Gotta renew the passport tomorrow. Get the pix and forms then overnight them to the L.A. agency that handles that stuff. And get a visa for India. Looks like New Delhi end of next month to fix some aircraft stuff. I've never been very specific about what aircraft stuff, and there's a reason for that. Anyway, models in New Delhi that want to get naked and photographed are welcome to contact me as I will definitely be taking a camera of some sort along.

After that I'm told China's on the list. Last I heard the State Department won't let me go there, but last I heard was thirty years ago, too. Things have changed. Then maybe Chile. I'm actually looking forward to that.

This is Cori. Oceanside, California a few years back. Yes, I'm still drinking.

In vino veritas. And I love me some veritas. Drinking a generic Aussie Merlot now. Seems they blend a bunch of grapes from all over to make these fruit bombs, so it comes down to which $5 bottle has the best label. Today's selection is Red Bicylette.

Dulls the senses, removes inhibitions, makes it more difficult to ride a motorbike. Fine stuff that Oz wine. Had a suggestion today that I retire early and take a poke at consulting. Very tempting. Good money, beholding to no one. Lotsa travel. I could cash out vested retirement and consult until my 401K can be cashed in for a house and drift along until SS kicks in at 62. Man is it tempting. But I'm not over the retirement benefits hump yet. Real soon that might be the best path, but financially it isn't quite yet.

I'll never quit working. Can't. Not photography, as this will always just be a hobby. Aerospace. People are willing to pay me ridiculous money for what seems to me to be common knowledge. Strange but true. Sorta makes me feel kinda guilty, you know?

Who is this? I can't really remember. Some girl from Billings, Montana - that part I recall. Liked rope. I liked her ass.

This photograph is out of context. The New- foundland shoot in particular needs context, both photo- graphic and textual, to be completely understood and appreciated. I've never shot that way before, always maintaining that each individual photograph should be able to stand by itself and tell its own story.

This particular picture is somewhere in the middle of the seduction. There was a play day, which was the girls getting to know each other, the seduction, which happened over a two-hour period, and then a day of dress-up play afterwards. Plus some more-or-less random pictures after that and scattered throughout. A series of photographs of that week would include examples of each, leading the viewer to appreciate it as an experience extended over time. Maybe someday I'll be able to edit the pictures and add some text by me and by the girls and come up with something memorable.

Angela and Cynnamon in Newfoundland this March.

I dropped the thermometer today and broke it. That means I can't develop any film until it's replaced on Monday. I guess getting twenty years of service from a free thermometer isn't too bad, all things considered.

Sat at the bookstore today considering work I'd seen in Aperture magazine. Once in awhile I pick these magazines up to see what it is that I don't want to do, but this time I was hooked. Low contrast color work seems to be popular right now, which means I certainly won't do that. But bodies of work involving places are also popular, and because places are all different it makes a broad interesting theme. Maybe I'll give some of that a go one of these days. I'd rather continue with B&W though. Just until I get it right.

Ashley and Chantel in Winnipeg a few years back.

Last night was my second large format people photoshoot. I completely understand why, when the roll-film camera was invented, it took off so well. I am re-thinking this whole move to 4x5 from medium format now. It sure seemed like a good idea at the time...

Candy, photographed in West Hollywood. She's moved to Seattle and is available for art modeling.

Just got back from Nelson Photo (no relation) where I bought some more canned air and TXP, and from Lightbulbs Unlimited where I got a 600W halogen bulb for one of my hot lights.

I cleaned the dust off the hot lights earlier, as I really only use one sometimes for travel and the others just hang there on the wall. I'll be using two tonight for the shoot. I still haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to light the girl, but the usual studio plan of bouncing one light off a white wall isn't going to be good enough. I need a very soft source close enough to her to keep the duvatine she'll be on very black. Ideally that would be a huge softbox pointing down about three or four feet above the stage. Soft boxes for hot lights are very bulky, and I want a solution that will travel well (without igniting), so I'm still working on that.

Today's shoot will be no more than 14 frames of 4x5 and maybe one roll of 6x7 for the I.D. picture and a bit of backup.

Stopped in at the new Java Joe's on 9th between Market and G Streets for breakfast. Nice place.

This is the lovely Angela, alone this time, on some of the more recently scanned film. I still have so much more to process and scan it's a little ridiculous.

Last workday of the week, and tomorrow I have a photoshoot. Bondage in the studio. I've got some details to clean up before the shoot - a couple of fresh bulbs for my hot lights, load the film holders, make sure the new tan dropcloth is translucent enough to use as a light diffuser, clean up the studio a bit.

