Uma again. If you want to read about the shoot in Arlington, Texas, go look at the earliest posts in the February archive.

I'm in a hotel room in Vacaville, California...alone. These last-minute trips don't leave a lot of room for planning photoshoots. On the other hand it's a pain to take along a camera, and particularly film, if there isn't a shoot booked. So I didn't bother. I've got another short notice trip to Columbus, Ohio, next week and haven't even gone looking for Ohio models to photograph beyond one I'm already scheduled to photograph at the end of May in Chicago anyway. Once I get back to San Diego from Columbus it's off to North Carolina. Now I've had plenty of time to plan a photoshoot or two out there in the two weeks I'll be around, but just haven't wanted to make the effort to find a suitable model out in the Bible Belt. Maybe I'll go looking tonight - It'll give me something to do in this otherwise quiet hotel room.

After that last post, Reader "Anonymous" asked if I'd talk a little about lens lengths. That pic and this were both done with a superwide 45mm on a 6x7 camera, though this one's less obvious (until you look at the hand). I'm not sure where to begin. Back in photo school I had normal 50mm and long 135mm lenses for the 35mm camera and used whichever seemed to work for the assignment. With two to pick from the choice is not a problem.

Lenses longer than normals always seemed better for fashion and portraiture as they made the noses small and the image itself feel flat. Wide angle lenses seemed pretty useless except for architecture or lanscapes, in which we, as future fashion photographers, had no interest. But there is an observation that the longer one makes photographs, the shorter his lenses are, and following that path I have found that it would be easy to live with only a normal lens and make it work for everything.

But once a hardware junky, always a hardware junky. I'd put the longer lenses away and was pretty much only using normals until late last year when quickly dropping prices of good film cameras made me go shopping for a Hasselblad SW/C, that ultrawide Biogon platform. I couldn't find one locally, but a friend who owns a pro camera shop and junkyard pulled the Pentax 45mm f4 out from the back and I bought it, only later realizing I needed a body to mount it on. Got the body from him, then figured I'd best get a normal as well. All of that set me back about $800, which next to the new price of just that lens at something like $2000 a few years ago, was chickenfeed.

I use both of the lenses and once again, with a choice of only two, the choice becomes obvious. (I did also pick up a 135mm macro lens for some special photographs I may show here someday, but it generally just sits in the bag.)

So in the beginning it was a choice of two and in the end it's effectively a choice of two. In the middle I sunk small fortunes into every length I could possibly use. (For example, I have a lovely Pentax SMC A* 300mm that I've used twice - once for each younger kid's graduation from high school.) For now though I think the superwide and normal give me enough flexibility to do whatever I want to do.

I make the pictures to fit the lenses and not vice versa.

This is Ashley again in the very next negative I scanned after the last one. I'm gonna have to start showing other girls again soon or I'll hear about it.

I hope you aren't getting tired of seeing Ashley yet. Last night I developed the last two 120 rolls of film from her visit last month and, as usual, see some interesting photographs.

Not sure you can see it in this little scan, but those are Mickey Mouse pyjama bottoms. Once again, I'm not sure why I made this picture, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Even though it's far from my usual style or subject, it's cute and I like it. Let me know if you don't and why.

I just got off a chat with Lisa here, photographed last year in a hotel in Connecticut. We were talking about which picture I should print up or make a huge scan of for her to print. I sorta like the last one I posted which included her butt. She liked that as well as this one. Truthfully I hadn't looked too closely at this one, but I scanned it so obviously it was at least acceptable. The more I look, the more I like it though.

It's kind of a strange shade rendition on the lips. I'm pretty sure she had a dark enough lip color on and I wasn't using a red filter which would tend to lighten lips. The light was light bulb tungsten - I bought a package of 100W lightbulbs to replace the fluorescent screw-ins in the room. Now tungsten bulbs will be warmer than studio hotlights and of course than strobe, but it shouldn't be so warm as to effectively lighten the lips. So it's a minor mystery. She tells me I was using the Ilford Delta 3200 film (she's a photography major in Massachusetts now and most of our talk tonight was about photography) but that doesn't render reds as white either.

