More of the Goddess of Glam

Does it sound like I'm still fairly jazzed about my shoot with Tera Patrick? If it does it's because I am. Some of you might be thinking, "Enough already. She's just another model." Nope. Sorry. She's not. She's had the cover of Playboy, the cover of Penthouse, and has appeared in I don't know how many magazines around the world. She's not just another glamour model.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not smitten. (Well, from a pretty girl shooter's point-of-view I suppose I am. But that's different then the traditional use of the word.) And I'm not in heat. I shoot a lot of pretty girls. I shoot them regularly. Plenty of them are so hot they sizzle. Fortunately, I've built something of a personal immunity to the effects of having sexy, naked, gorgeous babes dangling off the front of my camera lens. I don't know if that's a good thing or not? Especially from a purely "guy's" perspective. But that's how I've become. When shooting, I'm all about the process of capturing the model's beauty and sex appeal and not about collecting raw data to feed my fantasy life if you get my drift.

There was a time, years ago, when the crotch of my pants became a little tighter while shooting these babes. But that was then and this is now. Maybe because I'm older? Maybe because I'm a bit jaded? Maybe because there's been so many of them parading in front of me (often in their birthday suits) as I wielded a camera? I really don't know. It is what it is and I am what I am and, frankly, I think it's better this way. Now I can concentrate on the craft of photography and not be effected by other stuff going on in my head. That's a good thing, right?

Shooting Tera -- and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be shooting her again -- was personally memorable. Not only is she drop-dead gorgeous but she truly "works" the camera and, for a shooter, that's a joy to behold. While we were shooting, I told her I felt like all I was doing was pushing my finger on the shutter. And that's kind of all I was doing. Tera simply busted move after move, pose after pose, and one sulty expression after another.

Plenty of girls who work in front of cameras could learn a lot from watching Tera work. She's incredibly focused and communicates so much with her eyes: Not just to the ultimate viewer, later on when her images are published, but to me, to the photographer. I always knew excatly when to let my finger depress the shutter because she told me when to do so with her eyes. With many models, everything sort of comes together -- body and expression -- into the next pose and that's when you snap. With Tera, it's not so much that she moves into the poses and then becomes still because she might still be moving when she tells you to snap. And she tells you when to do so merely with her eyes.

I don't know if any of this makes sense. Maybe. Maybe not. That's just how it went and it was a great, personal, experience as well as a great learning experience.

I messed around with a couple of Tera's images and converted them to monochrome. B&W often adds more "drama" to an image: I think it puts soul into a photograph. Maybe that's why in Westerns, Indians are so resistant to having their pictures taken. According to Hollywood, Native Americans believed the camera would steal their spirits. Maybe they knew something about it that photographers didn't back then? After all, all those early shooters had to work with was monochrome. It might not have been so much about the camera stealing the Indians' spirits but more about the soul of a photo that's captured in B&W and the Native Americans sensed that. Who knows? Not me, that's for sure.