Stacy hasn't been tied up before but she says she likes how it can look, so we'll do some figure studies with rope sorts of photographs. I think she's probably also curious about how it feels and thinks that a shoot is a safe environment. It is. So after the figure work we'll move into some more restrictive things if she wants. Ill probably have to use both the 4x5 and the 6x7, as I can only hold 14 pieces of 4x5 film with the holders I have, and I expect the shoot may go on longer than that.

This is Linda Tran, ass up, on a sawhorse I bought, painted and put eyebolts on back when I was shooting a lot of bondage. It's gone now, as for a few years it just collected dust. I used it for a lot of shoots though and have pictures like this one of several models. I think it was painful - it looks like it is.

About time! That Harley Sportster across the street seems to need ten minutes of "warm up" before the owner can ride it. If that's true, it's a bad design. If it's not true, then it's an ignorant rider. Either way, it's fucking annoying. But the noise is gone, so he's ridden away.

A friend from Germany is in town and I'm feeding him at Chuey's, just down the road, tonight. He's actually on his way to Hawaii on business. Talked a little with him at lunch, mostly pumping him for some info I need. I may be going to China, India and Chile (and some other places) for work and wanted to know some good hotels. He's been pretty much everywhere and gave me some good info, including an offer to see if his friends in Mumbai can book me into one of the best hotels there that he favors. This is all if I even go. Before that, it looks like I may spend a week in NYC, mostly doing nothing. I'll have to look up the gaggle of models from there that have contacted me in the last few months. None of the trips is real yet...just potential.

Anyway my friend recently married his girlfriend of several years and took her surname. I think that's pretty cool and interesting.

Myra, photographed in Hamburg, Germany a few years back. In a bordello converted to a hotel. No, I really don't understand where all that color came from either, but there it is.

There have always been rumors that there existed exclusive places on the web where Newton and Demarchelier chatted with Cartier-Bresson about lenses and such. Where Paolo and Eudora noted similarities in their work. Where Bettina trolled for 15-yr-old agency girls to humiliate. But if places like that exist, they certainly wouldn't let me in, and even if they did, the exclusivity itself would eventually make the place tiresome.

On the other hand, the public places that do exist on the web aggrandize mediocrity through bullshit like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," an argument that belittles the best in favor of the subjective judgement of those who don't know any better. The web is democratic, and therefore judgements tend toward the mediocre.

But as Winston Churchill (I believe) said, "Democracy is the worst possible form of governement, except for all the rest." Maybe there is a secret salon where the luminaries hold court and discuss silver paper and multicoating. Maybe I'll get to go there when I die.

Jackie in my motel room in Minneapolis, covering her "lady parts."

Erotic generally means something or thought that sexually excites. What specifically is erotic is determined by the one experiencing it. Again generally, men and women find different things to be erotic. Other ways to cut up the population include older/younger, religious/not religious, and so on. One model I photographed recently had just graduated from a Catholic girls' school, replete with pleated plaid skirts, white blouses and no patent leather shoes. She probably wore Doc Martin's. That uniform itself is erotic to many folks, like Japanese schoolgirl uniforms are erotic to most Japanese men (OK, that's an assumption).

My photographs are intended to be erotic, and the intended audience is women, though these days with the blog and all I figure it includes a bunch of men as well. But men are easy, so guys, you don't count.

I have a friend for whom anything, to be erotic, must include feet. Some people require more or less context. Some women will not be interested in photographs of women at all. Different strokes for different folks (Oh, I just got that!).

//

Sorry, had to run some errands, but I'm back.

Anyway, the thought's been truncated, but that's the way it is sometimes.

Uma, doin' it.

I finally got back to the book "Manliness" after setting it down for a few weeks and am starting to understand what the author is getting at. He's gone back and is reviewing the history of Western political thought in order to analyze feminism in order to give context, historical and contemporary, to manliness, and its apparent conflict with current feminist movements. Maybe surprisingly, manliness, the best characteristics of traditional men, conflicts very little, except in dogmas that deny gender differences even exist.

Still, the book hasn't wrapped everything up into a nice summary, so I will continue to reserve judgement until I've finished it. It is a slog, jumping from Hobbes to Plato to Nietzsche to Spinoza, creating cultural models of gender when women were ignored by each. Some of it feels like a stretch...

And once again we have Cynnamon and Angela doing their respective things in my hotel room in Newfoundland. Angela accuses me of showing these pictures too often, but they are the most current work and I'm still developing film, so it seems reasonable to me to show them. But I'll drop them for a bit in the next few posts, OK?

A model mentioned yesterday that it's amazing that I can blend in to a hotel room well enough that the girls apparently mistake me for a lampshade and pay no attention to me. I think that's a cool commentary. Actually I weight 220 pounds and use the world's loudest camera, so there's no "blending in" happening, but the part about models paying no attention to me and going about their business is sorta true.

