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 !