Guide for models (and photographers)

Thyia ~ "Light Dapples in the Creek"

Don'ts:

Don't write in your portfolio like you are texting your friend that you do seventeen times a day.

Use capital letter when appropriate and punctuation where needed. Don't abbreviate words such as, lemme instead of let me; u instead of you; n instead of and; etc.

Your bio page is like a job interview. Be professional and don't act like some kid who flunked out of second grade.

Don't put up photos you took in the mirror with your cell phone. Don't put up photos taken in your messy bedroom. Don't put up photos of your crotch for crotch sake, unless you are only there to get laid by some equally scuzzy photographer. Don't put up photos of your ass in the camera for similar reasons.

Don't put up photos of you pregnant unless you are. Images of you pregnant three years ago are useless to photographers wanting to know what you look like. Save the old pregnant photos for your family album.

Update your portfolio information as it changes. If you only shoot for payment don't leave "Depends on assignment" there. Keep your measurement stats correct and don't lie about them. Does nothing but piss people off when you sate that you are 130 pounds and show up at a shoot at 160. If you are 160 say so, there are people who want to work with you at 160, but not if you are 130, or 200. Be honest.

Don't bitch in your bio. No one wants to hear you complain about a photographer or how you have been treated. My opinion most of the time is that if a model is bitching in her bio she probably was the cause of the problem in the first place and I do not want to work with her. Bios are not a place for complaints, they are for a place to sell yourself to clients.

If you have done your first photo shoot and were really excited about it, make every effort to refrain from boasting about the photographer on your bio page. More than likely the images will really not be very good compared to the rest of the world and even though you think that photographer is the greatest thing since sliced bread you will probably end up removing those crappy images as time goes by and you have had a chance to work with other photographers that are much better. I often see some bio page of a model where she will boast about what a great photographer so and so is, but the images are crappy and it tells me that this model doesn't really know her ass from a hole in the ground just yet. And for gads sake, don't say that photographer represents you. A big turn off to other photographers that know what the hell they are doing. Photographers that say they would like to represent you have no idea what they are talking about and are 100% crappy photographers without even looking at their work.

Escorts. Don't. Escorts are an excuse for lazy people who are not willing to do their homework. If you are that lazy that you can't take the time to look at a photographer's work and get an idea about how safe you will be working with them, check their references and make a reasonable judgement on your own you probably should not be modeling because you will be too lazy to do a good job at that as well.

I will cover DOs on another post.

When the focus is not on the model

Kate ~ "Fern Bed"

I think that if the President of this country wants to take up arms against another country he should fight the ruler of the other country and leave the military out of it.

Obama should grab a gun and have a shoot out with Gadhafi, or whatever country he thinks he should be running this day.

I'm for letting Obama fight his own fights and quit making the American people do his fighting for him.

With any luck he will loose.

I'm sick and tired of politicians running this Government into the dirt. I do think it is too late and America is a train wreck. We waited too long to take it back from the politicians and vevamp the Government that was intended to be. They have built themselves a concrete wall around them where the people can no longer get the Government back. I fear we are doomed.

Currently Americans like reality TV, so the Democrats and the Republicans are offering up reality TV candidates for the presidency. Not a single one that has any idea how to run a country. Just weird people that Americans like to watch.

We probably deserve it.

Another Obama "What?"

Thyia

No matter how hard Obama tries he can't make the storm any bigger than it was.

Seems he wants this to be a National disaster so he can make headlines as the leader who stepped up to the plate in the time of need.

He needs to get over it and move on. It ain't workin.

More people died in car wrecks over the weekend than from the storm. 2.2 people per state died from some sort of incident related to the storm. EPIC PROPORTIONS OF DAMAGE!!!!

WILL TAKES WEEKS TO REBUILD!!!

Useless twit.

Reminds me of FOX News.

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Tomorrow I will have to travel to the Twin Cities once again. Ugh! When I enter the outskirts of the Cities I feel like I am crawling down into a sewer. I want to hold my breath the whole time I am there so as not to catch whatever those people have that make them act like they do.

It will be a long hour and a half and I will once more be happy when I am heading back north where people act like people and have some brain power left, where the air is clean enough you don't see it, and you can leave your house without turning on some stupid alarm.

Why anybody would want to live like that is beyond my wildest imagination.

Mad Max comes to mind.

Nothing new

Brooke

A color version of the image I posted a couple of days ago.

Probably not the most germ free spot to be in

Thyia

I don't remember having taken a photo set in a bathroom before this set with Thyia. Oh yeah, a snap shot of a model or two as a candid perhaps, but never an intended photo set.

I learned a few things. Crawling about under the sink to get back far enough is not all that of a pleasant experience when you are in a motel. Working with the ugly florescent lighting can be easily corrected in Photoshop or similar program but it still wants to hang in there and let you know just how ugly it is.

Still, when you have a person like Thyia dripping water from various parts of her anatomy you tend to loose track of the down side of the working conditions.

