, and forgot about them. Every once in awhile I wanted to do more shooting, but didn't have the time or energy to find new locations and people. If we go back to today, this week more ideas of artistic nude photographs have been spinning in my head. Because of this, I looked at the photos I had taken. I had decided that if I was going to continue to expand on this photography field, I can't keep it a secret. I had posted two of the photographs on my official deviantart account. The photo you see above was the second photograph I posted. I even posted this one on my faecbook page account since he was on'y shirtless here. The first photograph I had posted was the most popular and the one with the most feedback from my secret deviantart account. I had decided not to post that photograph on this blog, for I am afraid the photograph will show under my google + photo albums. I don't want to get in trouble for having nudity photographs on a social network that doesn't allow them. If you would like to see the photograph, visit my deviantart page at http://jwt-photography.deviantart.com/ The photo is titled "The Male". I do want to know, you might have to have an account on the website in order to see any mature content.
Anyway, there you have it. In a nut shell, I have a big interest in artistic nude photography, and my first model was a male model. Do I have any shame? Not at all. As I started at the beginning of this post. The human body is beautiful. My goal is to capture that beauty in my own way, and share it with the world. Hopefully, I will have more chances in the future for more shoots. I know I have way more to learn about photography, and would love to learn more about artistic nudes. I learned alot from this first shoot, now done two and a half years ago. Today, I have new ideas to help better improve my work in this field of photography. Anyone who attempts to bring me down, or make fun of me will have no effect. That fear has disappeared!
If you were to examine the human body in it's natural form, over time you begin to realize how beautiful the human body really is. Today's society revolves around sex so much, that people tend to be very narrow minded when it comes to seeing a nude person. Here in America, we are so involved into personal space, that many of us seem to be afraid of our natural form. Not sure how, but that is a truth. Over the past five years, I began thinking about the human body as a beautiful thing, and I began thinking of using my photography to capture that beauty. I got interested into artistic nude photography. Every once in a while, I would browse the internet to look for stunning examples of artistic nude photography, and began thinking of ideas of different ways I could capture a nude person as a subject. As time moved on, I would learn about different times of artistic nude photography, and at that point, I really wanted to give it a try.
There are two big issues when thinking of shooting artistic nudes, especially for someone who wanted to keep it on the down low. First came a location, which I had found a place to shoot. I will not mention this location in this post. The next and toughest issue was to find a model. For many good models, you had to pay for them. Being a poor college student had some limits. My first goal was to find a college aged female model. Over time, I learned it was hard to find a volunteer of a female model to take off their clothes for you and let you take photographs. I expanded my search to any model I could find. After slowly looking for about three weeks, I had an offer for a volunteer and I took it. Now we get to the part which is the main reason why I kept it secret for so long. The model was a 20 year old male who lived just a few streets away from my house. At the time, I then told myself to keep this a secret, for I didn't want to get people thinking wrong about me. I was mainly afraid of people claiming of me being gay for wanting to shoot naked guys for my photography. Now before your mind gets angry, I want to say that there is nothing wrong with being gay. I support those who are, I just don't like that lifestyle. As I write this, I start to question why I would fear this, especially today when the world is becoming more accepting of things? The most logical thought is that I am afraid to give people reasons to make fun of me, for as I was growing up I was made fun of at different times through middle school and high school. It is interesting how fellow peers treated me over a decade ago can still have a physiological impact of how I treat certain things today. One small example of why we need to help to stop bullying in schools.
Anyway, I had talked to the male model, and he agreed to volunteer for the shoot. Because this will be my first time, I told him that I would have no clue what to expect, and that this will be a go with the flow shoot. I had so many different ideas, and wanted to try them all. I know many professionals would examine their body before hand, for they want the perfect body, but I was happy just to get a model, so that thought did not come across my mind. The photo shoot happened at one location for about three hours in November 2009, the weekend before thanksgiving. At the start of the photo shoot, we both were quite nervous, for neither of us had done anything like this before. First thing that occurred was legal business. I had him sign a document giving me permission to use photographs to post online, to sale, and to keep. There was also a section where he had to sign to confirm he was 18 years of age or older. Along with that, I checked his drivers license to confirm the age. After the paperwork was complete, we went to shooting.
I had tried many different ideas. Some came from inspiration from photos I saw online, and others came from the top of my head during the shoot. It took a good 15 minutes to get fully working. This photo shoot had pushed me and the model out of the comfort zone, and I had a challenging subject. The biggest thing I wanted to make sure I was not doing, was making this look like it was a porn shoot. This was fully an artistic style photo shoot. Over half of the things I tried didn't work. Partly due to the models body type, lack of lighting support, and time. After the shoot, I had told him he was welcome to have any of the photographs I had taken, in case he wanted to build up a model portfolio. After the shoot, I didn't touch the photographs for a few months, then as I had free time, I slowly looked through them, picked the ones I liked, and edited them on photoshop. It took more time to edit, because I had to wait until the house was empty. Didn't want my parents to find out what I was doing. I really wanted to share my good shots to people to get feedback, but I was afraid to do so under my official photography media. I created a new deviantart account to post all my good nude photographs. After about half a year, I had some amazing feedback from the shoots. I left them their, and forgot about them. Every once in awhile I wanted to do more shooting, but didn't have the time or energy to find new locations and people. If we go back to today, this week more ideas of artistic nude photographs have been spinning in my head. Because of this, I looked at the photos I had taken. I had decided that if I was going to continue to expand on this photography field, I can't keep it a secret. I had posted two of the photographs on my official deviantart account. The photo you see above was the second photograph I posted. I even posted this one on my faecbook page account since he was on'y shirtless here. The first photograph I had posted was the most popular and the one with the most feedback from my secret deviantart account. I had decided not to post that photograph on this blog, for I am afraid the photograph will show under my google + photo albums. I don't want to get in trouble for having nudity photographs on a social network that doesn't allow them. If you would like to see the photograph, visit my deviantart page at http://jwt-photography.deviantart.com/ The photo is titled "The Male". I do want to know, you might have to have an account on the website in order to see any mature content.
Anyway, there you have it. In a nut shell, I have a big interest in artistic nude photography, and my first model was a male model. Do I have any shame? Not at all. As I started at the beginning of this post. The human body is beautiful. My goal is to capture that beauty in my own way, and share it with the world. Hopefully, I will have more chances in the future for more shoots. I know I have way more to learn about photography, and would love to learn more about artistic nudes. I learned alot from this first shoot, now done two and a half years ago. Today, I have new ideas to help better improve my work in this field of photography. Anyone who attempts to bring me down, or make fun of me will have no effect. That fear has disappeared!
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