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Blogger Changing Content Policy on Nudes – Updated

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Update: Leaving the original post below for future reference, but it appears that Google has reversed their decision on this. Doesn’t change my comments below on why I don’t want to rely on someone else’s platform for my content.

 

I like owning my Internet home, where I post my content for this exact reason. Starting March 23, 2015, Google is changing their rules on nudes on blogs hosted there. While the rules still will “still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.” if you’re a photographer or model that posts work to a blog there, you might want to consider a new home.

If you’re reading this on Tumblr and thinking, “Wait a minute”, my Tumblr mirrors content from my own web site at www.candidvision.com.

All the Purrs

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I’ve always been a cat person, and generally they return the affection. In one of those annoying ironies that life seems to enjoy hitting people with, I’m also cursed by the fact that I’m also allergic to cats. While I’ve owned cats, they’ve always been outdoor cats that were outside most of the time so after being with them I could come in, wash my hands, and rarely have any problems. Over the last few years I’ve mostly gotten my feline playtime fix visiting friends and family who had cats.

I’ve considered getting a cat off and on for the last few years, but always talked myself out of it because of my allergy concerns. I’ve had few rough moments from my allergies, but one incident always gave me pause. Early in my professional career I worked as a computer technician that mostly did their work out of the shop, but occasionally had to go visit to a customer’s home to fix an issue. One of those visits was to a person that had probably more than a normal number of cats around and not a well cleaned house. I did fix the computer problem, but when I left I felt like I’d come down with the flu and really didn’t get over it for a couple days.

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Lucky on her First Night at Home during a Shoot

Still allergy medicines are better, and while I’ll not wow anyone with my housekeeping skills, I do think I’m a better housekeeper than that home had been. And it’s been years since I’d had an issue as long as I’d been careful to not touch my eyes or face with my hands before washing them after contact with cats. I’ve considered it more of late, and finally had talked myself into it early this month.

So a week and a half ago I adopted two kittens from a local animal shelter, a pair of litter mates now named Lucky and Morticia. I’d only planned to adopt one cat, but the shelter really wanted the two to go together and both talked me into it given I do have an often busy schedule and only home for a small part of some days. I’ve become very attached to them in a very short period of time and that seems to have been returned.

At first all seemed well in the new household, but over the previous week I’ve noticed my allergies are being more of a problem. I’ve gotten amazingly attached to these two cats since they’ve come to my home, and the thought of not keeping them brings me near to tears, but I can’t ignore that even with allergy medication I’m waking up wheezing from the allergies. Even after taking a dose as I just did, my symptoms aren’t going away.

I don’t know how it will end at this point. I can’t contemplate taking them back, but if I’m feeling like this now, how will I do when tree pollen gets into the air which often leaves me wheezing like this without the added stress of the cat allergies. Keeping them outdoors isn’t really an option where I live. I’m trying some things to limit the parts of the house they use to reduce the places the dander can get into, but I’ve no idea if this is going to work out, and that just sucks.

Thoughts at the End of a Trip

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It’s been a hectic few weeks. I’m writing this post in the wee hours of the morning while sitting in the airport in San Francisco waiting for my flight home. It’s been almost three weeks since I last saw my home so it has been a very long trip, the longest continuous time I’ve been away from home in my life. The trip mixed work, vacation, and of course, several shoots.

In the last month I’ve visited Las Vegas, Phoenix, the High Sierras of California, Central California, and the area around San Francisco Bay. After last summer’s trip went so poorly I had more than a little trepidation about this one, but really it’s hard to imagine it going much better. In a state in a severe drought I found rain twice, once to good effect and once less so. It held a visit to a spot with a lot of personal meaning to me, my first interruption by police during a shoot, meeting some new faces, and working with a few friends I’d not seen in a while. I even took some time to play pure tourist, which in my case means not carrying around the camera for the day.

Overall I’ve enjoyed the trip more than I could have hoped. Not everything went according to plan, but those were minor inconveniences and didn’t dampen the trip as a while. There’s lots of photos to come and stories to share coming soon.

Kelsey Dylan and the Fireplace

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Sometimes my shoots are planned weeks, occasionally months, in advance. The details are often finalized much nearer the shoot, specifics like wardrobe say, but the date and often time are set well beforehand. Then sometimes shoots set up a few hours beforehand.

I’d worked with Kelsey before in the summer of 2012 in my first attempt at light painting. We’d spoken a bit about shooting as she was back in the area in December 2013, but weren’t sure things would set into place. When she contacted while in town though we were pretty quickly able to make things settle into place for a shoot that same evening. I headed over to Asheville in the evening to meet her at the place she was staying. The owners had graciously allowed us to shoot there and had a nice place to work in.

