If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?

Yes, the cheesy title of this post is a reference to a song, which in a generally cheesy period of time, turned the cheese dial up to eleven. If the title makes you cringe, it did it's job because I'm going to be writing about a subject that makes me cringe.

I tell ya, I swear I'm allergic to country music anyway, it gives me a head ache and severe back pain (no kidding), but the song in question was a truly dreadful example, and it ensured that forever after, no man could ever tell a woman that she had a beautiful body without sounding like a complete twat.

Although you may try and avoid dRama on deviantArt, it cannot have escaped anybody's attention that for every camwhore, there is an army of... sad gits* who follow them, and whose idea of a comment is just as cheesy as 'You have a beautiful body', or 'you have great tits'.

So it kind of makes it very difficult to give compliments to a nude model with out feeling that you are sounding like a prick, and worrying that they will mistake you for a weirdo!

"Does my bum look big in this?"
But what woman doesn't like compliments? Many of the models (including the cam whores) are, I am sure, are itching to get some assurance that they aren't complete munters... or just that their arse isn't huge.

Society is telling women that they should be a size 8 (that's UK size) and that anything else is fat. worse still in my view, is that we are now telling them that their tits should be huge and look fake**. Who is actually deciding this is what a woman looks like?***

Chubby Chaser or boringly normal?
Personally, what I find attractive is a fuller, more rounded figure. I like boobs that are natural preferably large, and I like arses to be in proportion. But Who am I to say what women SHOULD look like? Women come in all shapes and sizes, and men like them in all shapes and sizes -- there shouldn't be a problem. But there is and I don't need to go any further into it, because the women that I'm talking about are saying, "I don't conform to the stereotype, this what I am, here I am naked, I can be beautiful too -- I AM BEAUTIFUL!".

This is a sodding important issue as far as I'm concerned. It is a social problem which is leading to eating disorders and self harming etc. But it's also an Art issue. Art should challenge social conventions, and good art should transform the viewer, or even the subject. When I'm taking photos, what I am trying to achieve is showing that beauty. I also want to mention that I damn well consider the model to be the senior partner in a collaboration too, especially when they have done all the hair, make-up (dieting, exercise), I can hardly take all the credit just because I pressed the button on a camera.

So why this long winded rant? Well, I saw a nice model, an new model. I commented that I hoped we'd see more of her. The photographer hinted that it was a possibility if the photos got some positive reviews.

I'm never wrong
Well, I may be wrong, but this could be one of those times that a model would like some positive compliments to know what she is attractive, beautiful, sexy even? (preferably from someone who doesn't appear to be a pervert)
If not, then I could point to half a dozen models off-the-top-of-my-head that who have straight-out said that by stripping off they are challenging the society's conventions -- basically saying a big woman can be beautiful too.

So here's where I stand.
I'm on dA for the nudes, for the erotic art. I love looking at beautiful women, and I like to see them naked -- when they are naked you see some of the most beautiful bits! If you think that makes me a pervert... then you need to see somebody about your hang-ups. I have nothing against porn, I like porn, I look at porn... I'm not on dA for soft porn, if I want soft porn, I need look no further than my bookmarks.
I AM NOT particularly interested in Fine Art Nudes, as I said I like erotic works, and Fine Art Nudes are usually anything but. (Aside from that, it's a genre that has been around since the invention of the camera and I feel it's a little stale).
And as I prefer erotica to fine art, I'm in no great hurry to convince anyone to strip down to their birthday suit, It's far easier to be sexy, saucy, a tease when you have some clothes on.

Now that I have covered that, I think I can finally say...

"You have a beautiful body, nice tits, a great arse and I enjoyed seeing you naked!"

And now... you can put your clothes back on if you feel you made your point and would rather do something else, thats fine by me. If you want to do more nude stuff, I certainly won't complain, let me know so I can add you to my watch list^****.
But on balance, I'd like to hear that the experience gave you a more positive image. I hope it does.

That's all folks -- apart from the footnotes.

* I'm going to have to think of an abusive nickname for them. Suggestions welcomed.

** I was told by the owner of a large fashion chain that they stock size 8 and 10 because that's what the fashion world says should be the norm, even though they don't fit anybody. He said they then make their money selling accessories because a bag is a bag and will fit any ol' slapper. But he also told me that even the size 8s and 10s can't get into the clothes now because they are having boob jobs.

*** He gladly talked about menswear which was his thing, but when I asked him about women's wear he told me that he 'fucking hates women' even though, he assures me, he isn't queer. It did occur to me that this isn't the ideal kind of person to to have an influence.