I've got an interview with a Hong Kong photo magazine coming up. Apparently it's the largest circulation Chinese photography magazine there is. Unfortunately it's in Chinese so I won't be able to read it. They haven't specified what images if any they want to use, or scan specs required. I'm pretty sure they'll be making a conservative choice though.

Two nights ago I saw The Notorious Bettie Page at the Hillcrest Cinemas with some friends. It was an interesting movie about an apparently less-than-interesting model. Well done, period feeling and the actress playing Page, Gretchen Mol, looking every bit the part.

Now Bettie Page is an icon and a role model for many of the girls I've worked with, particularly when I was shooting mostly bondage/fetish work. She seemed an innocent in the movie and even her real photographs had that quality about them. I think my models wanted a piece of that too. Back in the counterintelligence community we called it "plausible denial." One sets up the scenario such that one can deny culpability later. They want to look like Bettie and be tied up and all, but the being tied up part should appear to be only play-acting. This allows the denial of actually enjoying the bondage. In the movie I came away with the same feeling - that Page knew exactly what she was doing and enjoyed every bit of it while denying it to family and friends and maybe even herself.

In any case, The Notorious Bettie Page is well worth seeing if you're a photographer, model, fetishist or simply interested in how it might have been way back when I was a kid.

These girls are Ashley and Chantel. You've seen them before and I've written about the experience of photographing them. They are best friends and wanted to be photographed nude together even though they aren't lovers or anything. Hmmm...

Claudia, San Antonio motel, November '04 again. I don't know what she's reading.

Looks like the story just came out in Vyuz, the San Diego alternative news source that interviewed me a week back. I suppose it'd be a good idea to go see what Larry wrote before I post this but what the hell? As long as he spells my name right.

OK, I'm gonna go read it then decide whether I need to edit this.

Edit: Yep, looks OK to me.

Collin J. Rae is our third guest photographer. I've liked his kinky stuff for quite awhile now and he's consented to show a photograph here.
________

About 6 months ago a young girl from Seattle emailed me to see if I would consider working with her. She sent a number of pix in order to entice me however there were NONE of her feet (and shit...isn't FEET what it's all about???) So I promptly emailed her back and said "uh well yeah maybe but I need to know that you have nice feet before I'll agree to a shoot." Weeks past, then a couple months, then another month or so when I finally received another mail and some photos of her feet, well I was of course blown away and made arrangements to meet and shoot her in my favorite hotel in Portland (The Jupiter). She drove all night to get there and I ended up shooting and obsessing for hours....first her alone then some hours later her with my good friend Cassie. This all took place in Mid February of this year, needless to say I'm headed back to Portland this Thursday for another round with young Courtney and her fabulous feet....oh yeah, she has other girl parts as well.

-Collin J. Rae

When I first joined a few other photographers and several models up in Billings for one of those shindigs in '00 there was a girl there from Missouri. She'd been sent up by her agency booker to test with at least two of us. Laura got some good portfolio pictures from a couple of the other photographers, but I really didn't get serious with her because she seemed too shy.

In August of '01 she flew to San Diego specifically to work with me, which was very flattering of course. This is one of the pictures we made outside her motel room in San Diego. Notice the goose bumps. She was a year away from her masters degree in criminology at the time. There was some talk about doing another shoot but the pressure of her studies kept her there and life moved on for me in other directions. I would love to talk to Laura again and catch up someday, so Laura, if you're reading this contact me. I'll buy the coffee.

The girls probably had hoped this picture would never ever show up again. Oh well. Back in December '99 I was taking these girls, Audra and Dani, to meet up with a photographer friend, Leland Ray, to go shoot a bunch in New Orleans with these and about four other models.

I woke first in the motel in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and went out to Burger King for breakfast leaving the two girls in bed. On the way out of BK I picked up some coffee for the girls and as an afterthought got those two paper crowns. When I came in the motel door they were sitting up watching cartoons or something on TV, both with their legs crossed as shown. I had them strip, put on the crowns and continue to watch TV. And I took this snapshot.