But let me digress a little. Another conversation yesterday was about "production values" during testing. That presumes commercial photography, as if there is "testing" and "not testing," the "not testing" part must be a commercial or money shoot. As I'm not a commercial photographer, everything is "testing" to me. No money. And because of the style of my work, there are no makeup artists, wardrobe vans, assistants, catering or any of that stuff. Beyond securing a hotel room, a model or two, some film, and maybe a bottle of wine, there is no "production."

I arrange for a scene to happen, then photograph it. And because the scene is authentic, what shows up in the photograph is more or less authentic. I say "more or less" because sometimes I will interrupt and have the model(s) change position or location, but then she continues where she left off. Ignoring me completely until I interrupt again.

Of course I also make the obligatory pictures where the model is looking straight at the camera, because those are the ones that lead viewers to speculate that I did her. When I tell a model that she usually laughs uncontrollably for awhile before getting back into the swing of things. So maybe it appears that they don't know I'm there, but in truth, they do and just don't take me seriously.

Cynn, showing skin and Angela, bundled up, outside the hotel in St. John's last month.

So if everything is out of focus but the fingernails, can it still be a nude? 'Course it can! Use your imagination!

The studio is ever so much cleaner now. There's still a lot to do, but I've gotten a good start on it this weekend. Took two couches to the dump and threw a whole lot of stuff into the dumpster and organized a lot of paperwork that's just been sitting around in stacks. Cleaned the floor - the biggest and most significant improvement. Cleaned a lot of furniture, including a couple of nice leather armchairs that have been covered in camera bags and boxes and books. Put a couple boxes of books outside the door, hoping someone will pick them up and read them. One of these days I'll have to go through my clothes and put out the stuff I haven't worn in a few years, too. And shoes...don't even get me started.

If I can keep the cleanup going for five years, then maybe I will be able to haul everything that's left in one big trailer and my pickup truck.

Fetish Queen Cynnamon and the lovely Angela (her fingers) in Newfoundland last month. I'm still developing and scanning from that shoot and there's a whole lot left.

Spring cleaning today. Scrubbed the floors and cleaned the furniture. Small as my studio/residence is, I'm only half done. I love Simple Green. Just another general purpose cleaner? Nope - it's widely used in aerospace as a cleaner/degreaser, particularly for aluminum parts. That makes is a suitable parts cleaner for motorcycle internal parts, as well as floors and showers and everything else.

I figure tomorrow I'll go do some laundry, finish cleaning the studio, develop more film from the Newfoundland photoshoot and maybe scan some, then go to the bookstore and hang out a little. I haven't been there for several days and I know they miss me.

Got some preparations to make in the studio for next week's shoot as well. It'll be bondage shot on 4x5 and I've got some rigging to do, as well as getting the duvatine laundered. Film...gotta buy film.

OK, I'm tired. Been on my knees scrubbing a lot today and I'm going to go read now.

This is Chloe, taking a smoke break outside the studio several years back.

You know how you get a little depressed, then it sort of spirals downward? I've been fighting that off for the last couple of days. I have a few tricks that work in my situation. Shopping, for example. Not clothes, but web-surfing for lenses and stuff. I'm going to do some heavy house-cleaning this weekend, trashing some old furniture, scrubbing the floor and buying some Ikea goodies. That sort of thing...

Eventually the depression will pass - it doesn't go nearly as deep as it used to, nor stay as long. Knowing that helps.

Anyway...this is Emalie. Wonderful photoshoot years ago. Pentax LX with a 50mm F1.2 lens and Tri-X film probably at ASA 3200, as I remember the light being very low in that hotel. The results were a feature at Nerve.Com called "All the Real Girls."

Ever had faeries dance in your bed? I have.

Yeah, they're all blurry. Aethereal creatures usually are, but in this case it's a slow lens wide open and long shutter speeds. Still, I think it's a pretty cool picture. This shoot has given me a variety of stuff, though little like my other current work. And I've still got a third of the film to go. More new work this weekend, then I brace for my second large format shoot and begin polishing up my act with that camera for awhile.

Today UPS delivers the lens board for the 150/5.6 and a new Domke bag for the Toyo 4x5 and I figure I'll have all the junk I need except the tripod in one bag. All my shit in one bag, gettit?

The lovely Angela on the left and Fetish Queen Cynnamon airborne on the right.

