JoelBelmont

I am a professional photographer working on a unique project for a book and an exhibition, and am looking for women to model their labia. Project is in Colorado.

Images are anonymous, closely cropped, and have nothing to do with sex. It’s a series about abstraction and the beauty of the lines and form of this unique body part.

No experience is necessary, most any age is fine (over 18), and a wide range of shapes and uniqueness is encouraged.

All work is done in trade for a gallery print from the exhibition, or a signed copy of the finished book.

Feel free to email me here, or at LProjectAspen@gmail.com, and include an image for reference if possible.

You can find my work here: www.joelbelmont.com

Thanks.

I am, by no means, any sort of "expert" in the field of the fine art nude photograph. Yet there are things I have learned over a handful of years in this department: things that are broadly applicable and can benefit most anyone's body of ongoing work. This article will take a few of these points into consideration.


Preconception

Though some would argue for spontaneity, and I myself eventually would argue for intuition, it is helpful in earlier stages to work with more of a game plan. By that I do not mean one should have a shoot literally scripted out, rather that you might consider what ideas or images you would like to see accomplished at the end of the shoot, and work towards that. Otherwise you may very well end up working a lot and having little to show for it; i.e. "ok. Um, can you move your arm a little to the right? Great [click] and how about place your hand on your shoulder [click] and maybe turn your head a little more left [click click] and down [click]."

You don't need a license to make images, and the photo police are not going to come banging down your door if you choose to work in more simplistic ways. The only reason you would have to go beyond these, is to work towards your own personal best, and believe me, you may never get there, but if you try, you will see a lot of wonderful "false peaks" on your journey, and your work will improve leaps and bounds.

So #1, think before you work, and have at least one or two ideas you want to work with before you start (more will always come as you work).

Motivation

What is your motivation for making a fine art nude photograph? Many of the masters of photography have eloquently attested that if it is anything, photography is the most honest of mediums. What does that mean? It will show no more and no less than what is there in front of the camera, and also it will show exactly who you are, and what you are working towards.

If your goal is to capture the human form in every conceivable way, your body of work will attest to that. If you are doing this as a means to satisfy sexual thoughts or have it be some sort of fantasy come true, your work will be very shallow and sexual. If your goal is to reveal higher, more spiritual ideas, your work will exude that.

"To understand photographs, I believe you have to understand that the camera just shows what it shows. Photography may be moving, exciting, compassionate, or clever. But the camera cannot lie. Neither can a slide rule, a balance." ~ John Loengard

It is only what you put into it, no more, no less. And from my experience and my studies of the most successful people in photography, it usually leads to a better, more successful body of work, when it is less about what it is, and more about, as Minor White said, "what else it is."

"I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways." ~Duane Michals

So #2, think about what base you are working from, and if you want your work to go higher than the obvious, work from a higher base.

The Shoot

Now that you are a little prepared (it's not the perfect metaphor, but you wouldn't go into a test without at least some thought given to it), it's time to work. First, make sure you have everything set up the way you want it, as much as you can, so you can devote most of your energy to the work itself, rather than the "busywork".

Second, make sure that the person(s) you are working with is comfortable in the setting, and *most importantly* make sure that you treat them 110% professionally. To work with the figure objectively (unless it is your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend) you have to work with it as detached an emotion as you can. As human beings, we are drawn to the opposite sex, especially when someone disrobes in our presence. The shoot should NOT give occasion to those feelings, lest they manifest, and get you into a whole world of trouble, let alone that the work would suffer.

Third, involve the model in the creative process. I always do this, and often find out what I can about them before we even meet. I find it helpful to ask them what they are passionate about in life, what is important to them. Let the model know why you are asking them these questions. If they are really floored about doing good for others, I might work with poses that emphasize that. If the work is not meaningful to the model, how can the image be meaningful to anyone else? The best work usually comes from creative collaborations from both sides of the camera.

The Results

Now that you have some feedback on your efforts, do two things. First, EDIT. Any successful photographer will tell you that most of the work they take is never seen by other people, and usually finds its way quickly to the trashcan. But before you toss the failures, learn from them. If you can learn from your mistakes, they are not mistakes, but stepping-stones to greater things. Another way to put it, is try to discern what is more effective and what is less effective in the images, and figure out how the that which is effective can be strengthened.  

Sometimes, if it is hard to make editing decisions, wait a few months or years, and then do it. What you will learn in that time will help you make those choices. Sometimes you will pick different favorite images then you initially did, you might find something you missed the first time, but you will also see that out of every 5 or 10 images, one or two is worth saving the rest of your life.

"Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop." ~Ansel Adams

Now that you have edited your work, or at least tucked it away for future editing (make sure you do it at some point), study the work you feel was successful, and ask yourself if it achieved what you wanted it to. Think of it as a science experiment. You know what your goal is, you work to achieve that goal, and then you see if your results match up. The more you can learn from your work, each time you work, the better your work will continually be. But if you shoot and amass huge piles of images, content to just do the process each time, your work, most likely, will not progress.

Postludes

Some other side notes that will help you with the process of working: make sure to keep good communication with the people you work with, both before and after you work, and make sure you give a priority to getting them the work (if it is Trade For Prints) as they made a priority to work with you. Reputation means a lot in this field, and you want to make sure you build a good repertoire.

In regards to posting work, either in galleries, on the Internet, or wherever, try to only post your best work. Value feedback of any but a negative type (by negative I do not mean contrary or undesirable, but malicious). If we only listen to praise, we are not helped onward, but content with where we are. Value every comment that can help you.

Work towards something higher each time. If you find yourself bored with where you are, take a vision quest or something. If you are constantly enthused about where you are with what you are doing, keep on with what you are doing. If you think you have no more room to grow, or are content just doing it as a relatively thoughtless hobby, working towards family albums is more appropriate than working to capture a fine art nude photograph. Though it is a broad, and broadly defined term, it has come to mean what the masters and those who have strived before us have worked to help define it as: each person's ability to interpret the human form in a way that speaks beyond the norm, or to work with it in a way that says something far beyond it, or to hold up a mirror to anyone that sees that image, and makes them look within their own self.

"I didn't want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature." ~Wynn Bullock

"We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium." ~Ansel Adams