This blog and its accompanying website are experiments. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain is an inchoate idea of what a photograph of a nude ought to look like when it is of a landscape with a nude in it. And somewhere else is a vision of what a landscape without a nude in it ought to look like as well. Whether I will ever create a solid, material two-dimensional photograph of that vision that you could hang on your wall – or want to – remains to be seen.

In the meantime, I’ll post some thoughts on photography here. Probably on other subjects as well. I welcome comments, constructive criticism and your knowledge as well. I am a retiring and recovering trial lawyer with no formal art or photography training and my ignorance of the subject is as vast as some of the landscapes I shoot. Please share your knowledge with me and my readers.

Let’s get a few basics out of the way now. First, a great deal of nude photography consists of photos taken by pretentious photographers of self-conscious women. Everyone involved in the process seems to think that because a naked woman is involved, overt seriousness is required to deflect objections to the enterprise. Humor is not allowed and it is best if it appears that no one is having any fun. This attitude is leftover from the Puritans and currently is embodied by the “Repuritan” Party. European photographers and their models seem a little less encumbered by it, but my feeling is that many of them too are infected by our puritanism. It results in much technically competent photography that is boring. It also results in some technically incompetent photography that is boring. There are men in the world who use a camera in an age-old male pursuit: Getting women to take their clothes off. That is their right I suppose, I just wish they wouldn’t inflict their snapshots on the rest of us.

Another important point: Examining photography on a computer screen is like examining the flavor of a fine wine by looking at the unopened bottle. Wine is meant to be drunk; photographs are meant to be printed. So when I write of a photograph that I have seen only on my computer, remember that I am criticizing a stream of electrons flowing across a computer screen, not the real thing. To continue the alcohol metaphor, it is the difference between beer and stale beer. You get the point. Nonetheless, I do believe that some valid things can be said about even a photograph that has been downsized, jpeg’ed and otherwise messed with in order to get it onto the worldwide web in a form that people can look at but not steal.

Finally, I exclude from this blog all of the pornography and all of the “pinup” photos of young women on the web today. They are designed solely to titillate males. None of it is art; most of it is a form of pornography. It demeans and objectifies the women, helps create and maintain unreal, false ideas about feminine beauty and operates; in its way, to separate the genders. More on that in later posts.

And, just to be clear, while I don’t much like that kind of photography; I like living in a country that allows it. Mr. Justice Black was right, the First Amendment means what it says.