I don't think I will do anything different next time I shoot in a motel bathroom, but I might be tempted to lay on a bath towel when I crawl under their sink.

Let's give them a free car too for being odd

Kate

One more thing...

"LGBT students may also qualify for special scholarships."

Seems they no longer want equal. They now want special.

This country is in a moral breakdown. A serious moral breakdown.

If I was gay, lesbian, bi, or trans I would be objecting to being lumped into a category of LGBT in the first place. That is like lumping religions into a group called, CPJH (Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Hindus).

Seems the oddball sexual preferences people don't care about what they are referred to as long as they get more than the average person is entitled to.

The only good thing is they can't breed to create more, and the wannabe gays, because it is the in thing to be, will soon grow tired of it and move on.

In the mean time it will cost us billions of dollars, and some poor smuck that is trying to go to college won't be able to because some gay people got special grants to go just because they have a strange sexual desire.

Oh yeah. And we think we should tell the rest of the world how to live?

The U.S. is a joke to 80% of the world. They only listen because we have what they want. But they laugh behind our back. Even British movies make sport of the idiotic U.S. and its Government.

No, we have nothing to feel proud about. Nothing.

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And for photographers (use the term loosely) who don't know an f stop from a hole in the ground, this image is not overly green. It is shot outdoors with trees and moss and is green.

Because somebody is whining

Cheryl ~ "Cold Rock, Warm Sun"

My Moose is not one for erotic work per se' but she wanted to give it a go when we were on the north shore this summer. Lying on cold, hard rocks does not lend itself to an erotic environment but she did one heck of a nice job considering.

There were several images form the set that I like much more than this but I am saving those for my "Erotic in Nature" show opening. No peeking until then.

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It would be nice if one party offered up a candidate for the presidency that was intelligent and and not some off the wall wacko. So far they have not.

Creek side

Thyia

Sometimes you have to get a little wet. Actually I pulled a bicycle and a lot of trash out of the creek before we began, so I was wet anyway, but I needed to to show Thyia what I had in mind so we inspected the tree base on the other side of the creek together. My assistant on this shoot was playing with my camera, as you can see, and we ended up with some candid images that I didn't know where on there until days later when I was going through them.

Nice ass!

Thyia's isn't so bad either.

The results.

Note the left big toe. I love it.

In just about every image where she was truly into the erotics of it all, she had her left big toe up in the air. A sure indicator she was not just posing for the camera.

I am very much looking forward to working with her again next month with the fall leaves.

Two and one half pretzels

Brooke

Sitting here with a bag of hard pretzels. "Serving size: Two and a half pretzels"

These people must be nuts. How many people are going to break a hard pretzel in half and put half back in the bag? You would think a company would have enough brains to put something realistic on the label rather than dribble that make no sense.

Labeling in general has gotten so far off in left field that most of it is idiotic these days, thanks in part to Government regulations and people who sue companies over stupid stuff.

I think schools should rethink teaching about mankind and place them in the lowest form of animal life this planet has. They have done so much more than all the other animals combined to ruin this planet and destroy all that is good. Intelligence does not make, best. Nor does it make good. It mean an animal with the capability to destroy at an alarming rate.

The world will be much better off when the species has died off.

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Had a friend wipe out on his motorcycle yesterday. Air lifted 250 miles to Minneapolis and the family called to be there ASAP.

Donorcycles.

Short Trip

Brooke ~ "Grand Marais Bound"

Taken Sunday afternoon

Just returned from a north shore shoot with Brooke. It had been awhile since I had gotten to work with her and she just returned from a long stint in France where she had been modeling six hours a day, seven days a week for a school there. I think she needed a rest and a chance to get away from everybody rather than model for me, but she did.

As usual she was one hell of a model, giving it her all on the cold rock of Lake Superior.

I made this a short shoot and only camped there for one night. She had been there four days already and was planning on staying three more night in her tent. She needed to recoup.

I was very happy with the result we got and left her to relax and enjoy the solitude of of the north shore for a few more days without having to get into odd poses for some scruffy old photographer. She will have enough of that when she works with Dave Levingston next month for their trip out west.

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As I write this I have unpacked Golden Hooves and put away the camping gear; started the washer going to take care of the muddy, wet clothes; lit up a very nice Padron 1926 cigar and am enjoying a pleasant evening on my porch (9:18 pm on Monday night).

Fall fun

Kate

Wouldn't it be fun to get a large, dead fish (could substitute a chicken) and stick it in your safety deposit box at the bank?

After about a week the entire bank would reek of dead fish.

They probably would know it was coming from the bank vault, but which box? And even if they guessed it might be yours, they would need a court order to open it, which they couldn't get.

Just food for thought.

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Another fun idea is to pour about a gallon of Dawn dish washing soap in the Buckingham fountain in Chicago.

Not saying I have ever done that, mind you, but I vividly remember them having to shut down Lake Shore Drive because foam the size of houses were rolling across the road.

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Inexpensive, fun things to do during the last few weeks of summer.

