Saturday, July 23, 2011

A Kiss of Light

I'd be a big, fat, liar if I didn't admit I've fantasied about kissing some of my models. I won't say where I'd often like to kiss them -- beyond the usual kissable places -- this being a socially-correct and polite blog... well, it's sort of socially-correct and polite, text-wise, at least. I also won't say my fantasies don't sometimes go beyond kissing. But that's another story, one better kept private.

Since I'm rarely invited to kiss my models other than with harmless, welcoming or departing, pecks on their cheeks, even the occasional brief and friendly lip-to-lip action, I'm usually left with merely kissing them with light. (Sucks, don't it?)

I don't, of course, kiss (with light) many of my models just anywhere. Mostly, I kiss them with light in places that match some of the very same places I'd like to kiss them in other ways. Go figure, right? BTW, if I'm sounding like a perv or a GWC, I really don't care. I prefer to think I'm sounding like most all men. Leastwise, men who are honest about this kind of stuff.

When it comes to photos of beautiful naked women, one might think a viewer's eyes, especially male eyes, would have no problems focusing on certain places on the model's body that are "places of interest." Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. Still, as a glamour photographer, I often feel compelled to use light to draw the viewers' attention to some of those body locations that are, to be honest, of major interest to my viewers.

I often do this -- kiss them with light in all the right places, that is -- with highlights and accent lights. For those who need this spelled out for them, those "places of interest" usually include the models' faces, breasts, and butt cheeks. Obviously, there are other "places of interest" which might be included on my list of places to kiss....with light or otherwise, that is. It simply depends, for the most part, on what I'm trying to accomplish with the pictures or what content limitations, or desired exaggerations, that might have been communicated to me by those writing checks.

D'uh, right?

Modeling lights and chimping are great ways to insure you're kissing your models with light in all the right places. (Or many of the right places.) Often, after chimping or examining what the modeling lights are doing, I have my models adjust their poses so those "places of interest" are kissed, and kissed well, with whatever lights I've assigned to do the kissing. Many of you probably do the same.

The use of additional lights to highlight a model's "places of interest" is certainly not anything new or original or something many of you haven't considered or regularly do when you're shooting models. I'm simply explaining my way of thinking about, looking at, or imagining what I'm doing with those particular lights when I'm using them to highlight or accent certain parts of my models. You know, as in "Hmm... I should kiss her harder there," or "I need to turn her a bit so the light kisses her better on her..." Well, you get the idea.

The mostly-naked and nicely-put-together model at the top is Madison. As you can see, I used some extra lights to kiss her in some of the right places... some of those "places of interest."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I enjoy reading your blog because most of your entries are about stories, experiences and human factor of photography and not like in most other blogs that are only about gear and/or technical oriented photography chat.
Having said that I applaud your honesty here ;)