Quote:
Yes how do you find the models? Also, did you started right with that, or did you first started to take pics in clubs or nature?
If you're young, still in your 20's, just start photographing stuff, then start photographing people... Offer to do it as a favor.. once you get good at that, start to do it for money... Once you do that, you can probably get girls to pose for you for free just so they can have nice photos of themselves.... Once you do that, you can probably get girls to pose in lingerie, for free ....
I took a different route ... As you'll read here, I spent money to find models, which takes away from the feeling of accomplishment.. Still, it's cheaper than college tuition in some arts program ... so take that into consideration ....
I used to make fake IDs for my friends many, many years ago, so I have always had experience editing with Photoshop.
Later, I used this skill to take and edit photos for a job I interned at.
Also, I've sold a lot of shit on eBay over the years, and I've always been pretty careful about the photos I took and how the light and shadows looked... used Photoshop to edit those, every time.
Anyways, one day I just decided, "fuck it. I want to shoot pictures of sexy girls... where do I find some??" ...
The answer was simple: call girls.
So I contacted dozens and dozens until one of them agreed. I just said something like I was trying to learn photography, they looked good in their photo, would they let me photograph them. Most of them told me to fuck off but one of them agreed. When I showed up she talked about how she wanted to help get me started on my goal.
I don't have pictures posted from the first shoot I did. But, interestingly, the arrangement was for 20 minutes of photos for $35. But the girl just kept posing and posing and posing and two hours passed. She changed outfits. She enjoyed being treated like a model, she enjoyed being told she was pretty, and enjoyed me adjusting her poses... I just looked up the poses using Google images on my phone .. "That looks good, let's try that.. etc"
Afterwards, a friend helped me edit the photos with Adobe Lightroom....I sent the girl the edited photos and she said they were great and she used them for her ad to get more tricks. Everyone was happy.
I used my spare time to learn how to use Adobe Lightroom and then tried to find more models
To try to arrange a second time, I just kept contacting call girls asking if they would pose... I used photos from the first shoot to try to prove I was legit... actually the photos from the first shoot were terrible, and most of the girls I contacted told me to fuck off. and they told me that the photos from the first shoot sucked... So I kept redoing them in Lightroom and Photoshop until they looked better ... Then I started getting more positive responses.
Finally, one of them agreed. She didn't even want money, she just wanted to meet me. She was leery at first but I told her to call the first girl as a reference... The first girl just hung up on her ... She said she'd come anyways.. She asked me to have beer when she got there.. She came over and posed for the photos and during the shoot asked if I wanted to fuck her during the shoot. She was kind of trashy, actually... She agreed to come over because business was slow... due to her trashy looks.. so I just had her give me a handjob. She told me that if I kept doing this type of work the same thing would happen to me over and over again. I asked why .. she said "because this is what you love"... When I shoot, I tap into this kind of crazy level of mental focus... Adjusting the lights, asking for poses, going over her photos with her and talking about which ones are good... this seemed to be a turn on...
The third subject was the girl in this thread.... she was a confused, depressed girl who was selling her body a year ago but then stopped immediately after a week or so. I never paid her for sex... I kind of wish I did, but it didn't feel right. She seemed too innocent. I had her number saved from last year ... I had never seen her face... Then I installed SPAM and saw her face because she also had SPAM installed and I had her contact info saved.. I said.. "holy fuck. she's hot" so I texted her and asked if she'd pose for photos and she agreed, and we worked out a rate of ~$37/hour after she sent me a bunch of nude selfies. It wasn't cheap, but she was very hot compared to the others.
When I met her, I found out that she's a hard worker and is in college for massage therapy. She said she was on the wrong meds a year ago and that's why she was selling her body last year. ..I think she has some dad issues or something... It was really fun because we fought like crazy for frame control... We argued about which poses were too pornographic and which ones were truly artistic... It was horrific because I hate conflict but it was kind of fun at the same time because I was telling her to chill out and be cool, etc... she liked it..
Honestly, I think the reason things went wrong with this girl is because I asked this girl to do an outdoor shoot when she truly wanted to do more boudoir work, deep down inside... And, myself, I think I'm just better at boudoir and figure studies than outdoor photos... I should have had more practice before trying to do something I wasn't experienced with.. And, I should have kept up my end of the arguing, because that's what she seemed to like... humorous responses to the things she said ...
Anyways, this has been a lot of work.. I am trying to do other types of photography and find people who aren't current or former criminals to work with... Recently I put an ad on Craigslist that you're looking for a model for "figure studies" or "boudoir photography" .. Responses have been from women in their 30's but whatever... I'll take what I can get...
Once I establish my skills, I plan to participate in an event that runs every couple months in my town ... There is this thing called a "group shoot" where a whole crowd of hot women show up and pose in lingerie and photographers show up and photograph them.. It's another way to build a portfolio...
Anyways ... .this photography thing has changed my outlook on why women dress sexy.. I used to think they did it just to attract men.. Turns out they dress sexy because they like to dress and feel sexy, period. It's not to impress anyone. And they like to model for the same reason. To them, it doesn't seem dirty or strange, because they are just expressing themselves. They consider it "empowering." They feel like a star.
A girl who doesn't even know you or like you will pose in lingerie for you because she wants to express herself. That doesn't mean she wants to know you, though... but helping a girl feel sexy will definitely help her appreciate you, I'll say that much.
So, all you need to start is a DSLR camera, some shop lights, and something to diffuse the light... also helps to have a mounted flash... You need to read the DSLR manual and learn to shoot in Aperture Priority mode. Once you get better, shooting in manual mode is the ultimate goal.
Here's an email I sent to a woman who is going to be mentoring me in photography, describing how I fought through it:
-- cut --
For all of the "boudoir" photos I used a really old Canon Digital Rebel with the original 15-50mm lens.
The photos starting with "b" were shot in Program Auto, but the settings were all wrong. I had the white balance and ISO set wrong. The lighting was from a lamp in the room. So, I had to do a lot of adjustment with Lightroom and to make the color and light look anywhere near normal, and I used Lightroom and Photoshop to do touch-up.
For the photo "a1", and the boudoir photos starting with "IMG", I had the white balance and ISO set correctly, and these were shot in Program Auto. For lighting, I used two hardware store work lights with 26w 6000K CFL bulbs and t-shirts stretched over the front to diffuse the light. I used the camera's built in flash, with a piece of a milk jug to diffuse the flash. Again, I did a lot of touch-up with Lightroom and Photoshop.
So, what I learned was that I should have used Aperture Priority mode with the aperture set as wide as possible and I should have used a mounted flash.
After doing these photos, I got a Sigma f/2.8 17-50mm lens and started shooting using Aperture Priority mode at the widest aperture and longest focal length possible, with the background as far as possible from the subject.
So I did this with the two outdoor poses you see and I think they look pretty nice. I used Lightroom to enlarge the subject's pupils and do touchup.
With the outdoor photos, I had a really hard time coming up with directions for posing. Nothing really came to mind about how to pose the model. With boudoir, I can have a laptop right there and just use Google to find poses, but outdoors in the sunlight I can't use a laptop. So, I think that's why its easier to do boudoir, as a beginner.
-- end --
CHAT