Undocumented immigrant

Kate ~"Morning Shower"

Undocumented immigrant. Undocumented immigrant.

Is that a way for the limp wrists to say "Illegal Entry" into this country? Someone that avoided a border crossing and came into this country in violation of our laws.

In most countries these people would be held in prison as a spy or terrorist. Here the limp wrists call them undocumented immigrants.

An immigrant is one who comes to this country legally. These people are nothing but illegal insurgents.

Undocumented immigrant? Pathetic.

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I sometimes wonder how this country got so screwed up. But it doesn't take but a minute to figure it out. Liberals. They want to let anything and everything go on and be allowed. They breed a nation of screwed up ideas and attitudes. They breed violence and disregard for authority. They turn people into animals that create havoc and destruction.

But damn! We now have laws that allow men to marry men. Isn't that worth riots and killings?

Seems the Cities hold the vast majority of these liberals. There is something to be said for fencing in all the major cities and keeping these people from corrupting the rest of the Nation. Let them riot and kill each other. Heck, drop a load of hand guns from the air and let them get it over with that much faster. The world would be a better place. A much better place.

Die, die, die

Claudine

The U.S. postal service says it is going to cut 120,000 jobs, but not to worry, customers will not notice any difference in their postal delivery.

What?

Then why do you have that many employees? If a private businesses ran their companies like the Government does there wouldn't be a one left surviving.

The USPS should go belly up. Only trouble is this Government would bail them out like they did the auto industries. Shove our money into corporations so they continue to get big kickbacks and contributions.

The Postal Service is a dinosaur that needs to quietly and quickly die.

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Pawlenty finally dropped out of the presidential race. About time. The man was a lousy Governor and certainly would not be a good candidate for president. But we still have a bunch of scary people out there with high hope.

I can't even imagine that more than four people would be so lost in life to ever consider Bachmann for president, but I guess there are more than four lost soul out there.

Religion has no place in politics. And bring her into a position where she would have a reasonable say so in anything to do with running this country would be a major step back in civilization. Major step back.

Photo of my friend

Sarah Jane

(click to enlarge)

Taken this last Friday

Owning a camera does not make you an artist, no matter what you tell people in your bio page.

Wanting to be an artist does not make you an artist, even though you really, really want to be.

Unlike most jobs you can train for, the ability to be an artist can be steered to a better direction but not instilled. I can play the piano. I can sit down and play a piece of music I have never seen before without a mistake. It will never sound like music however. I have learned about music but am not a musician. People can learn about photography and never be photographic artists. I know of many.

This tid bit of thought comes from a conversation I had today. I was asked, "What is art?".

After a bit of thought (I did not speak the first words that came to mind for once) I realized art is, something created by a person, or persons that another person wants. Basic, simple and true.

If I were to paint what I thought was a million dollar painting and no one wanted it, it would be junk for the trash man. If I threw a paint blob on a canvas and someone bought it for a million dollars, it would be art. Why? Because someone else wanted it.

If everyone hated, Starry Night it would have been used to start a fire in some fireplace. And as ugly, stupid, idiotic some things are, they are art if someone else is willing to hang it on their wall.

What gives value to art are two things: 1)After a hundred or so years, if many people still want to hang it on their wall. 2)If the artist is well known. It doesn't have to be good at all. People just buy it for the name so they can say they own one. Lots of that about.

So what has all this to do with anything useful? Probably nothing. I just thought I would share my thoughts with you on the subject. Nothing more.

Let's deport the limp wrist who want to give the country away

Thyia ~ "Dreamy Sundays"

Why do we deport people who come into this country only to deport them a few weeks later?

This report from CNN angers me.

Deport once, if you have to (I would like to see them shot) but a second time should result in a life sentence. You are not going to deter illegal entry into the U.S. if you are just going to send them back on a bus. What is the point?! What is the point of have laws against illegal entry?

The way it stands the U.S. encourages people to enter illegally. Why have border crossings?

The current estimate of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is 11 to 12 million. What good are boarder crossings with boarder patrols?

To give you some indication of what that number means, Chicago has 2.7 million people. There are almost four and a half times as many illegal people in the U.S. as live in Chicago.

This country needs to get its act together.

We make a big effort with tens of billions of dollars catching grandma and grandpa in their motor home at the border coming across with some pot. In the mean time twelve million people have come across the border a few miles away from the heavily patrolled boarder crossing carrying who knows what.

Good job, America!!!

Then we have the whiners who don't want the Mexicans who managed to avoid a legal entry and came across the border in a cowardly fashion to be let alone. Same people who do not want law enforcement to racial profile.

We should deport these people on a damn bus.

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Fall weather is upon us. It feels good. The bugs are gone and the temps are wonderful. The trees have not yet begun to change color, but soon now. There isn't a better time of year for being out in the woods.

From now until the snow flies I will be happy, looking forward to each new day and what it brings.

National Scenic Byway Joke

Thyia

I have a big bitch. A really big bitch. Unfortunately, or fortunately for most of you who tune in to this blog you will have no idea what it is about or care.