Yes, this is exactly how good these two looked in the morning. Amazing, huh? Youth has some advantages.

There was a knock on the door of my Times Square hotel room. I'd been anticipating a shoot with a 5'1" Canadian actor who'd been plying her craft way off Broadway for the last few years and even though I was more familiar with 5'10" fashion models back in '00 I'd agreed to shoot her based on her emailed zed card.

She was even shorter than I expected at 4'11". Models lie. But she was pretty and gregarious and we walked all over midtown Manhatten and eventually ended up back in the hotel room. At some point I put her in the bed and while my back was turned she started playing with herself. Whether she did that for the camera or for herself I still don't know. I made this picture - my first ever of a woman masturbating - then threw a sheet over her and made some more that I've shown. I just scanned this slide for the first time.

It's not terribly sharp, probably reflecting my state of mind at the time, and it was made under fluorescent bulbs, making the chrome green. I've corrected for color a bit here, but there's no correcting for focus. In any case, this was the start of it all.

Monica was in the U.S. on a student visa and eventually repatriated to Canada. She's been acting and doing voice-over work for the last several years in Vancouver. She used to call once in awhile and talk to "Uncle Don" in the sexiest husky voice in the whole fucking world. I've gotta get to Vancouver and look her up again one of these years.

My son changed law offices from Los Angeles to New York over Christmas 1998, coincidentally the same time that I had a need to return to photography. As I was elected to pull a two-axle rental trailer with his worldly goods out, and no one else in the family was remotely interested in riding back to California with me in the Bronco, I took the opportunity to search out models for my return trip with the intent of making a few pictures along the route. One model answered my email. Leslie King, shown here a few years later.

I went to the address in Billings, Montana (yes, that's why it keeps coming up) and was met at the door by a gruff old guy who introduced himself as Jacque King (or possibly Jacque DuRoi) who told me his wife was at work but would be home soon. I showed Jacque my pathetic little 5x7 portfolio - all that remained of my commercial work years earlier - and he made polite noises, then pulled out his own book. B&W prints I'd been shown in photo school - he was the guy my fashion instructor most often used as an example of the genre. We talked a whole lot, but eventually in walked this tall, skinny angel and I forgot how to talk.

Leslie and I did some studio work and some street work at night and she and Jacque saw to it that I was introduced to the right folks and after I delivered prints about a week later I became a web photographer. They hosted The Fashion Only Forum, the first and still best fashion photography forum on the web. She showed my work, Jacque loaned me some server space and we became close friends. On October 26th, 2000, Jacque died, leaving Leslie a widow.

I used to stop by a couple times a year on cross-country drives and continued to do that. Later I'd ride up from San Diego to visit Les or join a group of like-mided folks to shoot and drink and tell lies in the studio up there we all called "The Pit." Leslie and I remain very close friends. I called her last week to wish her a happy 40th birthday.

This photograph was made in my motel room when she was 35. I did have to tell her to put panties on. Fashion models don't wear underwear.

Another of Ashley in the kitchen, but out of the sink this time. Girl's not shy. She should be back home in Winnipeg now unless she fell for one of those fancy L.A. shooters and decided to stay up there.

In the last post you'll notice some comments. The first deleted one was from a model (Molly, picture posted February 24th) and I deleted it once I saw she'd included her email address, then re-quoted it below. I've emailed her asking if she'd write something up for the blog. Iona Lynn added her comments about a shoot we did last month and I kinda like the idea of models giving their perspective on this process and their experiences, particularly working with me.

I expect to shoot similar notes off to Trish and Ashley and Uma and a few other recent models to see if they'll contribute as well. If all anyone ever reads is my side of the story it can only be half complete. Any other models, if you're shown here you're welcome to comment or to email me writeups that I'll post with more of your pictures.

(I guess that'll determine if I'm as cool as I think I am, huh?)