Tomorrow UPS will deliver the new huge Domke bag and a lensboard for the 150/5.6 Sironar-N lens. That means I get to shuffle stuff around so wach system has its own bag, and I can stack the bags in the storage room and out of the way. In my tiny studio even one extra camera bag means lowered utility. It's one more thing to bump in to as I back up against the short wall trying not to cut the girl off at the ankles. As Uncle Sam will be sending me some of my own money back, the next thing is a 100-105mm lens for the 4x5. That will about fill out my predicted needs. I'm such a hardware junky!

This is Paige, really and truly getting off in my hotel room in West Hollywood. She is about as sexual a creature as I've ever known. So open and easy to photograph with no games played, no negotiations made. She just was who she was and I photographed her being her.

As the world gets uglier, I'll concentrate on beauty.

There's been some speculation a few places where I've shown these pictures that the girls were doing very good acting. Or that they are lesbians. Actually there's been a bit of speculation about most everything. Talking with Cynn once, she theorized that there isn't heterosexuality or homosexuality, there's only sexuality. I don't really agree with her entirely, but I do believe that's the case for her and also for Angela. Both like girls. Both also like men (or boys) so they're not exclusively anything. But they also like beauty, so it's not like they're completely non-discriminating. As much as I'd like to, I'm simply not going to get any play. That sort of goes with the job most anywhere though.

Fetish Queen Cynnamon and the lovely Angela, photographed in my St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada hotel room last month.

About the time I'm ready to fall asleep my cat climbs up to my left ear and begs some attention. She wants to be rewarded for a day of doing her job, so I pet her and talk to her. Now, her job is pretty much making sure I don't step on her during the day and getting enough sleep to have the energy to eat and shit. She does that all pretty well, so I scratch her ears and we talk a little. Well, I talk and she listens. I'll talk about books and photo processes and ask her about her day and she'll purr and if I scratch exactly the right spot she adds a layer of vocalization on top or the purr. But she won't actually tell me about her day. I'm left to guess. Generally I'll guess that she slept and kept her tail from under my boots and ate and shit, and she'll agree, thinking that I know all about cats. And I do.

This is Trish laced to a bed in a motel room in West Hollywood. Not the same motel as usual, but a different one. Notice the dramatic shadow falling over her. It was hard to make the shadow and take the picture at the same time, but a comment someone made about a similar picture made it worth doing. You know...I don't think I'll ever get tired of tying up beautiful women like this. Maybe I really am kinky...

Sunday morning. Yesterday's shoot didn't happen - the girl said she got so involved in other things she forgot to email me. But she's excited to shoot, particularly with my new "retro" equipment. I don't know. Pretty girl and all and I met her at one of my favorite cafes, so I'll see her again, on and off. But this is getting to be too much work. And all of that for what would pass for "artistic figure fotografy" if I were to recognize such a category, which I don't for so many reasons - dig a little - it's all in the archives.

This, on the other hand, is Jackie. She showed up on time, stripped down to show no elastic marks, played with herself, wanted to be tied up, and was all of 18 and just graduated from a Catholic girls' school (plaid pleated skirts and all). And she's gorgeous, built, and has perfect skin. Except for her wide-eyed innocence, she was so fucking hot! No, maybe that wide-eyed innocence made her even hotter. The picture was made with the 105mm lens on a Pentax 6x7, using Ilford Delta 3200 film at ASA 1600 and existing lights.

Made in Minneapolis.

As luck would have it, the best photograph of my first real large format shoot has a fully dressed woman in it. Sarah was nice enough to model expecting nothing. Being she seldom wears clothes, this picture might not be useful to her, but what it means to me is that I can do 4x5. I'll have to think about why this one worked, however. But hey, it's all part of the process. This feels like a turning point!

OK, back the Chilean Merlot and the novel and eventually to sleep. I'll be back again tomorrow with another photograph of a nude model or two. I like 'em that way best, but I really like it when a photograph comes together, nude or not.

Model Sarah someplace in East San Diego County a couple of weeks back.

There's a new "Java Joe's" downtown. I stopped in around 8AM for a bagel and coffee. Cost me $3. There were a few other people coming and going and sitting around, but there were just as many staff and the space itself is pretty big. It's in an area being developed with new condos (which aren't selling, BTW) and cafes and such. I have a good idea of what the space leases for, too. I do not know how this business will succeed. But I'll go buy more coffee there, as sitting outside with a cuppa and watching interesting bits of the world walk by is a nice way to spend a few hours. I'll bring that book, too.

