Where have all the naked people gone ??

We had our annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Photo Society building last weekend for this years RPS (Royal Photographic Society) Scottish members print exhibition selection. Its something of a mix of fun and anguish as poor James with his happy helpers try to select a single image from each member to represent the best of RPS Scottish members photography.

Now, there are 40 available print places but more that 40 members attending so at least a few will have left somewhat disappointment but that's an unfortunate fact of life, never easy.

The system of selection is basically all the members present vote on what stays in and what gets left in the print cases, and as this represents all styles of photography the aim is for a varied selection so many fine images will get rejected to make room for an even spread of image diversity.

First round is to select up to 2 images from each member, then these are whittled down to the required 40, and this is where the fun starts. I was fortunate to have 2 into the second round so it was up to me to chose which print goes forward to the final round.

And this is it, my offering from 2 portraits, a dancer and this image of model Katy D taken in my own studio.

The 2 non selected were portraits of local model Fredau which considering the number of portraits this year was an obvious choice as there were very few nudes. In fact there were No other nudes, at least in the final round apart from what looked like a figure standing in the street but was actually an undressed mannequin..., so this begs the question about variety from the Scottish members ?

So, why are there no other photographers offering art nude, certainly the Edinburgh Photo Society has an excellent studio and have seen shots of nudes including a certain flame red haired uk model in their own members portfolio. It's not that the RPS is in any way prudish and worldwide there are many RPS togs working with the nude, but just not so much in Scotland.
Shame really.

Just realised that I am lying, there was one other art nude print on the day, the one I had to take out...

 We did not manage to get down last last year but 2010 saw an image of Raphaella go into the exhibition and it made the front cover of the Scottish Region newsletter, not on page 3 as it was suggested :), I did offer landscapes and portraits but again this was chosen as much due to being on its own for this image style.....

So, a challenge for 2013 - lets see a few more art nudes to chose from up here, feeling a bit of a lone maverick which is just not me !

Feb 2012

A few weeks ago I accepted a call for a photographer to take pics of a local artist dong a full body paint. June McEwan is a really splendid artist that creates some wonderful figure and landscape painting works. She also has a talent as a face painter and she wanted to try developing her body art.
For now just a few pics from the session in progress, finished works images not yet available for me to publish. 

We had a great day and in the spirit of collaboration June and I are hoping to do something more in a style of my own work as a follow up session with a model from Perth.

 -----------------------

Following on the painting theme an acrylic done during a recent local school highers class art study day.

4 Artists, 3 hrs, 1 pose. I cannot claim to be the artists (I so wish I could), just the well rested subject.

 

--------------------------

And to finish something from the archives - a shot taken a number of years ago in my Glasgow flat when I was in my experimenting with lighting the nude phase.

I have resurrected this image  to use in a project using the torso as a base for digital art, and also its a great shot for demonstrating lighting for my fine art studio workshops where we use a life model for part of the session. more details : www.davehunt.eu/workshops

Image theft

Sure, this happens all the time, but who the flaming heck is some low life called Maxim Ivanov, sounds well dodgy.

Below is a link to a post by blogger who calls herself Graceful Goddess, her blog is Lens Erotica that has included a pic of mine but credited to some idiot Maxim Ivanov who has no doubt claimed copyright. Now its a form of flattery to have other use your work and they may be innocent in referencing pics found on the web to the wrong artist, but that's no excuse for being a prat (trying to keep it clean). Shame, cos there are some lovely images and words on their blog but can you believe anything on it.... 

And now for the real issue and whats prompted this rant.. I am often accused of always looking for the good in folk so in my naive way was thinking this may be a genuine error of identity so just get in touch with the author or photographer and point out the error, give them a chance to explain. But can I .. nah !! - cannot find any way to contact either, all I know about said individual is that they are female (narrows it down by 50%)....  I have little time for folk that hide behind their online persona - all this 'I wish to be anonymous' rubbish is just immature - if you are using others work and not willing to be approached to answer for your talk then you should keep your thoughts to yourself !!