Aja in a San Diego motel back in January 2001. What's not obvious is that along with Aja and me were her mother and grandmother and my photo rep and her daughter. That's six people. Aja's mom kept wanting her to put more on and her grandmother kept coaxing her to show what she had while she had it. And my rep was doing hair and makeup and her daughter was assisting in various ways. But five women and me in one motel room - what did the management think? She always kept some clothes on. She was headed for law school last time I talked with her...

On another subject, that model that I cancelled on several posts down has accepted my apology for being a jerk and consented to work with me. I'm grateful for the opportunity to photograph her because she is, as I've always maintained, stunning. And it will be a chance to visit a place I've wanted to see since high school - St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada. She thinks it's the end of the world and I think it's an exotic destination. Funny how where one stands affects what one sees.

Yep, she was in the kitchen sink. I loved the light from that porthole window and hated to leave it, so I used the 45mm f4 superwide lens on the Pentax 6x7 for this last picture there. The contrast has been bumped in PhotoShop to what it would look like on grade 3 to 3.5 paper; just a touch contrasty and dramatic. Of course this picture makes no damned sense at all in terms of "what a pretty girl would be doing alone in a hotel room." (I haven't been naked in a kitchen sink since my Mom used to give me baths in one in 1953.) Nevertheless, a pretty cool photograph and I may actually do a good darkroom print of this one.

Cameras:

For the last 20 years I've been using Pentax film cameras. Even before that I bought a Pentax ME Super at the Base Exchange in Iwakuni, as a Marine lieutenant was expected to have a good 35mm camera in addition to the customary Rolex watch, Gerber dagger and 7x binoculars. That camera started me nicely in photo school many years later and a series of ME Supers were the workhorses for my first couple years of commercial shooting as well. When client requirements dictated medium format I got a couple Pentax 6x7 bodies and four lenses and mostly used them in the studio. For location work Pentax MXs and LXs replaced the ME Supers that I was wearing out every six months or so. I still have one of those LXs I bought back in the late '80s.

When I came back to photography after a 5-year hiatus I picked up that LX, eventually moved up to a Pentax 645 (manual focus), then farther up, returning to the 6x7 system in a bid for the highest quality negative possible in a handy roll film camera. It's a heavy beast, but I'm a big guy and it works for me. I'm currently working with three lenses, the 45mm superwide, a normal 105mm f2.4 and a macro 135mm f4, for everything. I do need to get a second body one of these days.

Other cameras I don't use much include a Horseman VH-R 6x9 view camera, Minox spy camera and maybe a couple other cats and dogs. That Horseman needs some more exercise and I need some more practice.

Ashley a few weeks back in her hotel suite in Imperial Beach. She leaves San Diego tonight, heading back to Winnipeg, Manitoba. I've enjoyed photographing her both times and am happy this negative showed up in the batch developed last night. I think she was actually sitting in the kitchen sink - yep, she was; just checked the next couple of negs. Naked of course.

I had a friend once who was pretty big in fashion back in the '70s. In fashion, models want to "test" with the shooters who are always working. Mostly the photographers don't have time to shoot for free when they make their living that way, but there were always exceptions. At one point Jacque said, "Fuck it, I'll test. But they'll be naked for headshots." I've always liked that attitude. Now I'm no bigtime fashion photographer, but I also don't do this for a living so I really can specify how and when I'll photograph a model and if they don't agree, then of course we don't shoot. For the last four or five years I've simply decided to only photograph models nude. That means I'm not shooting every day of course, but it also means I'm not subject to any monetary considerations either. I don't pay models and they don't pay me. In all, it seems to be working out fine. (None of that is to say that there are models breaking down my door to be photographed with clothes on either.)

Speaking of which, attractive women are cordially invited to contact me about being photographed. I travel a heap and eventually get everywhere. Just leave a comment - I see those before they get posted and will not show such inquiries unless you so desire.

Another of Iona Lynn from a few weeks back. This was a low contrast negative and I've left it pretty well alone. It looks like it'd be a good candidate for sepia too. The shoot was too short. I rode into the motel parking lot in Anaheim having worried about running out of gas for the last 20 miles, but already behind schedule, found the room, which had been slept in my Iona (and Dina), dimly lit by some very weak fluorescent light bulb replacements with no chance to use daylight modified by the curtains. They'd gotten a late checkout, but that still left less than two hours to shoot.