The thing that cafes offer is a place to sit. And coffee, of course. But mostly a place to sit and talk, or read. That is to me a valuable thing and I'm willing to spend a lot on a cup of coffee for the privilege. Currently my favorite place is the "Borders Books Cafe." Lots of traffic - folks I know both customers and staff. Next is "Cafe Chloe," but that's become too upscale with the Lambos and such parked at the curbs and an older, more affluent crowd. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not affluent, haven't spent a nickel on botox, and don't find those folks interesting. They made their money and are trying to buy cool. I like folks who are genuinely cool. They exist, but don't pay $4 for a cup of regular coffee.

Miss Ava all trussed up like a chicken in my cheap motel room in West Hollywood a few years back.

Friday night. Just got invited out to hear a friend DJ, but she doesn't spin until 10PM and I'm already up past my accustomed time to retire for the night. I'm a morning person, despite what all these nighttime pictures may indicate. Probably more because I've established a morning routine, than because I'm chrono-biologically hardwired that way. When I travel, for example, I don't have a lot of trouble adapting to the local time. Sometimes coming home I do. Anyway, I'll miss hearing her - last time was at a place called The Dragon Lounge five or six years ago. I think at 56 I'm probably ready to admit that the club scene isn't the right place for me anyway.

Reading The Book of Dave by Will Self. I think my Ex recommended it. When I finish it, I'll give you a review.

Ordered a olive green Domke F-1X "Little Bit Bigger" camera bag today from Badger Graphics. Notice the difference between MSRP and the Badger price. It occurred to me today that with the four Domke bags I already have, color coding them might be a good idea. Thus the green one. Also ordered a Toyo 45A lensboard for #0 Copal shutter to mount the 150mm Syronar-N. Yep, it was payday.

This is Myra, playing with herself in my room of a gay hotel - a converted bordello, actually - in Hamburg, Germany a couple of years back. Haven't heard from her lately - I'll drop her a line one of these days.

The guy came walking down this hall from the elevator and the girls giggled and scampered back into the room. He said, "...it's OK - don't mind me," then turned and entered his own room. What else is he gonna say when confronted by two beautiful naked chix simulating oral sex in a hotel hall way. It would be OK with most guys. And if he'd stuck around the girls probably would have come back out and continued, giving him some better Newfoundland stories. Tourists and travelling businessmen can always use more good stories.

So far I've been developing and scanning the film randomly. Once it's done and if I have the time, I'll cull the results, then put them into some kind of narrative order. The story of what happened up there is worth keeping and worth showing as a story. I've never attempted to do that before. It is a story of seduction - maybe a romance worthy of a book. The story is still happening and we'll get another window on it in July when Fetish Queen Cynnamon and the lovely Angela visit San Diego. It's cool to be part of the story, even as the faithful sidekick.

This is kinda cool - a UK publisher I've done some business with in the past just emailed asking for lesbian images without naughty bits showing for a potential book cover. I'm pretty sure they're asking all the photographers that were shown in that previous book, but it's nice to be asked. I sent them to the recent work with Trish (shown here) and Mariah, and to the work with Angela and Cynnamon (all over, below) as well.

Is there some subtle similarity between grapes and grapefruits that I haven't noticed?

In other news, I haven't heard back from the girl I'm supposed to be shooting in the studio on Saturday. This kind of thing is so common in web photography it almost defines the medium. The bondage shoot of Stacy is now booked for the 28th, and I know that will happen. I still have an issue with lighting though. I need what will effectively be a softbox just above and camera-ward of the recumbant model. In the past I've used a white cotton painter's dropcloth to diffuse hot lights, but when I checked yesterday such cloths aren't available anymore. I may hit a fabric store later today. If I use the old solution of bouncing light off the walls it will end up being too high contrast and having too much background detail because of the ratios of distance from the light to the model and black seamless paper.

Well, that's all the news for today. Maybe I'll write something from the id tomorrow.

Trish, photographed in my motel room in West Hollywood last year. Mariah was there too, and is shown in other posts back a ways.

Last night I picked up the lens and mounted it to the board. Found a little rub mark on the front element, but it won't affect the pictures at all. I met the girl I'll be doing the bondage pix with. The guy I bought the lens from said something about my old motorcycle jacket and though it would be good to photograph a girl in - I've done that quite a bit - anyway Stacy accomodatingly stripped and posed in it for him while I mostly looked on. It'll be fun to photograph her - she's a fun girl. No date for the shoot yet.

This is Fetish Queen Cynnamon, just as it's beginning to sink in that she's having one of the best times of her life. I think that also applied to the lovely Angela and it certainly applied to me. I was hauling that big Pentax around just giggling about the whole thing. (For newcomers, I spent about four days with Cynn and Angela in a Newfoundland hotel room, shooting and talking and drinking wine. The whole story is serialized below in earlier posts. I have to figure out how to do that sort of thing every three or four months, as it's the best possible antidote to the boredom and frustration of "normal" life.)

