Eyes

Recent research indicates that people behave differently when they know they are being watched.  That is true of Ravens as well.  If they know or even think they are being watched when caching food, they either only pretend to cache it or cache it and come back and move it when they are certain they [...]

Male Models

You seldom see males modeling nude.  Perhaps this is because historically much nude photography has been by heterosexual males who prefer the female form. (With notable exceptions) Or perhaps it is because the lines of the male body aren’t as aesthetically appealing.  Or maybe most males look much like the real model for Michelangelo’s David [...]

It’s a cactus. Really.

In the Navajo creation story, First Man and First Woman have an argument that leads to a four-year separation between all the men and all the women.  During that time, the women use various aids, including cactus, to satisfy themselves.  Mischief resulted.  Fortunately for the women that did not happen in this, the fifth world, [...]

The artist in this cartoon just violated one of the fundamental rules of artists working with nude models.  I doubt he’ll forget it.  Thanks to William Steig and the New Yorker.

Photographic Film Users

Hiatus Ending

This happens every winter.  The days get short and dark and its too cold to shoot outdoor nudes and so I take a long hiatus from model photography and go back to nothing but landscapes.  And then I promise to spend many of those long winter evenings developing and printing the results of the summer [...]

Happy Solstice!

Later today the sun will be directly over the Tropic of Capricorn 23.5 degrees south of the equator. (Think Australia, Chile, Brazil and South Africa.) Lovely. Tomorrow the days for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere begin to lengthen. Imperceptibly at first. We won’t notice it for several days. “Solstice,” after all, is Latin [...]

The Halloween Dress

Happy Halloween.

The Trumpet in the Orchestra of Evolution

We live beneath a bird highway.  Every year thousands of Sandhill Cranes use the highway to fly back and forth to summer breeding grounds and winter feeding grounds.  They mark the changes of summer to autumn and winter to spring for us.  We use them to keep track of our lives. 

We heard the first [...]

Sexual Harassment, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill

[I know this is a blog about photography but I'm going slightly afield today because I am in a state of high dudgeon about Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court and his latest book. We'll get back to photography tomorrow. You can read some of the press coverage here and here.
I [...]