I love older houses to work in. There’s a texture and character that comes into a building as the years pass. We started with some nice figure work in her room before moving to a basement area with a wonderful fireplace surrounded by nice masonry.

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As always see more from the shoot in the Members Area.

A First Beginning

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Once upon a time it seemed during almost every shoot the model would ask me some version of, “How did you get started in photography?” I rarely hear it anymore. I assume that’s because I’ve been working long enough now that how I started seems less interesting than what we’re going to do that day. Also possible that I’ve just gotten so much better at small talk during shoots that models don’t need to go to their standard bag of questions to fill the silence.

I bought my first digital camera embarrassingly early. That camera was little more than a toy and useful only for taking photos for web pages when speeds were measured in bits per second and not megabits per second. I came into photography through art. I started drawing and painting the nude, and then thought of photographing the nude. Moving to nude photography took a while. Finding models became the hardest challenge to working often enough to build my skills. I first photographed a nude in 2005, a female friend who was mostly just curious what it would be like to see herself nude in a photo. This was before everyone had cellphones to text naked pictures to each other making it a more unique experience then. I hired a professional model for a shoot later in the year, but my inexperience really showed there.

After a few more attempts that came to nothing as I moved through early 2006. Late in the spring I connected with a model traveling through the area and scheduled a shoot. She also introduced me to a friend also traveling through the area at the same time. In the end things worked out where one model would come through and we’d work one on one, the second model would arrive and I’d work with the pair, and I’d finish working solo with the second model for a while.

The circumstances for the shoot weren’t the best. I was scheduled to close on a house a couple of days before the scheduled shoot and really had no alternate plan had the house closing been delayed. Most of my belongings were in a storage shed so the only lighting I had available was a single halogen work light bought to use when renovating the house. The house had last been renovated in the 1970s and the color choices reflected that. On the day of the shoot I had only a couple of chairs for furniture and wifi had been installed late the day before. Most of the shoot took place in an empty room that’s now my bedroom.

I mainly remember being really nervous before the shoot working with both models. The first model was okay to work with, but the second model really taught me a lot about working with a model and getting good results. I learned more during that one day of photography working with these two models than any other single day I’ve had with a camera. While I had little idea what I was doing,  that second model in particular was wonderful to work with and really taught me a lot about how to work with a model. That second model was Melissa Troutt. It was the first time I worked with her. While it would be several years before we’d work together again, a quick search of this site will show how much we’ve worked together over the years.

Melissa was great, but there’s little I look at from that shoot today without cringing at the mistakes I made. Here Melissa demonstrates why you should always make sure models are well fed before starting the shoot.

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There are a few gems scattered in there though. Melissa probably deserves most of the credit for those, but I do think the idea to shoot some images using candlelight worked well. A good example below and this is a lighting I need to try again sometime. It’s also been a while now since I’ve had the chance to work with Melissa, and I hope that we can work together again soon.

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Thanks to those of you that stuck around and read through these last few days. As I get to the end you might wonder what the point of this was? I’m hoping as I move into 2014 that I’m making the same jump I did in those times documented today or yesterday. A moment when I can move to a better level of work and one day look back as a similar transition point. In the last few days posts I’ve documented some of those moments along the way from the past. On Monday and Tuesday I touched on some frustrations from the last year and thoughts on where I want to go moving into 2014. Wednesday I looked at the worst stretch of my photography time. One Thursday I looked at the stretch that broke that frustration and titled it a new beginning. Today I looked back at my first beginning.

Later this morning comes my first real attempt in this direction in a shoot that will push me outside my comfort zone. The results will either be amazing or a mess. It makes me a little nervous, but I think that’s a good thing. Even if it doesn’t work, then I’ll learn from it and can take that forward and try again as I explore some new areas in photography. There will still be photos like you’ve seen in the past here, but expect some new things to show up in the future.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled post programming.

The New Beginning

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History is much easier to write in the past tense. Sounds obvious, but I mean that events that leave a mark often do not seem so until reflected upon after the fact. I left off in yesterday’s post at what turned out to be a turning point for me, though I didn’t know it at the time. As the middle of March 2010 arrived I knew I was really frustrated after dealing with some personal issues and  a lot of canceled or flaked shoots over the last months. So these three shoots The first of those three ended up postponing until the following Sunday putting all three shots over the course of a single week. That week turned out to be a large step into my current photography.