Image in question is my Tree of Life image taken back in 2006 when model KatyT was in Scotland (was my second ever session with her),  its won competitions and generated sales, as I said that's life as we live in a world of insecure folk that have to plagiarize to be noticed.

Tree of life by Dave Hunt
that's me, not Maxim Ivanov - who ever the heck he/she/it is .. !!

There, that's that off my chest, time to report abuse to Google :)

http://lenserotique.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html

Maybe if I mention Maxim Ivanov again this blog may be found in web searches so folk can see how he/she/it operates.

Art Nude virginity....

Been a bit of a quiet spell for photography in general especially personal stuff.

So, have been sorting out work and recreated my website, now with more pics and less waffle, and most important mobile and tablet friendly. I used Viewbook which was actually a bit of an uphill battle, Viewbook is great but I had to keep some of my url's the same as some are in printed promotions.. sorry, boring stuff .. move on.

In sorting out my work I came across the very first location and studio art nude sessions I ever did, when I say studio read my flat in Glasgow !

My first location shoot was with model Natasha from south England who was traveling around Scotland, at the time she had a high profile on Net-Model. It was mid December and bloody cold, we only had an hour so headed up from Glasgow to the shores of Loch Lomond to a spot I know and took our chances with being left alone. It was only afterwards that I realised how nervous I was, not so much shooting a nude but doing the whole outdoors thing but Tash was great, confident and professional. It was back in 2004, amazing how time has just flown by.

After the shoot I dropped her off at Contrast Studio so she could have a kip before getting the train home, next time I visited Con at Contrast found out my nickname there was 'That evil bastard that froze poor Tash..' all in good taste of course:)

One very cold model .. sorry Tash !

Then later in 2005 I met Sarah, she was a Yoga teacher and was life modelling at a class I attended, she had fantastic muscle tone so I suggested a photo shoot which she had never done before but she was keen. Had my rather simple Jessops Studio light kit which looking back was rather harsh but it was a great intro into lighting the human form. We did a second shoot which somehow lacked the energy of the first probably as I was just repeating the first session, a valuable lesson. Some of the shots were great and was really chuffed when she asked for some prints for her partner ..... and her Mum !. That was a real compliment.

 I have always felt that getting into studio art nude from my background in life drawing has been a major influence in the style of my work, probably why I never got into tacky glamour style images so much, to me it's all about shape and form. Also looking back going to life classes got me past the whole 'oh, I am talking to a naked lady' thing.

Sarah on s plinth ..... well, lounge coffee table !

So, I am now looking back over 7 years with more art nude sessions in the can than I can remember, taking into account that they were firsts I can see how I could have done better but I am far from ashamed of the results.

Not a bad start to a genre of photography that I never planned to get into, and it did develop into 2 Associate qualifications :)

Photography Masters Cup 2011

This years awards have recently been announced and the winners and nominations images now made public. I had a small success with a nomination in the Fine Art Category, I normally enter about 4-5 images into this or the Nude category but there is a lot of overlap between accepted images for each so it's all a bit of a lottery.

Slightly bitter sweet for me this year, whilst it's great to have the nomination which bearing in mind the number of entries across the planet is an achievement, but like other years I felt other images were as strong for this comp in the Nude category but hey, gift horse and mouth etc.

www.thecolorawards.com/

My nominated image is from the Dancers in the Dark project with a shot of Katy taken in Contrast Studio in Glasgow last year. This is one of my faves for the project and was more Fine Art than Nude hence the category entry. I was concerned that as the images are developed for fine art print that a lot of the subtly of these images are lost as jpegs and have clearly changed by the time they hit their site but I guess not enough to knock it back.

Looking back at all the entries shows the shear diversity of work, some I like, some I admire and inspires me, and some ... well ... each to their own eh !

I always wonder how much time the judges get to view each image and what their criteria are when faced with such a large number, especially as there must be so many in similar styles. I can see work in there that is very similar to some of my own entries and do they favour a spread of photographers and countries ? Either way it's such a varied competition and worth spending some time pouring through both the Pro and Amateur entries.

The Photo Masters Cup is related to the Black and White Spider Awards which gave me an Honorable Mention with a male nude this year. blog link