The road leading to Marcell where I live is Minnesota State Highway 38. A two lane blacktop road that is very windy through 28 miles of lakes and woods. Nothing to write home about, although it is pretty in the fall when the maple trees turn color. but a simple two lane road with pot holes and no shoulder.

A few years ago some idiots decided to petition the US Government into making it a National Scenic Byway. Why is beyond me or anyone who lives here. After a couple of years and millions of dollars in engineering firms and survey crews they decided to give it a go. First thing was to cut all the trees back from the road 100 feet. They did this to about half of the highway before the funding ran out. This section now looks like crap and is no way scenic. The rest of the road they decided will have to wait until 2027 to do anything with.

Now comes the really stupid part. Because it is a Scenic Byway, the state can no longer make repairs on it from the State Highway budget. As a result it has gone to rack and ruin for the last four years. it is almost impossible to drive on with the pot holes and crumbling pavement. One needs to buy extra hub caps to have on hand because you loose them as fast as the auto parts stores can keep them on hand.

A lady wrote to the editor in our local paper her tale of visiting the new Scenic Byway on her trip from Florida and she wanted to know at which junk yard the Scenic Byway actually started.

But now comes the straw that broke the camels back. The last two weeks a crew has been digging up every culvert that crosses the raod and replacing them. Perfectly good culverts being dug out and new ones put in. They must have had some Scenic Highway money in a slush fund they needed to get rid of. I wouldn't mind except when they are done replacing the culverts they are leaving a mound of crap there that launches you against the roof of your car if you go over it any faster than 3 miles an hour. Then you hit the foot deep pot hoes on the other side.

traveling to Grand Rapids from Marcell use to take 35 minutes, five years ago. Now it takes well over an hour because this National Scenic Byway (laugh out loud every time I say that) is in such bad shape that is smoother to take the snowmobile trail.

There are clowns in Government, but the clowns who decided to make this piss poor raod a National Scenic Byway(LOL) are the biggest bunch of fruit cakes there are.

We now have a road you can't use.

Thanks a lot Minnesota and all the complete idiots that made this so.

Bob Wolfe

Catherine McLynn

The Highway 38 Leadership Board

The Turtle Lake Association

Wabanna Township

The U.S. Forest Service

The area resort owners

The Federal Government (I don't know what they had their head stuck up when they agreed to this)

The State of Minnesota (They still have their head stuck up whatever it is)

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This Friday Gert is letting a wine tasting party go on in her place. There has been talk of the locals calling the county health inspector when it is taking place as the people who are putting on the wine tasting party are bring in their own home made food. it is a revenge thing for the way Gert has treated the other businesses in town, such as calling the health inspector when the church was having a pot luck and such.

Part of me hopes they do and Gert gets some ass kicking in return for the way she has treated other business and the locals in general.

We shall see.

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Enough of the local crap.

As you can probably tell by my images of Thyia, I certainly enjoyed working with her and look forward to out outing in September. I'm giddy just thinking about it.

Round 2

Thyia

It was too much. It was too much for me to digest in one session so I have decided to take a trip to Ohio and continue my Erotic In Nature series.

I have lined up three of the most wonderful erotic models I have ever seen and will be working with them from Sept 22nd through the 29th.

I have to admit that I would like at least one image with all three of them in there but know better. In all my shoots with multiple models I have never not wished I had only used one. And so I will pass on my notion of the three erotic women in one image for now.

This will be a new experience for me also as I have never explored Ohio and have no clue where I will be working at this point. I figure the Cuyahoga Valley National Park would be a good starting point. At least the photos of the place look nice. I am somewhat familiar with Hocking Hills and know it is like photographing at Piccadilly Circus.

Just because I couldn't repair last post

Thyia

We have the most silly and stupid submission rules for the Minnesota State Fair. Only people who live within ten miles of the fair grounds submit work.

In order to enter the Minnesota State Fair with your work you must deliver it to them to be judged. No digital or slide entries. They want it in hand. And then if it is not chosen you must pick it up a few days later. Who in their right mind is going to drive to the fair grounds to deliver their work with the good chance they will have to drive there again in a couple of day to pick it up? No one unless you live very close to the fair grounds. Someone who lives hundreds of miles away sure isn't going to do that.

So the Minnesota State fair will have its usual local artists in it and not a representation of the State like it should.

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Since I announced that I will be traveling to Ohio to work on the "Erotic in Nature" series I have been flooded with requests from models to include them in the series. I have found it quite amazing that the quality of the models that are interested are top notch figure models that we all know. Very talented people with lots of years worth of experience. Very many of them not into the erotic work for the most part but want to run with this idea and give their interpretation.

I am actually very excited about how the show is going to look. I think it will be one heck of a display with well known models participating.

I am looking at funding in an attempt to get each model, whos work is in the show to the opening.

It is going to be one super evening.