More time would have meant more chance to think about how I wanted to show the girls and what would happen if lights were moved around this way and that way. I brought up a 500W hotlight, but thought pulling it out would waste too much time. My bad. More time is better. Relaxed is better.

Next time.

I've just registered a Technorati Profile. This post is to facilitate registration they say.

My first photoshoot with BonBon was in August '03. I'd met her at the Borders Bookstore downtown where I was hanging with some sportbike guys. She rode pillion with one of them. She wore a turban and a tight white sweater. I went to get coffee and when I got back to the table she said, "They say you're a photographer. Will you photograph me?" I asked if she'd take her clothes off, she agreed, and we booked the shoot.

(Edit: I should probably mention something about how she pulled her sweater up there in the bookstore to show that her chest was real, but I don't know exactly how to slip that in.)

When she arrived at the studio for the shoot she looked around and noted that I "live just like an artist." Well ... yes. I had her undress to get rid of elastic lines before the makeup artist started on her. Because BonBon's nipples were so pale I had the MUA do them with the lip color she was using. At the MUA's request I supported BonBon's breasts while the color was applied. (OK I volunteered, alright? It was fun.) Even so they came out very pale.

I've photographed BonBon twice since then. The last included the photo of her pregnant twelve posts down. Every year or so she calls to shoot and I figure I'll probably be making pix of her for a long time.

In other news I'm cooling some chem now so I can soup two more rolls of film. I don't know who they're of as the rolls got mixed up. There are more to follow those as well.

Miss Ava in a West Hollywood motel last September. The life and undefined emotion in her right eye caught me and I've shown this photograph often, mostly in venues where nipples or pubes are prohibited. Surprisingly we never really connected during this shoot, but to her credit she gave me good pictures anyway. The film has more detail, but I liked this high contrast interpretation.

I've got a four-day trip to North Carolina coming up but don't have the dates yet. I hope it can wait long enough for me to recover - the cold has now moved from nose and throat to my chest and it's distracting. This is a dayjob trip and the task is only mechanical so I could do it, sick or not. This will be followed by a two-week trip to another place in North Carolina. I should probably go find a model or two to work with while I'm there.

I don't think you've seen this one, though there are probably a couple similar of Uma already posted. I could be wrong. If I am let me know and I'll swap it with somethng else.

Still have a cold but it seems to be breaking tonight. Today the editor of a San Diego weekly alternative news source asked if he could profile this blog. I agreed and met him up in Hillcrest for coffee and the interview. I've done phone interviews in the past and they always get something dramatically wrong. So it was face-to-sniffing/hacking-face. Interesting questions he asked. I hope I answered adequately. It's hard enough to give an answer that's anything like complete talking off-the-cuff, but much worse when only half the brain's working due to cold drugs. Not the kind that make one feel particularly good either. Those I get to ingest tonight.

It'll be interesting to read his take on this stuff I do and write about. It's easy enough to come off as a dirty old man and relatively easy to come off as a snooty artiste interested only in socio-sexual meaning, but when you're mostly between those two extremes and ricochetting around in that strange space it all depends on when one asks the questions.

OK, maybe tomorrow I'll be fine in time to go find an early Easter breakfast that's not crowded yet.

I've got an awful cold. Back when I was a kid a cold wouldn't bother me. I'd go trudging off to school all bundled up in -20F temperatures back in North Dakota and get along just fine. These days things hit me harder as many of my body's weaknesses are starting to make themselves known. Age is a mixed blessing. I know and understand so much more now than ever before, but some of that knowledge isn't useful unless one's young to begin with. The "if I only knew then what I know now" conundrum.

So I'm sick, but I need coffee. I live in the studio but don't cook...or even brew coffee. It's a decision I made years ago to force myself out into the world. If I didn't do that I'd probably be a hermit. So food, the dayjob and books are what make me poke my head out. And nude models in hotel rooms, too. But the immediate problem is coffee. The options are the little Mexican bakery a few blocks away, Cafe Chloe downtown or even McDonalds. The problem is that it's not easy to carry coffee on a motorcycle so I'll have to drink it there, making the ambiance more important.

