Lucy & Nathalia

Here is a Helmut Newton influenced image from a recent shoot with Lucy and Nathalia.

Lucy & Nathalia

Here is an image from a recent shoot with Lucy and Nathalia, which I was really looking forward to. It was a good shoot- although I've been working on it in piece-meal, since I've been crazy busy lately...

Lucy & Nathalia

Full disclosure: I’ve always been a cropper. Having started with film and spending years developing black and white photos, cropping in the darkroom always felt natural. To me, it also felt necessary to accomplish what I wanted to. This despite being vehemently told otherwise by others— they said that cropping was a cop-out for not being able to get it right in the camera, and it was a form of lying. Of course, that's B.S. All photographs are lies, all photographs are crops. My definition of a photograph is to add edges to the world which has no edges. But, none the less, I had guilt about cropping. I realize now that a “perfect” rectangle or square— pulled back so you see the edges of the negative in the exposed print (to “prove” you haven’t cropped) is basically a parlor trick. Over time I've seen the work of many photographers who don't crop beside the camera— and I honestly feel that while they may sometimes get an image that looks pure and wonderful, usually their compositions in the majority of their work are kind of (if not very much so) seriously lacking. So, yeah, I crop. Not always, sometimes just a little, and sometimes a lot. Sue me. All these years later, I look back with no regrets about it.

Lucy & Nathalia

It always seems to be easy to get two girls to do a shoot together- I can't recall ever getting a decline after suggesting it. It's actually much harder to get a guy to do a shoot with the girlfriend or wife. The woman is typically game- it tends to be the guy who is apprehensive. Guys tend to not like having their performance documented. I actually had a few shoots not materialize because the guy got cold feet. It was something that was a bit frustrating at first- getting guy/girl shoots was something that I really wanted to add to my portfolio for a couple of reasons. One reason was aesthetic- I wanted some balance, since I thought that a lot of girl/girl looked unbalanced. The most important reason was that I knew that once either a woman and/or couple viewed my portfolio, and saw some images like that, then they would be inspired to try it as well. Which is exactly what happened. People don't always know what they want until they see it. Not everyone has the imagination to envision possibilities, nor do they necessarily want to be the first to try something new. But when they see a good example of how it will turn out- it definitely breaks the ice. That's how I wound up doing so much erotic photography in general. It's a domino effect. When people see my work, they often get a very visceral reaction- "Oh, I want to be involved in that!".

Lucy & Nathalia

It is nice to get a glimpse of a lady bathing
you scrubbed your flower face and cleansed your lovely body
while this old monk sat and watched
feeling more blessed than even the emperor of China.

Ikkyū  一休宗純  Zen Buddhist monk, 1394-1481