I’m in between an installation artist, video artist and photographer.
And when you work with nude bodies, you’re immediately
called a pornographer or a fashion photographer.
Spencer Tunick

Glamour photos get extra life when the communication with the model is really good.

The beauty of a nude body has immense artistic potential, that’s for sure. But how does one make it look artistic rather than vulgar? Let us see in which way glamour photography can make it happen.

Nude portraits are not about our physical desires – they are all about art. They may be rather bold or provoking or sexual, yet they provoke thoughts rather than carnal excitement and raise emotions much subtler than plain loathing. This is all theory though – to hell with it, it’s high time to see how it is done in practice!

I offer you 7 useful tips that will help you take off into the world of nude glamour portraits with some knowledge of the subject and, hopefully, great motivation.

Think simple. One light from the side, one neclace and a nice window in the background.

• Balancing artistry and vulgarity is a must: you don’t want the latter, you want the former. Make emphasis on body shapes and texture. Avoid showing too intimate details e.g. genitals if you don’t know how to make them look beautiful rather than embarrassing. Let your sense of taste take flight – if you’ve got one (and you must have, otherwise why in the world would you take interest in glamour photography), nothing can go wrong;
• Don’t overload your model with trinkets and jewelry – when it comes to nude photography, human body must dominate the shot. Think small, sophisticated and well-balanced items that could add some glamorous and beguiling touch to your concept;
• Don’t use hot lights for lighting if you don’t want your model to melt down like a snowwoman. It’s always better to use cold lights – they are more economizing, they don’t make everyone in a studio sweat and they are very powerful tools to make a great photo. You would also want to obtain some soft-boxes to get more diffused light. Actually, always try to make light as soft as possible – it creates a proper mood;
• Watch out for the proportions: shooting from too high or too low might make your model look either a long-legged giraffe or a humpty-dumpty. You don’t want any of that, do you?
• Be creative. Different poses, lighting angles or backdrops and accessories will certainly deliver you several great variations on the same motif;

Be simple with your props and closing. An oversized panty hoase is more than enough.

• Shoot, shoot, shoot and did I mention shoot? Seriously, you want as many photos as possible, in order to be able to choose from a vast selection of captions. Even hardcore glamour photographers make some several thousand pictures in one studio session – so they could later pick really astounding images;
• Communicate with your model, make her feel at ease. She is not just an element within the frame – she is your vital partner and your very best friend when it concerns working in a studio. She is not simply posing nude but co-creating. If your model feels uncomfortable, you won’t get anywhere – even if you’re Helmut Newton!

Nude photography is not easy – nor is glamour photography in general. Yet you can achieve a lot if you keep practicing and pushing on. Remember – a journey of thousand miles begins with one step! Or, in our glamour photographers’ case – with one flash.

Good light!

– Michael

Technorati Tags: Artistic Nudes, glamour images, nude portraits

Should I be afraid? I am a glamour photographer. I am portraying real life people. I follow a completely digital workflow. Will I be completely outdated soon?

The first famous glamour image: Betty Grable

I would really love to know for sure where the future of glamour images lies. And I would be happy to share this with you, dear photographer, in my glamour blog. Then on the other hand, it might be that we photographers soon don’t play a big role in this game anymore. A large portion of our work, probably the second half of the whole process, is nowadays already done digitally in Photoshop. The first half of the creation process, the actual taking of a photograph, is still with us. However chances are that we hand over this part to specialized rendering applications soon.

But in order to get a feel for the future of something it is absolutely worth taking a close look at the present and also visiting the past.

Contempory glamour image #191 by Michael Zelbel

In the distant past glamour images were painted with oil onto canvas. The full range from simple, innocent face portraits up to full body nude portraits was popular and was painted for example by famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. In the middle of the 19^th century the first cameras became available. These were big bulky dry-plate cameras for studio use, which required quite long shutter times. Portraits became popular fast, but the subjects had to sit or stand completely still for quite a long time.

Is 3D-rendering the future of glamour images? (cc) by Franck Genot, www.myvirtuallady.com

Often head-clamps where used to help the subject holding their head still during the exposure. Obviously, with a clamped head a model usually will not add a lot of glamour to a glamour photo.

With the advent of photography and the advances of camera technology the game changed. Shooting photos on film made it affordable and practical to shoot glamour photos. Magazines started publishing such photos. I can recall the Playboy photographer David Mecey talking about the very recent past, in which they had to shoot every Playboy centerfold with large format cameras for quality reasons. This meant that they had to use a ton of light and a lot of times they blew the fuses of the location on which they were shooting when they started to use their strobes.

Currently glamour photos are pretty much always taken with digital cameras. Small and medium format. The quality of the digital cameras increased in a way that it is no problem whatsoever to shoot a magazine cover with a little consumer camera.

Easy and affordable tools for 3D rendering – the democratisation of glamour

Now future of glamour images will be quite interesting. Will we see an advent of 3D rendering software? If so, then this future already started. My favorite German magazine on Photoshop now features more and more articles about 3D rendering programs. I spot more and more glamour type generated images online. I have online buddies who are complete virtual identities from Second Life and similar and who post Flickr photo streams which consists entirely of rendered images. Their own virtual glamour gallery! Surfing online, it seems like the most common use of 3D rendering software like poser these days is the generation of elves, the beautiful exotic female characters in mystical stories. The generated elf images a lot of times hold all the attributes of glamour images.

So chances are good, that I personally, the guy with the digital camera, am soon be the dinosaur in the field of glamour images. Glamour photographers, be alarmed – just don’t panic! However, I believe in what I am doing. And I see that the art of oil painting has survived, the art of photographing on film is still practiced with magnificent results and I am sure that as long as I live there will always be a need for glamour images made with digital photo cameras, good light and a lot of love.

Good light!
— Michael

Technorati Tags: glamour images