Looking back over the last few posts all I see is pessimism. I'll ascribe all of that to this damned cold. i just hope it isn't the avian flu or anything horrible. In any case, I'm miserable.

Photo: Paige in a motel in West Hollywood in January '04. She enjoyed it. So did I.

I probably screwed up. A few posts back I talked about cancelling a trip to photograph a model. I did cancel and may have misunderstood the whole conversation that I took as hostile. ASCII communication is a long way from being perfect yet. There are no inflections, facial expressions or anything to go by except the words and at best one can only assume the feelings behind them. And it's too easy to be wrong. I was probably wrong.

I wish "live and learn" applied, but the whole cancellation was based on what I've learned travelling around photographing women. Also below I mentioned travelling to Atlanta with two photoshoots scheduled and having both models flake on me. So it's a matter of balancing the downside of a possible flake after making the travel investment and investing the time and the upside of the photographs. In this case the upside was so far up that it might have been worth a 50% risk for the pictures. But I decided to pass.

I hate this stuff sometimes. Shit.

Edit: I probably did the right thing. Lesson learned - book and shoot quickly. Don't spend too much time thinking or talking about it first.


(Claudia and Little Robin in my studio a long time ago.)

A round of applause for Emalie! You're not giving me enough feedback on this wonderful model. Get with the program!

OK, I've been drinking. A friend, Marek, just wrote reminding me that sometimes there's Truth in the bottle. In my case it's only large quantities of beer, but the Romans said "in vino veritas." Now I think the truth they were talking about is different than the Truth that I'm finding in my pathetic Budweiser. (There seems to a beer war on here and a 32 oz. bottle sets me back about $1.25, making it a cheap form of Truth.) Marek pointed out (obliquely) that those who exhibit satisfaction with their lives may in fact not be satisfied but are fronting it because of social norms and expectations. I don't think he meant it that way, but that's the way I read it. I think that smart people are seldom satisfied with anything.

'Course I figure myself in that category, making it easier to justify my own dissatisfaction. OK loyal reader, you probably envy what you believe to be my life of sin or unbridled libido. Truth is that's neither how I live nor what my photography is about (despite you're having gotten here through a porn aggregator link). Thus those self-flagellating earlier posts about quitting this stuff. Hell, a perfectly beautiful local model wants to shoot and I put her off because I have a cold. A fucking cold! Given the opportunity, would you pass up a beautiful naked chick because of a cold? Why would I? Because it's not enough.

I had a short conversation today with the publisher of the book that never happened. He challenged the concept of photography as art. I agreed in that a single photograph is not comparable to a single painting as a piece of art. But as a crowd wearing Geo. Bush masks gathering at a McDonalds can be art, so can the process of photography, if not the single image. (Given, an Ansel Adams print can be art all by itself. But a D. Brian Nelson print is best taken in context.)

Ah, looks like Marek has sent me another email. I'd best go find out what he has to say this time.

Claudia, photographed in a motel in San Antonio, Texas, in November, '04. Tiny girl. She was sick during the shoot due to some medication she was using, so the progress was interrupted frequently. Mostly we shot on the streets in industrial sections of town as I was doing quite often back then. Claudia also brought an escort, which caused a funny dynamic. Apparently they worked together and he'd photographed her, but not quite to the extent of nakedness we were doing, so it felt like there was some jealousy hanging over the shoot.

On top of that, I was plagued by a consistently bad focus. That shoot was done primarily with Kodak Ektachrome 320T pushed to ASA 1600 under extremely low light conditions. The hotel had low wattage bulbs and I think I was constantly having to hand-hold the Pentax LX for 1/4th second exposures. I can pull those off sometimes, but at least in this shoot it resulted in too many blurry pictures. We've talked about doing another photo shoot, but I haven't been back to San Antonio recently. That visit was on the return leg of a motorcycle ride to Louisville, Kentucky, where an old friend (but young model) was married (mentioned in an earlier post).

