MonkeyMetal

Another set from a few years ago.  In case you haven’t noticed this is Rebecca.  This time we’re along the north shore of the Picnic Point Peninsula.  This particular location is my favorite on the entire lake.  I’ve also shot here with William.  

The second in my series on food.  Emily is a Chicago model who was up in Madison last October.

I am extremely pleased with how these turned out.  Emily is an outstanding model and I would recommend her to anyone.

Since the begining of the year I’ve been trying to do this series of photos with models covered with various foods.  Flour, cocoa, sugar, and others.

The problem was, I’d have tons of people interested, but after a few messages they’d disappear, stop responding.  Or maybe some would respond, we’d actually set up a shoot, then at the last minute they’d cancel.  Both of these scenario’s happened MANY times.  I was begining to think the series was cursed.  So I stopped looking for a few months.

Then Elena contacted me, and we actually got to set up something and shoot it!  These are the results of that.  Elena is covered with flour in this set.

These are kind of old, well, January, of last year.  Kriestienn came over one night, and we tried a few things.

Keesh Lorraine is an amazing model in the Madison area.  You can see some of her other work on her Model Mayhem site.  I first contacted her about working with gold leaf, such as the ones I’ve done with Rebecca.  We ended up going a slightly different direction doing outdoor nudes at Devil’s Lake State Park.  While not the first time I’ve visited the park (many times as a boy scout), it was the first time I’d photographed there.  And I hadn’t been there in quite a few years.

After stopping at the Visitor’s center for a vehicle sticker, we went to the south side of the lake to climb the east bluff.

In the far left distance you can see the lake, about a third of a mile away.  At this point we’re about 200’ above the lake, though we’d only gone 75’ horizontally.  I’d wanted to go higher, but, um, I’m not in that good a shape.  So we stopped here and got quite a few pictures.

  As you can see we’re above the tops of most of the trees.  The colors of the rocks, and the lichen really match well with her skin.

This next pictures is my favorite.  The diagonals of the rocks, the matching angles of her arms and legs, the straining of her muscles.

On the way back down, we took a little side trail, and found a boulder field much closer to the ground.

To me it looks like she belongs there.

Not much text with this post.  Still working my way through all the pictures from that night.  Click the pictures for larger images.

Yeah, it’s been more than a few days since my last post of Rebecca.  But better late than never.

I really liked the way the sunflower looked when I used this other black and white conversion.

The Biocore Prairie that is.  So this is the first set from my shoot with Rebecca on August 22nd.  There are a LOT more sets from this shoot.  We stared shooting at around 7:30pm.  We planned to start an hour earlier, but someone was late.  She made up for it though because we took our last picture at 3am.

To find out more about the Biocore Prairie just click the link above.  It’s a really amazing place, along with the rest of the Lakeshore Preserve.  I just discovered most of it last year.  I’d been out to Picnic Point for the first time about 6 or 7 years ago, and have visited a few times since then, but I’d never explored the other direction.  There are some amazing places that I’ll be showcasing more of, especially for University Nudes.

And now on to Rebecca.

This is the very first picture I took for the day. It's rare that the first turns out so well.

I love the mood in this one. And the coloring looks almost 70's film like.

If your monitor is not calibrated correctly this one may not look good to you.

After the sun had gone behind the trees on the horizon Rebecca climbed the tree to get more light.

My next post will be either Sydney Max defying gravity, or Jason my newest University Nude.

When I lost my job earlier this year I thought about going back to school to become a teacher.  I don’t have any formal education training, but anytime I did any teaching or training at work I enjoyed it.  And I’ve had a few people comment over the years that I’m pretty good at it.

I like to shoot nudes.  I even have some nude self portraits on my blog.  I don’t want to stop shooting or stop sharing in order to get a job.  And I don’t want to get a job, then be fired because somebody sees my work.  So I’m not pursuing being a teacher.

It doesn’t bother me that a choice of one thing prevents me from choosing another.  There are thousands of decisions that I make that are that way.  As an example, I purchased my Condo last year.  While it does offer tax advantages and the ability to remodel how I like, I am prevented from moving as easily as someone who lives in an apartment.

What bothers me is that the Church Ladies think that nudity  has to do with teaching ability.  That people are being prevented from pursuing or performing a much needed job that they are otherwise qualified for.  As much as 1/3rd of our current teachers could retire in the next 4 years, and our society is putting up artificial barriers.

And what about the people who do follow the Church Lady rules?  Are they really the types of people we want as teachers?  Just like in my experience people who pose nude share the traits of confidence, intelligence, creativity and a willingness to try new things.  What characteristics do the teachers who are willing to follow the demands of the Church Ladies show?