getting closer (preview)

Famous photographer Ansel Adams once said "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop."

I do hope that I can show you more than 12 really good photos in a year, but it's true: one cannot produce series of all really good images. I can't. And I have see nobody who can.

When I do a photo session I have a goal, an idea of one special image that I have in my imagination. During the session I search for this one image. I put the light as I imagine, I ask the model for the pose and expression (in fact: try to produce the ambience and make the model feel so that she "automatically" produces the desired expression). Then I take photos until I reached the goal.

It's little things: moving the head a little bit changes the shadow of the nose and the image might still be nice but it is already not perfect anymore. So it needs some shots, subtle changes, until I have what I want.

Of course, if you just want that one image, it isn't necessary to shoot all the time. You could just look through the viewfinder and only click when you believe you got it. But that makes a session very boring for a model and it makes her feel insecure ("not good enough") when you take a long time but never click.

I analog times photographers used to change the film back with an empty one, so that they could click and give the model the impression that she is being photographed, without actually using film. Then, when the photographer felt that he's close to the goal he changed the back for one really loaded with film.

With digital cameras this is not necessary anymore, of course. It doesn't elevate your cost whether you click 30 times or 300 times... So I click from the beginning.

Sometimes, on the way to the originally imagined image, others ocurre by chance: you see a pose, a shadow, a composition, that you like and then follow this path for a while until you come back to the original idea. And, when I actually think I have reached the goal I still continue to photograph some a little different photos, and so sometimes in one single session two or three really good photos emerge. (There are also the session in which none comes out, of course...).

Now, with the selections (series) I show here I am very much aware that not all shots are great shots, by far not.

If I would publish only those images that I truly see as great artistic photography, my Patreon would maybe show 100 or 200 images - actually the gallery has more than 50'000 photos... And if it were only the very good and the good ones, there would be maybe 1000 or 2000. (I have selected my personal best-of from the series I published here in the first two years in my book "erotic node art photography 1" with approx. 250 images).

After a session I usually wait some time (some days, a week or two) to do the selection. This is because often during a session I kind of fall in love with the model and see everything in her as very beautiful. I must calm down a bit and get some distance to be able to see the photos as photos and not just as a representation of what I liked so much or what made me so very hot...

I work with copies (I never delete an original photo, they are in my backups, because I know that in another moment I could find an image great that I considered trash now). So from the working copies first I remove all shots that I consider "bad". Out of focus, wrong exposure, wrong composition, unflattering for the model... things like that.

Then I look at similar images side by side (you know: 5 or 6 clicks of more or less the same position and framing) and keep the better ones. In the end I look at very similar images and also just keep the better ones.

So now I have the series that contains (if lucky) one or two great images, 5 or 6 quite good images, and the rest what I would call "not bad". Of course all is a matter of taste, and sometimes my "not bad" is exactly what others see as great.

However, I think in total the series give a much broader impression and thus, for a lively site like my patreon gallery, are more interesting than just a very restrictive selection like in my book, or an even more restrictive one as if it was hanged on the walls of a real life gallery.

Also, and this happens quite often, during a session some excitation occurs and the images come out that are maybe not that artistic (although I almost always try, even then...) but very interesting in an other sense.

So for the series I just uploaded for power and special level, the goal was to shoot very very close close-up details of Layla in in some artistic frame that goes beyond mere documentation of what is. I am often fascinated by the details of a woman (and of some details in particular), want to investigate them from really very close, especially when there are those hairs that I like so much, and would love to take images that one one hand transfer the exciting content, but then again are artistic enough to hang them on a wall.

I think I reached the goal in a few (very few) of the images of those series. And I think the others are worthwhile to show you, too :-)

Here's a preview.