Dragon Laws

Thyia ~ Illinois Statute 720 ILCS 5/9‑2, Ch. 38, par. 9‑67 "Devouring Maidens Out Of Season"




Dang. I'm sitting here in 78 degree weather and a slight breeze came up. My right hand has lost all feeling and it white. Those who have Raynaud's syndrome will understand. I will now spend about fifteen minutes attempting to get circulation back into my hand by running it under hot water and swinging my arm violently to get blood down into my fingers. Sucks.

It is a condition where your brain thinks your body is under attack from the cold and attempts to save you by shutting down the capillaries and directing all the blood to you central mass. It can happen at 100 degrees in the desert. All it takes is a faction of a second where a message is sent to the brain saying, "COLD".

The summer months are usually the worst. It is that hot to cool difference that triggers it. During the winter when it is cold I don't seem to have much trouble.

Getting wet via rain will trigger it quite often. If I am not able to get circulation going on my own I run the risk of tissue damage. This poses a problem when it occurs in my feet. i can't swing my feet wildly to force blood into them, and if I am out on a hike or canoeing trip and can't get into a warm sleeping bag or get a fire going it becomes a big problem.

Now you know all you want to ever know about Raynaud's syndrome and then some.

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Thyia from our recent outing.

Well dang! Isn't this interesting. I have tried every which way I know how to correct the top portion without success. I don't know what I did or how to fix it. I can't even copy and paste it without it looking the same.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another day.

Maybe our Government is editing my blog these days.

Giggle

Katie

Look at any M.M. portfolio, or any other on line photography portfolio of nude models and see which ones have the most views. Crotch shots by the tens of times other images have views. Why? Because as crude as he was, Larry Flynt said it correctly, "That's what people want to see".

Even your most snobbish art freak will take a peek at the crotch shot first.

You would think that photographers of nudes would have seen enough crotches to last a lifetime. You would think they would have little interest in homing in on a crotch shot by another photographer of a model they don't even know, but they will.

Almost spooky and a little bit scary.

And I know of photographers that collect these images. Images other photographers have taken. They add them to their secret file of crotch shots they have hidden in their computer where a browsing wife would never look. Pictures! Like high school boys hiding a Playboy magazine in lawn mower shed at the back of the yard. Adults!

That said, I enjoy looking at the not so often seen parts of the female body as much as the next man. I don't collect them however, except my own images. And I don't hide them. The wallpaper on my computer is a crotch shot that I dearly love of the recently photographed Thyia. My wife wouldn't think of asking me to change it to something else. So I have no need to hide pictures from her in some multi level file that I hope she will never stumble across. And likewise I do not schedule my shoots when my wife is gone. She is more than welcome to sit in on them anytime she wants, though she rarely wants to intrude.

I think photographers that hide images from their wife and schedule shoots with young models when their wife is gone need to look seriously at their life and get a grasp on it because they are acting like school boys when they are physically grown up. There are no doubt some mental health issues or a really poor marriage involved.

Just my thoughts for this morning as I look through some blogs of others.

Nude Fashion Model

Katie

Got an offer from a well known fashion photographer to model for him sans clothing. Go figure.

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Evolution has been attempting to create perfect animals that are divided into two groups, Herbivores and Carnivores.

This process has been ongoing to millions of year.

Why does the Government put out food group charts that they think we should eat that contain plants when humans are carnivores? I'll tell you why. Because farm lobbyists are a powerful group. Humans have been designed over these millions of years to eat meat.

We are suffering extreme levels of obesity and diabetes in this country because of the high carbohydrate intake of Americans due to eating plants (grains; cereals).

Sure, we are brought up to think this is healthy and we are still told this is healthy. But for one minute do you think a bunch of politicians are smarter than millions of years of evolution that brought humans this far?

Carnivores were not designed to eat plants. Ever. It is unhealthy, no matter how many Government organizations are funded by farm dollars.

All these so called vegetarians out there will end up taking insulin in their golden years.

Good Storm

One last image of Thyia and then I need to move on. After all, life is not just about "in your face" bodies, as nice as they are.

I get to work with Brooke!!!

She is back from her stint in Paris and we are going to the north shore for some serious work....and play. They go hand in hand.

It is storming and I am sitting here in my screen porch watching the storm. I always loved a good storm. The weather is comfortable and the wind is fairly calm so I don't have to worry about getting wet if it starts raining. For now it is all cloud to cloud lighting and it smells wonderful.

I do believe I will unwrap a fine cigar to round the moment off. I have a 21 year old Honduras, hand made (rolled on the sweaty thigh of a young wench) beauty that needs to be savored.

I am getting quite a few images for my 2012 erotic show but still in need of a few models to kick in their interpretation. I would like to end up with at least eight separate models in this body of work. To date I have five. I will work on Brooke while we are camping and see if I can talk her into participating.

The fun part is that with the exception of Thyia, none of the models do erotic work that I have used. And they have displayed a variety of ideas that will make one heck of an interesting show.

I have to say, this is the best storm I have seen in years. Thoroughly enjoying it and this cigar.

