Andrew Marvell and Photography of Bodies

My wife is in charge of shampoo in our house. I just use whatever she chooses. Today, I noticed that we currently are using a brand that labels its shampoo, “Bodifying Shampoo.” I am over 40 and need reading glasses which I do not wear in the shower. I put them on after [...]

Art, Cats and Dogs

The question of what is art has bedeviled humanity for a long time.  We’ll have some discussions here about that subject.  (Or, I’ll just talk to myself if no one ever reads this blog.)  Some of the discussions may get pretty philosophical and serious.  So we’ll begin on a lighter note, reminding ourselves that artistry [...]

Free Speech and Photography

I mentioned in the very first post on this blog that I love living in a country where taking photographs is almost always protected speech under the First Amendment even if I don’t like the photography. But I was taken to task for not being more specific about First Amendment rights for photographers and [...]

Lake Superior Nudes

Of all the photographers I know of that are working with nudes outdoors – also called “environmental nudes”, a term I think meaningless; you can’t take a human being out of the “environment” any more than you can take the land out of the “landscape” – Craig Blacklock is probably my favorite. He is [...]

Photographers will appreciate the cover of this old pot boiler’s cover. It isn’t great art, just as the story probably wasn’t either. But the artist did at least get the view camera in foreground right. The image of the model is upside down on the ground glass, just as it would still [...]

Gender

This is from an interview with Gloria Steinem:
Q: Do you see the world through the prism of gender?
A: No, the world looks at me through the prism of gender.
Her answer raises some serious questions for photographers, especially serious fine art photographers.  One assumes that people who take pictures for the “Playboy wannabe’ web sites such [...]

Ansel Adams and Nudes

Ansel Adams reportedly did not make photographs of nudes. He said of Edward Weston’s nudes that they all looked like they were dead. I’ve never been able to look at this photo and many other of Weston’s nudes without thinking of that comment.
I don’t believe it, of course. It is quite possible [...]

Ruth Bernhard

Ruth Bernhard
I mentioned Ruth Bernhard in one of the first posts on this blog and I thought I should show a few of her photographs. She lived to be 101 years old. A chance meeting with Edward Weston in the 1935 was a life changing event for her. He became her mentor [...]

Art Nudes Blog

Here is the first in what I expect will be a long line of reviews of photography blogs and web sites. After each review, I will add them to the blogroll at the right. Unless, that is, I find nothing useful or redeeming about them in which case I’ll just omit them.
As you [...]

Adobe’s Damn DAM

Dear Adobe,
I swear that I will never again by another Adobe product if I, again, have to learn a new Digital Asset Management (DAM) program to use the product. It isn’t worth it. Life is finite and unpredictable. The universe and the timing of all our deaths seems arbitrary and capricious. [...]