Picking up the Rodenstock Sironar-N 210/5.6 lens tonight and will mount it on the #1 lensboard I'm currently using shimmed to #0 for the similar 150/5.6 lens. That will give me a better people lens for the studio. As I've got at least one upcoming shoot there, I'd best also get busy cleaning it up a bit and setting up some light.

I may not have mentioned it, but I'm not a fan of strobes. Even with modeling lights it's hard to tell what one will get. Polaroids are helpful, but I sold my 180 camera years back and would prefer not to have to deal with Polaroid backs and such. Or the new digital alternative. I suppose I could pull out the digicam just to be sure though. Have to think about whether that's in keeping with my current goals - I don't think it is.

What I've done in the studio for awhile is simply bounce hotlights off the white walls. It's not entirely satisfactory as the light source is effectively far enough back that the black seamless starts to go grey. Having a more effective close soft light would be useful. I've built a PCV tube 4x8 foot frame that supports a white painter's drop cloth and may hang that from the ceiling with wires and light it from above, flagging off the seamless with the barndoors. (Sort of thinking out loud here.)

The first shoot is of a woman I know casually and she wants some specifically non-sexual figure pictures and that kind of soft light would work great. The next shoot is bondage and the light would also be nice for that. Tonight I'll go see if I have all the right stuff available or if I'll have to run to Home Depot.

Candy (linked on the right) lying about in a motel room in West Hollywood, California. Go see her blog - very interesting writing.

Looks like I've made a deal on a Rodenstock 210mm F5.6 Sironar-N lens for the 4x5. The guy also has a dream lens that I think would fit and I know covers with huge room for movements, a Schneider Super-Angulon XL 90mm F5.6. I'd have to buy lensboards for the Toyo 45A to use them, and I probably can't afford the Schneider right now, but that Rodenstock is going to get used this weekend here in the studio.

He's also got - hold onto your trousers - an Arca-Swiss 8x10 monorail camera! I know - just gives you the willies doesn't it? In a beautifully crafted wooden case with dovetail joinery and everything. I couldn't find any lenses that cover 8x10 while rummaging around tonight, but there's the 4x5 reducing back and lens board adapter that make it a huge 4x5 with the ability to be upgraded later. Another thing I can't afford...but it's nice to dream.

Cynnamon cradling Angela, whom I adore.

Yep, Angela and Cynnamon again. Hope this doesn't get old for you as I've got something like 140 images so far and probably that many more to go. I do have a photoshoot this coming weekend - large format, something along the lines of graphical body parts. We'll both know what that is once I've shot it. And another model wrote this morning asking if I'd shoot some bondage of her. Hard to turn that down, eh? And I'll sprinkle in some other photographs as we go along as well.

The reasons this shoot produced so much are legion. First, we were there together for almost a week with nothing else to do. Compare that to my typical two-hour photoshoot. Second, the girls are gorgeous and simply can't look bad on film. Third, they were just naturally playing around, so there was little I had to do except wait for the next picture to present itself. I wasn't sweating coming up with the next killer pose. Now Cynnamon has modeled for a long time. Angela has not. Cynn instinctively knew what to do with Angela when there was a pause - she'd present both of them for the camera without even thinking about it. Except during the seduction, when neither of them even noticed the camera, of course. You've seen some of those and more will come along. Guaranteed.

The lovely Angela and Fetish Queen Cynnamon on my hotel room bed in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada three weeks or so back.

Once in awhile if a model's been very, very good, I'll let her put clothes on and play dress-up. Angela had been very, very good.

Also once in awhile lucky accidents happen. The picture I made just before this is sharper and less brooding looking but isn't as cool. Except for you folks who know better, I show these and take full credit for creating them. (If they only knew how many wonderful photographs are lucky accidents...)

Happy Easter if you celebrate it! If not...uh...happy Sunday I guess...

Angela, in a rare clothed moment in my hotel room in Newfoundland a few weeks back.

OK, now to bury that last picture with one more of Fetish Queen Cynnamon's legs and the lovely Angela photographed in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada a few weeks back. Scanned this one tonight. More yet to come, of course. Using the big Pentax isn't nearly as hard as using that damned 4x5, you know. But I'll have more from that shoot and make you look at it and sort of follow along as I learn the process and get to know it.

Not much else to say - spent most of the day developing and scanning. When I finish up the next scan I'll cut and file some more negs that are still drying, then dink another glass of wine and read myself to sleep.

OK, the first result from the 4x5 view camera photoshoot with Sarah out in the toolies last weekend. Boy did I learn a lot.