The thunder is continuous. There has not been a second where booms were not heard. Make me kind of giddy, although the loons on the lake are not quite as happy about it as I am.

My current wallpaper

Thyia ~ "Sleepy Time"

It was tough but I have finally decided on this image as my current wallpaper. I change wallpaper about every six months, mainly because I get tired of looking at the same thing all the time. But this one will do nicely for awhile.

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Update: I was sitting in the Minneapolis airport waiting for someone to arrive and opened up my notebook to do some work.

A little kid behind me said, "Pretty girl". I swung around and saw this 8ish year old boy kneeling on his chair looking right at my computer.

Maybe I best make sure I have a traveling wallpaper to substitute.

But I agree with his assessment.

A new me

Thyia

At he end of this last winter I was weighing in at almost 160 pounds, the heaviest I have ever been. I felt like a Weeble and some fat old man. I decided to get myself right and back in shape at that moment before I actually hit the 160 mark (one fifty nine and a half).

Today I felt like I should, shape wise, so I got on the scale. 138.4

A quick look in the mirror confirmed that I now had my ab muscles back and they were not hidden by a bulging stomach that looked terrible.

Not Bad. Not bad at all.

Abigail, where are you now that I look good? At least from the neck down.

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London Riots

Shoot them all. Where is Mayor Daley when you need him? Not that limp wrist kid of his that just left being mayor, I mean the one that really was a good mayor, his old man.

During the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago they rioted. Daley ordered the police to shoot and kill, on site. There is no excuse for humans to act like assholes and the need to eliminate them from the gene pool is at hand.

I really thought the UK had a better crop of civil people than the US but I guess they have descended from the same ugly branch of mankind.

Did the Japan tragedies teach us nothing about how compassionate and caring humans should be? Just think what the US or England would be like if something like that happened.

As a representative of the human animal we are the lowest form there is.

Go Alabama, Go

Thyia

This asshole Federal Government thinks it can run the show so big industries can have illegal immigrant employees.

The States are starting to fight back and institute laws they can enforce themselves because this Federal Government won't enforce the laws it has for fear of stepping on the toes of big business (their companies).

Time for all the states to start taking control of their borders because the Feds won't.

Time for a new Civil War.

Time for a succession from the union by those states that want to control their own borders from those who want cheap labor at any cost.

Trouble will be that illegal Mexicans will have to cross the southern states to get to those northern states that want them, which will result in many being killed. But the northern states don't care as long as a few get through to water their lawns and trim their trees. After all it is not about people to them, but money.

It is time for the Federal Government to back away and quit dictating what states can do and not do. It is time for the Federal Government to uphold laws that are on their books instead of turning their back because it will hurt large businesses.

It is time, or it is time to put an end to what is now called The United States because we no longer are.

If a Pakistan was noted sneaking across the border at night into the U.S. he would probably be shot dead on the spot.

If he was noted to be a Mexican we would not pay the least bit of attention.

Go ahead and tell me why you disagree with Alabama's new law. In your explanation you will let everyone know what a stupid as a box of rocks person you are, or that you need to have your trees trimmed and you are a cheap bastard that is willing to forget about our laws to save you cash.

We don't need a giant fence that cost billions of dollars. We don't need a warehouse of high tech gear. We need a couple of snipers that randomly move about the border shooting people who come across illegally. Pick a couple of hundred off and they will stop coming. Inexpensive and effective.

And for you people who whine about racial profiling (because it is the only catch all phrase you know), if your wife is in the opera house that has just been blown up, and a Pakistan and a French man run out of the back door....I wonder what you would think if the police chased the French man because they were not allowed to racial profile.

Idiots.

Still riding high on my Thyia wave

Thyia ~ "Heart Racing"

I'm reminded about the scene in the movie, Bridges of Madison County where Francesca say, "I was lying there just below where the water caressed over his body. I found it to be quite erotic. Everything about Robert seemed to be erotic".

Everything about Thyia seemed erotic. I found myself craving her voice for when she spoke it too was erotic.

There came a point when I could have been photographing her left big toe and found it erotic, and I did.

The woman is pure erotic energy that turns an everyday crotch shot into a dreamscape for the imagination to run wild with.

It is not the image that is erotic. It is the idea the image portrays. If you are not left with an entire story you can fill in yourself it is just porn.

________________________________

Everybody ready for the U.S. to go to war with Syria?

Just what we need to get involved with now. One more country we think we should run.

Time for someone or some country to put a halt to the U.S. interference in other countries.

Time for Americans to take back their country from the Government. They are killing us and wiping out all that once was the greatness of this country.

Delicate my ass

Katie

I have spoken in the past about the myth of "Whites vs Colored" clothes. We have come to realize that this term really means: Her clothes and your clothes. She doesn't want her clothes in the same washer load as your grungy clothes so the term, Whites and Colors was invented to make it sound nicer.