First of the three came Ms. Rebel, a fairly local model out of Knoxville. It’s the only time we worked together and honestly it wasn’t my most inspired shoot since I was coming off such a long gap. If I’m honest I don’t think I really expected her to show up until I got a text from her that morning that she was on her way. I hadn’t planned a lot for the shoot, and didn’t have a great plan before she arrived. I played it by ear and was nowhere as good at that as I am now. Overall though we had a good shoot. Working with her helped me get back into the routine and thought process before my later shoots that week. The photo below is of her amazing seascape chest tattoo. It’s still one of the best works that I’ve seen.

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Originally I had two shoots scheduled for the late in the week, one on Thursday and the second on Friday. A week or so before the shoots the Thursday model asked to move our shoot to Saturday, which turned out to work better for me so I ended up with Friday and Saturday shoots.

The Friday shoot came with Laura New. We headed to a place that’s become one of my favorite shooting locations over time. I’d hiked there a time or two, and the thoughts of the locations to photograph held great possibilities in the late winter/early spring transition. Having not shot nudes outside before, we began with some work with her in a white dress. The photo below of Laura on a rock next to a small rapid was my favorite of the shoot and a print of photo hung on my wall for a time.

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Laura was really the first time I’d photographed a model outdoors for a lengthy period of time. We got a lot of good images that day. It was early enough that while some green showed,much of the bare winter landscape still prevailed. In spots there was a lush green carpet of plant life, but feet away would have passed for mid winter. Another shot I like from this shoot is this one of her posed on a tall rock. You can see some greenery jsut behind the rock, but the trees in the background are still bare.

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The shoot made for a long day, but a good learning experience. I learned on the fly to balance the changing natural light and a model both in outfits and nude. We worked in a number of locations, each a little different. Not all went well. We were caught by onlookers once with her nude, and almost caught several other times. As it ended I walked away happy with the images and feeling I’d learned a lot in a short period of time.

I also remember being completely exhausted and sore when getting back home at the end of the day. I’d started hiking the year before, but done little over the winter undoing much of that gain of endurance. I spent much of the coming summer slowly getting back into some shape. Now I do longer hikes than that day carrying more weight just to unwind after a hard week. You can also read a post written nearer the shoot along with a second with more photos.

Saturday came the last of these three shoots with Melissa Troutt. I’d worked with her once several years before when I just started out. After she arrived  we had a wonderful artistic click almost from the start. She seemed to understand what I had in mind and how to help get there. We did a little indoor work before heading out to a location because of concerns about the weather. After the day before, I chose a less ambitious hike for this shoot. We made a short though slightly strenuous trail that ended with of a wonderful waterfall. We got to the waterfall, but started in the area around it. This early photo from that day still is one of my favorite photos that I’ve taken of Melissa.

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I love the expression and pose of her on the log. I remember enjoying the way she got involved in the shoot, not just reacting, but looking for ways to make better photos. We only worked the one spot around the falls, but there was plenty of variety for a long shoot. We didn’t end until we were stumbled across by some surprised onlookers. Again no problem, but with that and the lowering light deep in these woods, we did wrap up the shoot. The biggest lesson of the two days I learned the lesson to be more careful in the future was learned.

Another shot of her on the falls itself. Posts and photos posted nearer to the shoot can be found here and here.

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The experiences reworked my thoughts on photography. I felt energized and ready to work harder to get better. This blog began to become more active after those shoots. I still had a number of flakes and cancellations over the next months, but more good shoots. Somewhere along the way I began to feel like I had an idea of what I was doing and began to wnat more. I already could produce good photos with models as experienced and talented and Laura and Melissa, but began to get better results with everyone. In retrospect I think that the end of 2009 and early 2010 was a dip, a sort of plateau I had to get across to get better and start getting the results I wanted. Thanks to Ms. Rebel, Laua, and Melissa, I did get there to where I couldn’t imagine the last few years without photography.

This was the only time I worked with both Ms. Rebel and Laura New. Ms. Rebel appears to no longer model. Laura still works, but I think no longer does nude work like that here. Melissa and I have worked together many times since this shoot, and I’ve come to see her as both a muse and a friend.

Tomorrow to wrap up this week I’m going to take a look a bit further back to 2006 and one of the first real shoots I had with professional models and wrap up this little series.

The End of a Phase

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I took the photo below in early August 2009. The models are Candle Boxx  on the left and Kimberly Marvel on the right with a light bulb in her mouth. The two had driven up from Atlanta for the shoot. It was the last photo of the day, the end of a final comic theme around the two playing at trying (badly) to fix a problem of a blown light bulb. We ended with this Uncle Fester inspired solution. Not a great concept, but fun and they did it well. I enjoyed shooting with them on it and do like the humor in the final photo here.

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I wouldn’t take another photo of a model for about seven months.