**** This reminded me of a joke:-
An attractive woman goes to the doctor because her very large breasts are aching. The doctor asks her to strip to the waist but she is very embarrassed because her breasts are so large. The doctor says, "I am a doctor, a trained professional". She tells him again that she is really self concious. He says that she hasn't got anything she hasn't seen before, so she makes him promise not laugh or be surprised or to stare and he agrees. So she undresses and her huge full breasts flop out and the doctor yells, "Whey-Hey!".(Boys will be boys!)

GetWatchers.com

I have gone viral, but not in a way I would have liked. I seem to have some kind of nasty throat virus, I have a fever and I'm more sodding grumpy than normal, but I make no appologies, firstly because if I wasn't a grumpys sod I probably wouldn't have much interesting to say, and secondly because I'm going to have a go at cat lovers, who deserve everything they get.

So anyways, I signed up to GetWatchers.com. I'm loving it, it adds a whole new dimention to deviantArt. Yeah, it works, I'm getting lots of page views, comments, favourites, and a few watchers at a time when I'm not submitting new work and expect to be very quiet. But I'm not a pageview whore, and I wouldn't be doing it just for that... although I admit I am enjoying testing strategies and tick-tacks which I will keep to myself for the time being.

What I'm really enjoying is being exposed to a BETTER selection of works. You only see stuff by other people signed up for it, and obviously if they are taking the time to put their best 10 works forward, you are filtering out a lot of the blah. So as a general rule the quality is much higher than you'd get. And there is so much stuff on dA that normally I just browse the catagories I'm particuarly interested in, and there ain't enough hours in the day for that. But with GetWatchers, you get a nice selection of stuff although you can filter out a few topics so you can avoid all of the awful fan-art, Manga and vampire shite.

So yeah, I have seen some great stuff. The skyscapes are amazing, what's not to like -- I bet they are popular. And I love flowers and blossoms as you can tell by my blog (I am hetrosexual by the way). And some of the macro shots are simply mind blowing.

But what is with the fucking cats?
Okay, so we shouldn't be totally surprised, I remember as far back as about 1994 saying that half the pictures on the interwebs were of porn, and the other half were of sad weirdos and their cats. And you can expect 'sensitive' people to be both into cats and have delusions of being arty, so a disproportianate number of cats isn't a mind blowing revelation. But some of these pictures are by talented people!

As an example, a couple of times I have found myself looking at people's galleries and they have some really great work, often a wonderful variety of portaits, landscapes, skyscapes, night shots, macros, character studies... all of which I'd give and eight or nine (on a day I'm feeling less grumpy), and then there are a load of cat pictures! Don't get me wrong, they are well taken pictures, in focus and all that, but nothing special... it's as if having a cat in them is enough! It's like they love their cat, we should fall in love on sight also, and that is the point of the picture. Well, I frigging hate cats, as did my father and his father before him, evil bloody things that creep up on you and leave mice in your bed.

Frankly, you see one cat and you've seen them all. It's not even like you are showing us any funny LOL cats.

And then it struck me, isn't this what the APEs say about nudes? "Seen one, seen them all", "It's a pair of boobs, get over it" and "I don't want to see your body, how is it artistic?". I may be onto something, but I'd rather be highly sexed and into nude women than be a fridged cat lover, so I'm not going to waste any energy analysing it.

Anyway, GetWatchers.com is highly recommended, don't be put off by the cats.

Poetry - Last refuge of the bearded, cricket hating sodomite

So, the whole do-dah about porn on dA is back again with a news article and a load of journal entries by various dA celebrities.

I like to keep my head down on such matters, not least because those that usually do the complaining are often... well, pretentious, judgemental and their work is usually contrived, contrite, sterile and lacking any imagination. But as it tends to be technically brilliant and fits the mould, it tends to be very popular with the kind of people who 'know' the difference between art and porn.

Anyway, I noticed, and even exchanged comments with a few people who are technically brilliant, popular, AND feel the same way I do. I'm relived, I'm not alone!

Really, the whole issue of porn on dA hasn't really bothered me. Until this week where I started following several of the camwhores, reading their journals, comments and following the links they provide. It's pretty obvious that there is no real pretence at 'art' in many cases, they just come to dA to swap pictures of genitalia and to meet up for cyber-sex. There are other places for that.

And it explains some of the weird notes CP has gotten.

Speaking of weird notes, I had an interesting exchange today. To cut a long story short I got a note from somebody saying they were a poet, which said that like him, I obviously appreciated bare feet. That he liked my work and was going to come back.

Well... anyone who has read my journal will see that I state quite clearly that I don't get the whole foot thing, but that I found it (along with all kinks and fetishes) very interesting and it was a theme we were going to explore, which we did. Around half of my foot photos are specific requests.

So when I get a private note from somebody assuming that I share their appreciation for feet (lets face it, it's a fetish) when I do not, I felt it only fair to let them know the true situation.