Introduced into this washing of her clothes and your clothes comes, delicates. I have yet to decipher this code as there is nothing delicate about a bra that is basically a four inch wide hunk of elastic with enough wire metal in it to make a bumper for a 46 Pontiac. It is probably the most non-delicate item of clothing in the wash. But the washing machine manufacturers have played to this phrase and included a cycle for it. I see nothing different than any other cycle except that it pauses between sloshings, giving you the feeling it is being gentle, when in fact it is just wasting time it could have been sloshing more and doing a better job.

So we do HIS WASH; HER WASH; and THE NOT SO CLEAN WASH in order to finish up what should have taken 1/3 the time. But we do it to keep her happy even though she doesn't understand laundry one bit, having been taught by her mother who was taught by her mother that this was the way it is do be done.

When she is not around we throw everything in the washer together and just pretend we did a load of whites (her clothes), colors (our clothes) and delicates (not so clean bras). Of course this sometimes backfires as she did not tell you that she just bought a new red top and all the clothes (whites, colors and delicates) are not pink.

If it were a new orange top we could use the IRON IN THE WATER excuse, but pink just doesn't cut it with the rust excuse.

Of course her now pink panties are all ruined. The fact that two weeks later she will go out and buy pink panties does not enter into the equation at this very moment.

Really, if I end up with a batch of pink tee shirts....who gives a rat's ass?

A week later she will want to know why I am washing that red top in with the colored clothes when it should be in with the whites (hers). It only needed to be washed with the colored clothes the first time when it was going to run red dye all over (your clothes).

The last good politician was Everett Dirksen

Okay, it is time to stop all the talking about gays. They got their rights and their marriage things done and over with, it is time to move on and quit using the term gay. "People" should work nicely for referring to everyone.

No gay pride month, or gay flags. We don't have heterosexual pride month or heterosexual flags, so stop it. If you want to be treated like other people and have the same rights as other people, quit the, Proud To Be Different routine, or give back what you just got.

If I was gay I would be ashamed of the way the gay community is behaving.

_______________________________

I am going to exercise my right Not To Vote from now on. There is not a politician in office or one that will be running for office in the foreseeable future that I would want in charge of anything to do with country. They do not know how to spend money wisely. They do not know how to spend only the money they have. And they certainly do not represent the people of this Nation.

This Government certainly is not what Thomas Jefferson had in mind. It has become a corrupt, self serving institution that no longer has the interests of the people on the table.

So I will no longer partake in the election process until a reform of major proportions has been introduced.

From a man who knew where this Government was heading.

Katie

I said I would display some more images of Kate swimming around in the pool below the waterfall. These are a few of them I thought you might enjoy.

You can see from this one above the problems we encountered when attempting to extract her from the pool when we were finished.

About where I am standing to take this shot was the extraction point, having a tree limb that had fallen into the pool.

I'm not sure this old man could have climbed out of there using it but she didn't have too much trouble with my arm as a second hand hold.

Few things in this world more beautiful than a perfect backside, naked in the water.

Kate proved to be a real trooper on our first outing. On our next adventure I will introduce her to some tough challenges.

Grumpy old man

Claudine ~ "I'm Your Leopard"

Claudine came up with some dandy poses for the erotic series. This is one that I particularly like.

She has that "Island" look that is quite special and her in the tree was just fitting for this one.

I'm raspberryed out. We have been picking them everyday and we are not keeping up. Half are falling on the ground and we have no more room in the deep freezer or house freezer. It is time to stop and let the birds and critters have a go at them.

The grapes this year are going to be wonderful. The vines are loaded with large grape clusters.

Grape vines are a lot of work if you truly want good grapes and I have been working hard at them all summer. A good grape vine look ugly. Short and bare. If you let them grow like they want to grow you get tiny, poor quality grapes. All the energy goes into the pant and not the fruit. Keep them pruned down and the energy goes into the grapes.

Now....if I can keep the deer from eating them all like they did last year just before I was going to harvest life will be good.

Think dead deer. Think hard.

Vermin creatures. Only thing they are good for is feeding wolves.

Every time I see Walt Disney's, Bambi I want to put a set of cross hairs on its forehead and leave its spotted carcass for the scavengers.

Tents

Some people collect cameras, some collect fishing lures. We each seem to collect things we really don't need but have this desire to own all of them.

For me it is tents. I can't pass up a tent that is for sale (cheap) even if I have no use for it what-so-ever. I'm not even going to make an attempt to count how many tents I have in my camping storage in the garage. Wall tents that outfitters use to house 14 hunters; back pack tents one person would have trouble getting into; dome tents; pop up tents; hexagonal tents; tetrahedral tents; mountain climber tents. I think I have them all and from every manufacturer of tents. In the last five days I have come into possession of two more tents, sight unseen. One is a small two man (one person) tent sold by REI. I don't know who made it for them but I suspect Kelty. The other is a Gander Mountain that was made by Eureka.

The REI tent looks to be in great shape and I have no idea what I would do with it because even when I camp alone I use a six person tent so all my clothes and gear fits inside.

