Li & Carl

Photographing Li and Carl was one of the first really explicit girl/guy shoots that I've done, and it is still one the the most intense. While I've since done shoots that are perhaps more explicit, this set the benchmark for me on the type of intensity that I'm looking for lately. I often give a little direction as to what I think will work before shooting, but I don't recall saying anything to them before shooting- I just picked up the camera and started looking for angles. Well, I guess that I sometimes tend to perhaps make doing these shoots sound simpler than it is. I am constantly moving lights around. I'm also constantly thinking of making sure that these images are raw and uncensored, while striving to be anti-porn at the same time. Not that I have anything against porn, but it is what it is- it's a definitive formula for a practical use. I'm always trying to go against the formula and beyond to rise above and create something more genuine, to let people see more possibilities in sexual imagery. There are plenty of amateur photographers trying to pass off what is essentially porn as fine art- especially with the advent of digital cameras. One can even walk into an art gallery and see erotic work that is essentially, or basically, porn being poorly passed off as art. I want to get a visceral reaction from viewers, change perceptions, or ultimately have someone say that my images are like nothing that they've seen before...

Jade Vixen

Jade Vixen is a very well known fetish model, who is also an old and dear friend. Some of my most memorable images were created with her, although they have usually been fashion or vintage looking images rather than raw and erotic. There are several good reasons for this, despite that she has a very edgy and uninhibited persona. For one thing, she typically tends to be in control and dominant (or wants to portray that in her images), whereas my erotic images tend to portray a submissive with some wild abandon. She also has an exquisite collection of latex and vintage clothes- so we've usually gravitated towards showing them off.

Sylvia

I've been doing different versions of this shot for as long as I've been shooting, which is about 25 years now. It usually does not work, as hands on the face photographs typically look either stiff, forced or fake. Often, they're absolutely painful to look at. I always think of the hand on the face scene in Napoleon Dynamite! What makes it work are the hands and their owner- the combination of photogenic hands and someone who knows how to bring them to life. Hands can be just as expressive as facial expressions. Hell, they can be even more so- think how much sign language can convey. Human hands can paint the Sistine Chapel, pluck a guitar, maneuver surgical instruments, chisel a David, forge steel, and write poetry. They can grasp, scratch, poke, punch, feel, sense, evaluate, hold and mold the world around us. No other species has appendages with such a remarkable range of capabilities. And yet I can count on one hand how many people out of everyone that I've photographed have amazed me with their hands...

Miera

Bettie Page tribute. Deviating a little bit from my own style to create a more authentically vintage look. Actually all that I did differently than usual was add some scratches and some vignetting on the edges, but it works.

Lauren

Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar.  ~Helmut Newton

Holly

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. ~Imogen Cunningham

On posing...

I don't like when models pose. When I see a model start to pose, I have to start on my whole spiel about how I don't want them to pose for me. While a seasoned poser can lend themselves to a great image, usually it's just simply superficial & soulless at best, and cheesy & fake at worst. It's easy for me to get what I'm looking for out of a neophyte, but an experienced model can be a different story. Kitty (second image down) was one of those who was apprehensive at first to my demands to just keep moving without stopping to think about it, but she quickly came around- by the end she said that it was the most interesting and refreshing shoot that she had ever done. Indeed, movement and spontaneity are the most important elements to my more recent style of shooting...

M & S

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Holly

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more you it tells you, the less you know."

~Diane Arbus