News Flash! Just got word this morning that a lifestyle submissive I'd anticipated working with next month is cancelling the shoot by order of her master.

Well, I've run into the classic web-photographer conundrum. I have arranged a photoshoot with a model far from here. As I've said before, I can pretty much travel anywhere with frequent flyer miles, so the travel isn't a problem and I enjoy it. What has happened is the model has asked why I'd want to travel that far to photograph her. I've done this before of course, and posted photographs from such trips on this blog.

In any case, it's devolved to a situation where the model is apparently suspicious of my motives (who wouldn't be really?) and I can't explain well enough that for me a trip to Europe is just another day. So right now it's sorta up in the air. I don't have any problem finding models to work with me and she, due to an off-the-thoroughfare location, hasn't modeled except for boyfriends (who did a great job in her case) but doesn't seem interested enough for me to gamble on.

Web-photography, what I do, has it's share of models that flake. That is, they just don't show up. Now as I don't pay models it's not a financial loss, but it is a loss of opportunity. The worst case is when I lug cameras and especailly film through airport security only to find the model isn't going to be there. That does piss me off. So the question is, do I make a trip when I have no confidence that the beautiful girl will show, or do I cancel it and shoot the models I know want to work with me?

This is Chioma, photographed in a motel in West Hollywood last August. I need to photograph more Black models.

Just going through the stats a little today. In the last hour this blog has been seen by folks from Czempin, Poznan, Toronto, Galveston, Nahmer, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Fridingen An Der Donau, Bloomingdale, Reston, Driehuis, Eureka, Milan, Ile-de-France, Madrid, Helsinki, Lisboa, Irvine, Alberta, Manhorn, Zurich, Kortemark, Kassel, Ottawa, Codnor, Nottingham, Norrkping, Bratislava, Karlovac, Karlovacka, Antioch, Glen Ellyn, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Delhi, Lettelingen, Hainaut, London, Dreieich, Hessen, Mexico, Forest Hill, Rumbeke, Bombay, Lexington, Amsterdam, Fort Worth, Nice, Bloomington, Savigny-sur-Orge, Tuxpan, New York, Trk, Moscow, Kehl, Nordick, Istanbul, Karnala, Slough, Copenhagen, Knoxville, Embleton, Livorno, Amersfoort, Aquitaine, Mountain View, Bilpin, Henryton, Rosersberg, Rios, Rio De Janeiro, Alexandria, Hebron, Vizela, Sunnyside, Cumberland Center, Toronto, Atlanta, Goven, Embarrass, Veikkola, Sulzbach, Goose Creek, Minneapolis, Peterborough, Evenhausen, Nijkerk, Mckinney, Hodogayacho and Alicia. The countries aren't always the obvious ones of course, as cities here in the U.S. are often named after older cities elsewhere.

Visitors spend something like 75 seconds on average, meaning some read the words and others don't. Some spend up to 20 minutes reading (we'll presume), while others click on and off quickly. The blog is getting something like 2000 unique visitors a day and was ranked by Alexa.Com yesterday as 68,500th on the web, which isn't surprising for a place that shows pictures of naked women for free. (Edit: Today Alexa's showing 154,500th - still pretty good.)

Most viewers come here via IndieNudes (Indie's an old friend and lists all three of my sites), while others are linked in from various searches, mostly involving "nude," or through other blogs either linking here or mentioning Hotel Room Nudes.

That's another fine picture of a difficult subject by Stan Schutze.

Now I'm just posting to avoid doing anything useful around here. Too early to go eat dinner, too light out to spool film, laundry's done and the daily rider ('04 Kawasaki Z1000) is all shined up, so it's post, dust or shine up another bike. But this will be the last post today...probably.