The Gander Mountain tent is a six person (three people) hexagonal tent that looks to be in fairly good shape but is missing the rain fly. Nice on a hot summer day if your are 100% positive it is not going to rain, which it always does. It is also a royal pain in the ass to set up. So for practical reasons it is another useless addition to my collection.

But like Mel Gibson in, Conspiracy Theory, "When I see one I just have to buy it. And if I don't see one, I have to go find one to buy." Such is me and tents.

I had quite a few hand me down tents as a kid but I bought my first tent myself when I was about ten. It was a canvas pup tent about four feet long and two feet wide. It also had two poles inside that you had to fold your legs around when you brought your knees up to your chin so you fit into it. That lasted for one camping trip.

My biggest tent was one I never even got home. There was an abandon Nike missile site about two miles from my home. I was prowling about there shortly after the base closed down and came across a canvas tent. It appeared to be a command center tent of about 30 X 50 feet. It was in beautiful shape and all the poles (the size of telephone poles) were there too. I had to get this tent home fast.

But nicely folded as it was it was the size of a gawd damn Buick and probably weighed in at nearly a ton, so I enlisted the help of a few neighbor kids.

In the several hours that we spent attempting to get this beauty to my home we had only managed to make a mess of the neat folding of it and move the entire thing about eight feet from where it stood originally. My heart sunk when I finally gave in to the fact that I was not going to be able to get my prize home.

Now I need to go take down the two tents I have erected in my yard and shove them into some corner of my garage where they will be safe and happy amongst all the other tents.

Gas me, doc

Kate

I should have had twice the images of Katie that I have, but our outing was cut short a day because of the bloody heat. We wrapped things up that evening and never got to shoot the morning light. Next time.

_____________________________

Seems I will have to make an unscheduled trip to the Cities. Ugh!

It is bad enough that I have to go there when I plan on going there, but to have to go there when I wasn't planning on it is like having teeth pulled.

Different Styles

Claudine ~ "Light Dapples Lead To Love"

Another one of Claudine's interpretations in the erotic series.

Each model was given the guidelines: Birthday suite bare and in nature. That was it. It was up to them to pick the location in which to work and what they were going to do with it.

For some it came easy. For others it was a challenge. No direction from me.

Claudine was having a bit of trouble because she wasn't allowed to work with props. I didn't even ask what types of props she was referring to and let that one slide on by.

But she was a trooper considering she does not do erotic work and turned up with some fairly erotic stuff. At least in my mind. But like what this series is all about, we each have our own ideas about erotic images.

Thyia on the other hand kept me running to keep up. She found location after location in which to work and swung into high gear at each spot, often finishing before I even got the camera set up.

Those who dawdle miss the boat. So to speak.

Thyia ~ "Wait!!!! I need to change memory cards!!!!!! Wait!!!! Wait!!!!"

Problems with working outdoors

When you work outdoors and not in a sterile studio you run into unexpected mishaps. Here Thyia had some critter swim up between her legs just as I was touching off the shutter. We did get the shot I wanted after she settled down.

Another problem is dents. Once you place your body on tree bark, gravel, or rocks you get dents that take a long time to go away. We don't have that kind of time so we work with the dents. Thyia's knees look like they were in a waffle iron and I had to do some skillful fudging to make her look presentable.

She looks great even with dents, but my prints don't.

I did notice that she has a tendency to lift her left toe.....

When all was said and done (toe included) we turned out a fair set of erotic images that I will have no trouble including in my erotic gallery show next year.

More Katie

Kate ~ "Christmas Wrappings"

Time to back up to my shoot with Kate.

I understand her mother reads my blog. Hi mom!

Starved Rock (note the name, Katie) has such wonderful back drops to work with. Some 16 canyons carved out of the sandstone that offer up numerous waterfalls and rock formations. The green vegetation is a sight to behold and covers the canyon walls with vines and moss. Also there are a wonderful variety of plants not normally found up above. One could spend months prowling about at the park without seeing the same thing twice.

I didn't tell Katie before hand of the triple murders that took place in one of the canyons many years ago. I figured she better get to know me first and feel comfortable working with me before I broke that to her. I did tell her after we had been working a couple of hours however.

She thought (out loud) that the best murderer would probably be an ex-forensic technician that taught death investigations for a living. I agreed and she missed a step in her stride.

But I think she would not hesitate to travel with me having spent time working with me on this shoot.

You know me. I couldn't let a beautiful lady like Katie go without shooting her swimming.

The trees were making a grand, green reflection on the surface of a pool below a waterfall. We eye balled the pool and tried to figure out how to get her out of there once she got in. The sides of the pool were surrounded by high sandstone walls. It didn't look possible without a rope, which I didn't bring on this outing. There was only one way to find out....jump in and see what happens.

After a good set of swimming shots she managed to climb up a tree limb that had fallen into the pool. That and a helping hand from me who was holding onto some tree roots.

More of these wonderful swimming images to follow in coming posts.