MatureModelMM wrote:
I have been following your work faithfully since I first became aware of what you were doing. I love the recent shots, they are all nicely done and as usual, the settings are nothing short of amazing.  It's possible that some of the older ones might be just a bit more intense or attention getting, due to either the lighting or the poses, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the new ones. 

If I lived nearby, I'd be honored to spend an afternoon naked in those settings for you to photograph me. Any model should, because your work is consistently visually appealing.

Thank you for your kind words!  I can see how some of the older ones might come off as more intense or attention getting; I recently found a film profile online that I programmed into my 5Dmk3; it (as best as is possible on digital) more or less replicates the tonal quality of Fuji Pro 160S, a film I love shooting.  So the colors are more muted, the contrast is lower, but the edge acutance is higher.  There's less inherent drama in such a look, but more inherent realism.  I wonder if, perhaps, I should continue to use this setting for architectural shots - that's always been a favorite film for architecture, because it captures the scene honestly, without sentiment.  But perhaps the more contrasty, color-saturated look of the default setting would suit model photography better... I might do half-and-half on my next shoot in a couple of weeks.  Thanks for the thought!  And of course I'd be glad to shoot you if you came around, but it sounds as if your health is not fantastic right now?  For one of the locations this week, since they never grant photographers permission (even with $1M in liability insurance), we had to climb two fences, shimmy under a third, and squeeze through a gap in a fourth - not to mention climbing up and down about 30 flights of stairs, about 8 total miles of walking, and climbing up on stuff to take shots.  So might wait until your health improves

Python Photos wrote:
I would love to have access to a place like that for shooting. I think my favorite is the one with one model on an old sofa and the other looking through a window. The model on the flanged blind on top of the equipment bothered me a little for safety reasons, but if you guys were sure of the situation, that's fine.

Spend 20+ years traversing various ruined buildings, and you'll learn where the best ones are!    But seriously, I never push models to climb ANYTHING they're not comfortable with.  That was actually a shot proposed by Vox, and it was within her comfort level, so we did it up.  Yeah, falling two stories off that thing would have been bad, but she was confident and her footsteps were cautious, so nothing to really worry about, any more so than in any of these places.

Eros Fine Art Photo wrote:
To be perfectly honest, I find myself often disappointed by your work.  You go to the trouble of finding these AMAZING locations (any of which I would love to shoot at), but put little effort into integrating the model into the shot.  Instead of using the models to create these powerful, thought-provoking, or even haunting photos, you just...pose them. 

Their expressions are bland, the poses are stiff, and the "mood" of the models is out of sync with the mood of the interior.  You have good models to work with, but (IMHO) you're not using them to their full potential.  Don't just settle for posing a nude model inside a creepy building.  Stretch your mind and your creativity to create art. 

Look at this photographer's work...

http://ravens-laughter.tumblr.com/

You don't have to copy it, but that's what I'd rather see coming out of the locations you've chosen.  Something deeper than uninspired nudes.  Play with lighting more as well.

I think you and I might have very different aesthetics.  I'm aiming for ambiguity.  I don't want to tell a discrete story with anything I'm shooting, but rather, to paint an ambiguous picture which is left to the viewer to read into (or not).  This is why I very rarely have a model address the camera; why I'm often heard saying "stop emoting with your face" if a model is smiling, or affecting an expression of despair, or that sort of thing (unless it's a shot designed by the model, in which case I'm capturing what she wants for her own portfolio).  An unambiguous facial expression often traps the overall image in a sort of mood, like a fly trapped in amber; I generally try to avoid doing this - although there are a few cases in which I do so very intentionally, and those should be obvious.  I aim for asynchronicity; there is something intrinsically out of place in the notion of a beautiful young woman (supposedly ephemeral in her beauty and lifespan) inside a once-beautiful ruin (supposedly eternal in its beauty and lifespan).  It's jarring, so I aim to make the scenes ambiguous and, while beautiful, slightly off-putting.

Your own work - which I think is quite good - is very different tonally.  Your models tend to be telling a story, and emoting power, sensuality, control, sexiness.  I try to avoid imbuing the model with these things, as the model is a piece of a puzzle, just like the building is; it's not really model photography in the classical sense, because the model is not the sole focal point of the image.  She has to share that with the building, with its past, and in the images, with her own lack of past or story.  I'm aiming to tell a Samuel Beckett story or an Albert Camus story, but nothing like a penetrable narrative.

You're right about the stiff poses, and the answer to that lies in the lighting - which, unfortunately, I have little control over.  My lighting is almost entirely natural, with maybe a few quick dashes of a high-powered torch for fill if the color temperatures are right.  These places are dark though, even with the natural light.  At least half of the photographs in this collection are 1 second or longer, and remaining absolutely still while doing exposures of 1 second or longer is tough business; it often takes a dozen attempts to get a fully sharp image.  And of course, I'm a slave to the sun and the clouds - on a sunny day, I might have to bypass an amazing scene because it's getting burn spots from a hole in the ceiling.  Likewise, a room that gets crappy light in the morning golden hour might get amazing light in the evening golden hour; a scene that would be perfect if the window in the room had southern exposure might look like total bollocks if the sun is coming in from the east.

I took a look at Raven's Laughter, and while I appreciate the aesthetic there, it's really not for me.  I aim to get as close to a straight-out-of-camera, just-developed-and-printed-film look as possible.  No HDR, no photoshop or weird filters to "correct" things (with one notable exception that isn't up on here, from many years ago but which would have been possible in a C41 darkroom with enough time and... access to a C41 darkroom); no added hair lights or gridded strobes or anything so unnatural which perhaps belongs in a studio - I generally aim for "nothing I couldn't do with an enlarger & my choice of papers, filters, and lenses for printing".

But thank you for the blunt critique; I always appreciate a blunt critique.  I will try to look at ways to incorporate a few of your notions into my next shoot and see how I feel about the results; particularly your line "Stretch your mind and your creativity to create art" is inspiring in terms of seeing what else - beyond what I first envision when I enter a room and analyze the lighting and angles of the place - would make for more compelling imagery.

~~~

Thanks again everybody!  And if anybody else would like to chime in, I'd appreciate it.

I Ference Photography wrote:
I think you and I might have very different aesthetics.  I'm aiming for ambiguity.  I don't want to tell a discrete story with anything I'm shooting, but rather, to paint an ambiguous picture which is left to the viewer to read into (or not)...

Well, that's a shame; because all this viewer sees is a photographer taking snapshots of naked models inside an old building.  There's no story, no puzzle, and  no aesthetics.  You could take the same shot in your living room, if that's the case. 

This biggest problem I see, is that there's more than just the model and the building in the photos.  There's the photographer.  The stiff poses give the impression the model is aware of the camera.  If you want to create the illusion that the model is in this building for some unknown reason, then I'd say try to create more of a juxtaposition between the model and the environment.  The way the photos are shot, it's clear to everyone why they're there...they're posing for a photograph.  In my opinion, that makes for very boring photos. 

Hopefully you will stretch yourself, but it kinda' sounds like you've fallen into a groove that you really don't want to get out of.