Lisa from July of '05 photographed in Trumbull, Connecticut. There's another picture way below of her looking at herself in a big mirror. Nothing more to be said about the shoot itself, I guess. I can't much use horizontal pictures anywhere but here, so I get to show things here that haven't been seen anywhere else before. It's a nice picture of her fine butt and shows a pretty, languid profile of her face, with that corner-of-the-eye glance at what I'm doing back there. It was a fun shoot with much more horsing around than usual, but having two girls usually means they feel comfortable getting goofy. They got goofy and I got goofy. Oh yeah, it made me giggle.

Gotta love this hobby.

Just rummaging through my image files and I like this one of Myra too. I know I just posted a couple color images and at least one B&W of her already, but it was a good shoot last August (or September or October - history gets foggier as one ages) in Hamburg at that little gay hotel.

The other color pix were high in magenta, while this one is very warm. Probably that 25 watt bulb in the lamp next to the bed. I don't shoot color at all right now while I'm trying to make my B&W better, but this one shoot was the exception. Color is so easy. If you don't have detail, color is the second best thing, but it's still like substituting onions for steak. When I get the B&W working right, then maybe I'll start color again.

Oh, the reason I did shoot a roll is that I've changed formats from 35mm to 120 and the color film I know and love for 35mm (Ektachrome 320T) isn't available in 120 so I wanted to see what Fujichrome Provia would do pushed. Not too bad, really.

Dina is Iona Lynn's friend who is seen below schooling Iona on the use of the remote control toy. She had never been photographed nude before, but Iona told me Dina was considering it for this shoot. Her rigid protective posture indicates some of her anxiety. Makes sense to me.

I'd been shooting Iona and Dina had been back behind me moving stuff out of the frame and turning lights on and off and such when I asked her if she wanted some pictures. There wasn't any hesitation, so I had her strip (those words just tickle me) and put her on the bed alone for the first few. Later I photographed the two girls together, but because they are so dissimilar in everything, trying to pair them didn't work as well as I'd hoped. Dina is tall and Iona short; Dina has a long face and Iona a small round one. Dina is a little darker, but not enough to use the contrast - it was more of an exercise in positioning to get enough light on each to keep the faces well lit. As I said, that didn't work as well as I wanted. I think I have some undeveloped film left, so there may be one or two yet that worked. We'll see when I get to that film.

More film is still unprocessed on BonBon and Ashley as well. Gotta spool some up and do it tonight or I'll never get it all done...

And now for something completely different. BonBon (probably a diminutive of Bonnie, though I've only known her as BonBon) dropped by the studio one day last month. She's pretty obviously pregnant - 8 1/2 months by her reckoning - and the father's a big guy. BonBon's always been curvy - I don't think I've shown any of her here previously - but now she's way curvy.

I taped some duvatine to the wall, opened the drapes over the big window for light and used the Horseman VH-R view camera to make a few 6x9 frames - this one cropped. Not a hotel room, but there you have it. If you don't like it, sue me.

BonBon will be skinny again soon enough. (Come to think of it, she may be quite a bit skinnier already. I haven't heard from her since the shoot.)

Trish wrote me today and told me she has another girl lined up for some Domme/subbe girl-girl work. If you call that work. Sometimes even I know just how lucky I am. Unfortunately, May is already completely filled with dayjob travel to North Carolina and a long weekend in Chicago photographing some models, drinking with some shooter friends and general carousing. As well as I can tell without a calendar handy, that leaves no weekends and I prefer to shoot weekends so as not to destroy my mornings at work.

In June I'm flying to Newfoundland to photograph a very pretty girl there and kill some frequent flyer miles and take a short vacation. I think July is still open...

Oh, the picture? Trish in a motel in West Hollywood a few months back. There are a couple more of her below. (These are all for you Bunx...)

Oh I don't know what I was thinking. I had no real main light here, except some fluorescents from the bathroom and that way too bright lamp on the nightstand. No interesting light, a pose that's more or less exposed, but only interesting because of that and the demure look on her face, loss of hair detail (which I may be able to cure with a little more time spent re-scanning the film. So, I've scanned one roll (10 frames) and have maybe two or three that are useful. Not a bad average. And three more rolls to look at yet.

Ashley, a week or so back in a hotel in Imperial Beach, California.