First, the negative. The film, Ilford HP5, was exposed at ASA200 in order to reduce what I expected to be very high contrast. Well, it was very high contrast and developing in XTol for 5 minutes got me a negative with detail throughout. Pretty much throughout. Good enough that I'll probably do the second set of seven sheets for the same time, at least.

Now, because I can't blame the film, here are my screw-ups, starting from small and working toward big:

Looking on the ground glass and looking at the scene itself I didn't "see" the light variations as being as significant as they were. That resulted in indifferent light on the model, with bright sunlit patches on the edges, leading the eye anywhere but to the girl. I'm not used to shooting with sunlight and have forgotten how cruel it can be.

The composition is ordinary. The girl is a detail of the picture, and not the focal point - there isn't a focal point.

And the pictures says nothing about me or about Sarah.

As far as film handling goes, I also screwed up some in the tank. There are slots for each sheet and I got the sides of two of the sheets into the same slot, wrecking both - probably one of those was a masterpiece, but we'll never know. Another sheet came out clear, but I remember exposing film a couple of times with the aperture wide open. I need to work on my agitation technique so I don't get chem on my nice shirts, too.

As I said earlier, I've learned a few things. Probably the most important is that I'm not gonna drag that camera and tripod into the bush again. Next time it will be in a studio or hotel room.

Anyway, nothing requires me to only show good stuff here.

Sarah, I've got seven more sheets to look at - maybe one of them will be useful. Thanks for the patience.

Tamerlane - Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi. The book held my attention throughout. I'd find myself riding home from work just wanting to pick it up again to see where Tamur was gonna go kick ass next. In the late 1300s, a boy rose from rapscallion to emperor on his wits, his aggression, his inhuman cruelty. He came from what is now Uzbekistan and conquered pretty much everything from the Mediterranean to India, from the steppes of Russia to the Persian Gulf. He died en route to Peking where he intended to conquer the last significant (and wealthy) place in the world.

The author, in finding his story, visits the center of Tamur's empire, Samarkand, as well as other stomping grounds. Commentary of the "this used to be" sort is fascinating, and given that much of the empire was reworked and destroyed by the Soviets in the 20th century, how they handled the Myth, the Hero, is instructive.

Great book! I picked it up because of the cover (sometimes you can tell) and gobbled it up because of the writing and the story.

In the mean time I re-read Bayles and Orland's Art & Fear, the single best book on the making of art that I've ever read or even heard about. I read this about once a year to get my head back in the right place. If you are a photographer or an artist of any type, this book should be regular reading. Takes a couple of hours, not expensive.

And now, on advice of the Ex, I'm beginning Will Self's novel, The Book of Dave. I haven't read any of his other work, but it's all gotten good reviews. More on this book later.

Candy, photographed playing with herself in a motel room in West Hollywood awhile back. Though similar to a couple other color pix of her, I don't think I've used this before. But it's hard to be sure. I should have made up some kind of system to check pix off as they're used, but having little foresight I didn't.

Got up at the usual time and went in to work. It's a holiday, so I was pretty much alone there. Checked emails that I might have missed by being out sick yesterday and there weren't any pressing. Made some coffee and had a cup. Came home.

I am sorta tired of being cooped up here in the studio, so I had breakfast at my favorite little cafe downtown, almost got a ticket as I'd not fed the meter (Good Friday apparently isn't a city holiday), came back to make a post on a forum somewhere about the origin of photographic ideas. Now I'm feeling cooped up again and am going to get out a motorcycle and ride down to the bookstore and hang there for a bit.

All together now... ah, the life of an erotic photographer!

Uma with the Magic Wand in my hotel room in Arlington, Texas a few years back. Life does have some exciting moments, too.

That's a Wartenberg Pinwheel (click the pic for a better view). A medical instrument, believe it or not. Maybe neurologists use them? I don't know. That sharp spur thingy pricks and stimulates nerve endings. Maybe it's related to acupuncture? I do know that Angela loved having Cynnamon use it on her. She relaxed and seemed to get lost in the sensation.

The first time I saw one of those used was at a fetish party I was photographing for the promoter. Used by a woman on another woman it seemed a careful process. No screams of pain, just an immersion in the senses.

I learned a lot this trip. I doubt I'll ever put any of it to use personally, but it's all good to know. There's no such thing as bad knowledge, as long as it's true.

Guest photographer Renée Jacobs, coming out.