This chap took offence because I told him he was mistaken. In his reply he reminded me again he was a poet and that I shouldn't tell new fans that they are 'mistaken'.

Well, I'm not a poet. In fact, English isn't my first language (I'm far better at html and javascript) . When I decide to say something, I try not to mince my words, and I value honesty above all else.

And don't get me wrong, my only problem with fetishes is that I don't have one. I only wish I did, it would make life more interesting. I have no problem with anybody who likes a nice foot, and I encourage them to run with it (forgive the pun), enjoy it, be open about it, look at and take photos of them... and if they really must, write poetry about them.

But fuck, I hate poetry at the best of times! Poetry about feet holds no interest for me, and I'm not going to pretend I share an affinity or common interest.

I am what I am, if you take offence at that. Your loss.

I have to say, this exchange confirmed my prejudice about poets... they may be the only people more wussy and pretentious than fine art photographers.

*The title is a line from a comedy sketch by Armstrong & Miller, Mitchell & Webb.

Lovely legs

Giant by ~DannyBillArgent 

So I'm editing video by day, and editing these photos by night. My cold has gotten worse, and CP has developed a coldsore - so we'll be taking no photos for a week or so, which is a pity as we had plans.

We weren't completely happy with the last set of photos and wanted to reshoot some of them, which we were going to do over the next few day. But still, I have some photos that I can put up, the one I was working on last night is quite interesting as I grafted the head from one pic onto the body of another... as so many people have been asking how you do photo editing, I think I may do a brief Photoshop tutorial on it and post it here.

Sodding Typical

Well, Friday came and went, and we were both struck down by colds. Not so bad for me, but CP couldn't stop sneezing.
We took some photos anyway, but she couldn't wear make-up and had a very red nose... so it didn't go as well as hoped.

Her favorite pic, it requires a little editing.

Plus, with her not being particuarly into it, and me feeling stressed, I can't say I made the best of the camera and lighting. So, out of the 100 shots I took, I'll maybe get 5.

However, it's not all bad. The shots we did take, although not great, did show lots of potential. We can learn from them and hopefully do a few more sessions over the coming weeks. CP certainly seems to have been plesantly suprised by the results as she thought she would look as bad as she feels. She didn't -- she looked great in some of them. Shame I had problems with depth of field, focus, blur, poor background, and the ever present problem of noise due to shooting in poor light with a very old digital camera.

Here's to the future... I may not need to twist her arm!

I'm talking to myself

...it's the only way to get a decent conversation!

The forums on dA are terrible. Seems like no matter what you say, you get contradicted by some nerd or 20 year old know-nothing. It's just one big pissing contest to  prove who knows the most about photography and has the least social skills.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the answers there given are highly knowledgeable about photography and cameras, but they seldom usefully answer the question asked, and they prove once and for all that photographers generally know nothing about art.

As somebody once said, talking to photographers about art is like talking to Dog the bounty hunter about fashion... sure you'll get an opinion, but you'll not learn anything useful.

Scouting for Girls

We took the whole family for a walk on Sunday to a location I wanted to scout. It wasn't as good as I remember, and certainly not as quiet. It was about a mile walk to get there and along the way was some wonderful countryside. Shame we missed the summer!

I really should get a Twitter account for posts like this. I think i will.

Plenty of plans, but no plans to do them. Hopefully now the kids are back in school things will settle down to normality and I can take some photos.

Experimental post

I'd like to talk about my work, problem is that it does contain nudity, which is no big problem as far as I'm concerned but it means that I probably can't post thumbnails to it because it's marked as mature content on dA and I don't want to break any terms and conditions on blogger.
So here goes...


Statuesque by ~DannyBillArgent on deviantART

I'm used to photographing cars, so using a worm's eye view seems natural to me, thats all I did with the photo Statuesque. I took a load of photos while the model posed. I like this pose because it was sorta right, but sorta wrong too. I had some work to do blurring out the artex on the ceiling, I generally used the smudge tool on Photoshop where the pattern showed, which was mainly down the left side of the picture.
One of the lamps I used was a bedside lamp with a violet lampshade, this gave some of the picture an unusual cast and so I went with it, adjusting the colour temperature in CameraRaw, and that was it. All done!
Essentially I had an old camera and some household lamps. The location was our dining room, I photographed upwards to avoid shooting any furniture. The model was nude because we didn't have any clothes that she'd want to be photographed in... she just slapped on a bit of make-up, and this picture was the result. I'm quite pleased with the result, considering that it's basically a product of circumstance. If we had a studio and some nice clothes I may have produced a very different picture, but making do and working with what you got is kinda fun.

New

This is my new blog to compliment my deviantArt account which can be found here.
I'm still wondering why the word 'blog' isn't included in spellcheck. There will be other random thoughts, notes, etc.