The Lesser Art of Pretty Girl Shooting

A fair number of people perceive glamour/nude photography as a lesser art. They relegate it to a lesser art because of (what they consider to be) the prurient aspects of images of nude and semi-nude, feminine beauty. Although it's obvious this is more of a morality-based judgement than an artisistic critque, they often let their judgements seep into their perceptions of the aesthetic value of the genre.

The proliferation of the internet, as well as the dSLR, has meant there's more people shooting and making available glamour and nude images of women than ever before. And it seems to mean there's more women willing to model their charms than ever before.

Unfortunately, it also means there's more publicly-available crappy images of those willing models than ever before.

I don't know how most of you react to this, but when someone trivializes my work because of the subject matter, rather than its creative, technical, and aesthetic qualities, I get a bit perturbed.

Throughout history, when artists have painted or sculpted nudes, it's often been considered high art. That notion is still with us. But when photographers shoot nudes, it is considered, by many, to be little more than smut. Interesting dichotomy. To make matters more troubling, it seems this dual-standard is growing, rather than diminishing, in recent times.

If you're a successful fashion photographer or portraiture shooter who occasionally photographs nudes, you're simply an artist experimenting outside the boundaries of what you normally shoot. The great portait guy, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, recently put out a book of nude portraits of nude porn stars. It was a big success for Mr. T-G-S. That's great for Tim and probably didn't do much to lower people's perceptions of him as a genuine artist. But if you're, principally, a glamour/nude photographer, people tend to percieve you as something else. And the words "art" or "artist" don't often creep into the minds of many of the people making those morality-based judgement calls regarding what that "something else" might be.

Does my subject matter say anything about my level of skill and artistic and photographic abilities? Apparently, to many, it does. It seems to say, to many people, that I must be less skilled, less artistic, and less of a photographer. But in reality, do I put as much personal love, time, caring, and effort into the images I capture? As much as, for example, your average, super-star, fashion shooter? Many people might not think so. Of course, these many people are wrong... close-mindedly wrong, judgementally wrong... wrong, wrong, wrong.

I read something the other day-- Someone was commenting on the current state of glamour photography. This person wrote, "...the style of photography and what is possible has changed from Suzy's (Suze Randall's) time, its now not necessary to make people the slave of lighting and set up. USM focus lens, portable flash and being fluid with the camera, freeing your eye from the viewfinder is what DSLR has brought us."

Well, that might be true for some who pursue the art of pretty girl shooting these days, but it ain't true for everyone. Your's truly, as an example, puts as much thought and applies as much know-how to the lighting, the set-up, and nearly all aspects of the work as anyone else, Suze Randall or even Timothy Greenfield-Sanders included. I've not yet attained their status as shooters--perhaps I never will--but that doesn't mean I don't put as much creatively-motivated effort into the process of capturing images as they do. Many of you probably are the same way. That's part of why you're reading this blog.

Okay. I'm done ranting and venting my frustrations. The gratuitous pretty girl in the images is Faith, shot a few months ago. I had faith that Faith would make for some decent pretty girl pics and she didn't let me down.