I just wanna address this completely correct comment from a photographer's perspective.

in photography •  last year 

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If you can't create a compelling photograph of a person with their clothes on then what makes you think you are creating a compelling photo just because a person is not clothed? I believe one indicator of talent and skill is to be able to create a great photo regardless of what the model is or is not wearing.

In my twenty years of either doing photography or cinematography, I've actually never done full nudity.

I've had a scene on which I was the cinematographer in which a woman took her top off; but, nobody ever saw anything.

The closest that I've come nude photography was actually a shoot that the model wanted to do, in which she was only wearing panties and a bow tie, and her breasts were only covered by some flowers that she pasted on.

The photos of which I'm most proud aren't nudes. The women who I photographed in those images, weren't naked. I don't even think that any of my favorite photos showed a woman's bellybutton.

It's not that I have any aversion to nudity in art. Quite the opposite. The earliest Christian paintings showed people's private parts.

The issue isn't nudity. The issue is laziness.

Some models may have the perspective that they only get money if they get naked. That's probably a real thing. That's awful. That's something that I'll never experience. I can't say that I have a clear picture here.

I can say that I do think that I could make more money as a photographer if I got more women to pose naked.

I also know that a lot of photographers are absolute garbage. They're just men who made their money doing something else. They paid $20k to buy some equipment that they don't know how to use. And, they're paying young women to get naked in front of them because they want to see young, naked women, and they know that other men who want to see young, naked women, don't give much of a fuck about quality.

There actually was a time when images that were considered to be pornographic were shot on 8x10 film cameras which I can't even afford to use today on a regular basis.

Photographers have to face this dilemma.

We all know that, if we get an attractive woman to pose naked, we're gonna get more money.

That's not a radical position. That's fact.

Too much of the problem is with these men who couldn't tell you what three point lighting was to save their lives; but, they're paying young women to get naked for them.

Maybe the male photographer who is staging everything on a generic background, and using an on-camera flash, and just cranking out photos of random women who are naked, and there seems to be no attention given to the actual women or the actual surroundings, should be an issue.

I have literally not done a nude shoot. Most of my regular models wouldn't do it. I've never asked.

That said, as a person who's building his own fucking darkroom in less than a month, I'm critical of photographers.

We should all have "no touch" policies. We shouldn't be middle-aged men who are paying younger women to strip down. We should actually know what the hell we're doing with our lights and our cameras.

We shouldn't be relying on a woman to show her private parts for us to make a damn living.

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