Right after this shoot a lot happened. A long term, and often tempestuous, relationship came to a final and unpleasant end. As that fell apart, two people I’d put a lot of trust in screwed me over to their own benefit. All three were involved in my photography. Some people leave a mark on your life when they leave it. Others leave a scar. After those moments, I just didn’t want anything to do with photography for a while.

I started trying to come back toward the end of the year, but shoots kept falling though (a few legitimately, but mostly just flaking models). The trend and my frustration built early in 2010. I reached the point I begun to consider if the frustration was worth it. I got as far as gathering my gear and considering putting it onto eBay and stopping completely. How close I came to that is hard to say. At the time it felt like a close thing, a near decision. Looking back I have trouble believing I would have done it, but time changes perception. Photography wasn’t as much a part of my life then as it’s become today. I don’t really know. Even if I had quite then, I think I’d likely taken up a camera again at some point. Probably I came closer to quitting model photography than I did giving up on photography completely. I do think I was close to giving it up.

As 2012 moved into mid February I’d seen little other than frustration in my attempts at scheduling shoots. Probably a few more negative experiences would have pushed me over the edge. As the end of February arrived I had set up shoots for March with three models. One I’d not worked with before, one I’d worked with early in my photographic career, and the third had been one I’d spoken with a few times, but shoots never worked out. Three shoots in March, and all three worked out well. I do wonder if they had fallen through if that might have been the push to

As part of it I also decided to look at something different and work on shooting outdoors. I’d started hiking the year before, the first step in the long road to getting into good shape. I’d even done one swimsuit shoot outside in 2009 and had found a couple of locations I thought it would be interesting to work with a model. One at a waterfall and the other with some great rock formations around. To those shoots, and why I think they kept me from quitting, I’ll speak more tomorrow.

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Closing with another photo from that shoot with Kimberly and Candle. I’d worked with each model individually once before this shoot. I worked with Kimberly again in the spring of 2011 in a nice outdoor shoot. I believe she’s semi-retired now. Candle is still a very active working model and still as talented. Why I’ve not worked with her since this shoot given she lives only a few hours away I can’t really answer and need to try to remedy sometime soon.

Looking Back and Looking Forward – 2

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After yesterday’s slightly gloomy post, this last day of 2013 I want to look at the better parts of the past year and forward a bit into 2014.

There was much that went right. Personally my health felt like a major win for the year. Those who’ve known me for a while know that a few years ago I was significantly overweight and out of shape. After several years of work I reached a healthy weight this spring and have maintained that weight through the year. I started running this summer completing my first 5k race in late July and tried an 8k race late this fall. I don’t race to win, but simply to finish the race. I’d easily say I’m in the best health and shape of my life. While it wasn’t as smooth as I’d liked, I also got an item of the bucket list in my backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon this year. Some photos from that November trip have already passed through here with more to come.

Staying within photography I met and worked with a number of new and wonderful models this year. Also worked with a number of previous collaborators again during the course of the year. The results of both groups were a number of wonderful photos some of which I’ve shared here. Every year I find that I enjoy my work more and this was no exception. I’m particularly happy with the small project where I photographed several models at the same location back during the late summer. I’ve also been quietly playing with a project that I’ll reveal more later this week to showcase more of my work.

There are some wonderful models I’ve not worked with in a while for various reasons that I expect or hope to work with again in the coming year and I’m looking forward to those collaborations to come. While my travel was a mixed bag this year, the results of my November trip have me looking to try more in the coming year. I do think I’ll find my way out west again, perhaps to the northwest, and if things align right I’ve had the idea of a trip along the west coast for the coming year.

I’m going to try some new things and push outside my comfort zone a bit more in shoots this coming year. I did a bit of that early in the year, but want to focus on a little more grit and story in my work. Not all of these ideas will work, in fact if all of it works then I’ve likely not pushed hard enough. I’ve already set one shoot for later this week that’s going to be either amazing or a disaster, but should be fun either way.

Also I see more landscape work in my future. Some falls trips to the the mountains and my time out west have left me wanting to explore the landscape alone a bit more. My outdoor nude work actually started outdoor before I added the nude a few years back.

Vanessa and Emilie

Today a photo of Vanessa and Emile from the spring of 2008. I was in Raleigh for a few days where I worked with these two models. I had photographed models together before, but this was the first time I did anything with an erotic concept. I’d scheduled one to arrive first for some work with her, then an overlapped time to shoot together, finishing with the second model solo for some work. The second model, I can’t remember which, arrived late cutting the overlap time leaving time for only one concept, but we still got some good work for I think my first try. As far as I can tell neither model is still working. I did work with Emilie again later than year resulting in a wonderful shot I posted in a wrap up a couple years ago.

Tomorrow I’m going to look back to when I almost quiet photography. Happy New Year everyone. Hope your 2014 is the best year yet.