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Erotic. Erotica. Epiphanies. Erotic Epiphanies? So here's the back story (as they say): Many years ago, in a galaxy far away, I was a photojournalist. Gritty black-and-white, how much can we all suffer, sorts of photos. I was pretty good at it. And very empathic (so people told me). Used to freelance for newspapers and magazines; even had a book published. (Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania- out of print now, but around on Amazon, etc). For that, I lived in an Appalachian coal town for six months that was dying from a toxic underground mine fire. With a gas monitor in my house. That would go off. Fast forward to a slightly more recent galaxy...I was a civil rights lawyer for 15 years after the initial photography stint. Wearing a white hat, doing good. And getting downsized. For the last time, two years ago. A year ago, I decided to start shooting again. I had really not touched my cameras for more than 15 years. A lot of people expected me to pick up my photojournalism again. I decided to start photographing nude women instead. Why? Fifteen years of being a lawyer and the state of the world today.....To recover from that, I needed to surround myself with beauty and strength. And I thought it was a fine time to start exploring what is-- to me--the singular most powerful force on the planet---female sexuality. Let's put it this way. I'm a lesbian (or as I joke with some of my more enlightened friends, "lesbonic."). And it's NOT for the politics. Or because I don't like men (some of my best friends, etc. etc). It's just that's the way I'm hardwired. And I've got a lot to make up for since I didn't come out until I was just about 30. So what better way than to cannonball ride my way right out of 15 years of law and back to the land of the living. Not just the living. But the vibrant. And vibrating. So the nudes I started shooting were very emblematic of the things that intrigue me about female sexuality--mystery, power, explosiveness, unattainability, incomprehensibility. Almost a mythological, sculptural representation. In a way, very representative of what was so compelling and awe-inducingly seductive before I came out. Talking with Don and looking at his work helped me to realize that I was also (subconsciously or not) distancing myself in my images from my own experience. And that so much of it is about sound. Aural, not even oral or visual. There are a few of Don's images where I could practically hear the women and I realized THAT's the most emblematic difference to me about why I'm a lesbian. I can't even begin to describe to you what happens when I hear a woman getting turned on. It's certainly not the only thing that sets me off, but..............So........I wanted to see if I could break down the barriers and try to encompass--for me--what passion is about. Is it erotic? Don't know--wasn't the goal. It was about trying to capture a slice of what I feel about women. This was my first try. For me.

-Renée

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Outstanding photograph. And thanks for saving me some work.

Two nude women in a hotel room. Notice the clutter in the shadows. And notice that this is a full frame picture. That means that the scan was made of the complete film negative image and a little bit into the border of clear film (which scans black).

All full frame scans show small irregularities in the actual edge of the image. Large format sheet film holders show the image extending into the border at each side of one end. Hasselblads have a notch on one side. This one from a Pentax 6x7 has a small extrusions of the image in the left hand corners (easier to see if you click the image to see it bigger). Sometimes the hubris of full frame printing lets people go a little overboard, as in 35mm prints with sprocket holes partially showing. Back in photo school, we all wanted to do FF all the time, as it showed we got it right in the view finder.

In fact it's still considered pretty cool by some of the digital crowd who use various post-production effects to fake it. Of course, if the side proportions aren't right or if the FF edges are exactly the same on each of their scans, it just looks goofy.

Anyway, this picture of Fetish Queen Cynnamon (on the left) and the lovely Angela (on the right) isn't perfect by a long shot, but there wasn't much I could crop off, so I left the border in. Made with the 45mm f4 ultrawide lens on a Pentax 6x7.

The lovely Angela and Fetish Queen Cynnamon, scanned tonight from film developed yesterday. So much film to go. Gonna be nice to finish up so I can start deleting duplicates and the lower quality pictures and winnow the bushel down to half a cup. But I like being busy with the photography. Sometimes it's months between photoshoots and I go crazy with nothing to do. Life is always lumpy like that.

OK, back to scanning the film.

Angela and Cynn photographed with a Pentax 6x7 using Ilford Delta 3200 film at ASA 1600. This was actually shot in the stairwell of my hotel. We kept hearing voices from below and The girls and I would cover up (well, they would) and scamper up the stairs back to the room. Once another guest caught one of the girls naked in the hallway, but I think that's on film too, so we'll get to it sooner or later...

Yesterday a photographer friend had an epiphany - she found out what erotic photography is all about. They (photographer and model) giggled, drank, were intimate (I do not presume to know by which definition), had fun and made pictures. She doesn't know if the pictures are any good yet, but I'm betting they are. Any time you can get a person to open up for the camera you're likely to be delighted with what the film shows, both the image itself as well as the memory it evokes.

We'd talked quite a bit about what it means to make erotic photographs rather than just trying to put erotic cues into conventional pix. Putting too much structure into them can make the pictures too obvious. We've also talked about the grand spectrum of sex, ranging from the quieter stuff I record to flagrant wall-bouncing, screaming fuckfests. I don't know what she got yesterday,