The greatest mistakes/clichés in nude photography

[Ducky]

Like Weston's green pepper, it's light and shadow on the nude body.

I agree painting , painters, do it better.

 

[Pablito]

Jamie,
I am not learning at all! Better change the book,,,, 😀

yes, it's one thing to describe a cliché, another to show it. Same goes for the non-cliché...

 

[Leigh Youdale]

For me, in most cases, the photography is about line, light and shade and a little bit of mystery - also the 'whole' is often less than the 'part'.
My pet hate is poses that clearly require a degree of contortion or discomfort and thus end up looking a bit unnatural. I always find myself asking "Who ever sits (stands, reclines etc) like that with their clothes ON? So why do they do it differently with their clothes off?"
My next hate is nudes in ridiculous situations, like one I've seen where the model is crawling over the backs of a flock of sheep in a similar way to sheep dogs. Nice looking girl but the context is just ridiculous. Even a bit tacky.

 

[tbarker13]

Awful nudes can be found all over the site Model Mayhem. The place is packed with photographers who seem to think that a great photo is one in which a model agreed to take offer her (or his) clothes.
I've worked with a bunch of models in the past year or so - but generally I prefer for them to keep at least some of their clothing on. Part of this is because I just believe that there are few photographs worse than bad nude photos.
For me, good nude shots are those where the nudity is secondary.
And I really don't think it has anything to do with cliche props, etc. There's not much you can do in photography that hasn't been done before.

I personally prefer so called "implied nudity."
http://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/pic/20910424#20910424

But here's a bare breast and a chain. I'm sure it work for some, but not for others. Hell, I'm not even sure what I think about it.
http://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/pic/23959810#23959810

 

[peterm1]

I am hoping you would agree this is more how it could - maybe even should be done.........................Candid shots of a sleeping woman.

 

[Frank Petronio]

http://alysha.tumblr.com/

http://nettierharris.tumblr.com/

http://hattiewatson.tumblr.com/

These models travel the world shooting alternative and semi to full nude work, they even get paid to go to Paris and hang out, which is pretty sweet. Nettie is one of Ryan McGinley's favorite models; Alysha does a lot of skater fashion and tattoo magazine stuff. Hattie is sponsored by American Apparel. They're wonderful, talented, and creative art models with their clothes on, although they won't get much commercial work because they aren't tall enough. So they pretty much have to shoot with photographers and most of them want nudes, for which they will pay $100 and hour or so.

There is a subculture of a couple hundred traveling models doing this, right now these three are the top of the heap. But then there is a larger range, from Vegas dancers to girls who want to be in Maxim to hippies stealing rides on trains. Plus messed-up prostitutes and scary drunks and druggies.

One woman I know managed to remain 23 for five years! Magic. Another made enough to buy a loft in Manhattan. All cash and off the books too. I have a ton of great, f-up stories from it all.

Most of the photographers are nice guys, they don't encounter too many creeps but these girls know how to weed out the jerks early on as well. If you want to shoot with them, simply send them an email, they are very nice and professional. If you want to learn how to shoot nudes and get over the fear or boundaries, I recommend hiring them to shoot for a session - they will help and educate you.

Anyway, if you look through their Tumblrs and get past the initial shock and awe, there thousands of pictures all sort of run together and most of the images are indistinguishable from one another and it hardly matters which photographer shot them because if I see yet another hipster Polaroid of a topless girl mugging for the camera I am going to hurl.

Which is why I rarely shoot nudes anymore. I think my stuff is unique but I don't like being associated with this crap. As cool as the girls are. As nice as it is to see a pretty girl showing off. It ain't worth it. People typecast you as a nude photographer and that isn't so hot after a while.

I do recommend that people try it, it is a very good exercise and it makes you braver and bolder with your other work. But as a genre unto itself, I am not sure it is that great an idea. I much prefer shooting "portraits" over "nudes". If the subject's personality is such that their showing a body part makes a difference then I'm not about shy shooting that aspect - I'll even do a close-up detail - but it's not the basis for the shoot itself.

I think most nudes done by art photographers are sort of lurking and creepy because in spite of trying to position the work as art, we see nudity as sexuality in our culture. Heck why else do men pick attractive young women 98% of the time? So if I am going to shoot a nude I'm going to confront it head on and admit I'm attracted and looking at them sexually. It doesn't mean I'm going to jump them or hit on them. It's just honest. That tends to work wonders in terms of getting good expressions that feel real, as opposed to Playbody styles that just seem kind of faked and scary.

So try it, get good at it and see where it takes you? But don't take it up as a subject itself, think of them as portraits once you get over the initial nervousness and awkwardness that many photographers are likely to feel.

And don't shoot topless Polaroids like so many other hipsters or I'll punch you.

 

[regularchickens]

And that's why I didn't shoot Nettie when she came a-knocking.

I shoot a lot of nude work, but I don't post a lot of it online. I'm more interested in combining my work into short, small themed books and magazines. It makes me think more about what I'm doing and saying with it than I would if I was doing the usual tumblr dance. And all that stuff really does run together.

 

[Frank Petronio]

Nettie is a force of nature though and she doesn't need to be naked at all. Of all of them, she's one of the most interesting to photograph.

http://vimeo.com/18383729

This kid is doing a documentary on her travels. He filmed us shooting and talking and I think he got some good stuff so I'm looking forward to seeing the big film next year. I think he got my shock when she started peeing into Lake Ontario, haha, what a freak.

 

[Frank Petronio]

Hattie made Italian Vogue: http://www.vogue.it/photovogue/Portfolio/f5cf5dc1-6afa-4f62-935c-6524e1d26f14/Image You have to figure that her having a lot of tattoos and only being 5-5 or so - well she must be a damn good model to overcome that and get into one of the top fashion venues.

 

[regularchickens]

My (least) favorite cliche in this kind of work has to be the stiff, awkward model in front of a portrait backdrop with studio lighting. There's usually no connection to who the model is and no effort made by the photographer to portray anything in a sympathetic manner. And there's usually a list of expensive equipment - including arrangement and model numbers of the strobes used - at the bottom. It's the equivalent of HDR landscapes, done with pretty young girls instead.

The cliche I'm guilty of, and will probably never tire of, is taking portraits of women next to windows.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Some of the "biggest" or "greatest" mistakes in the nude photo world --imvho-- are:

- lack of taste
- lack of vision
- confusing lack of clothes with artistic nudity
- talking about it with people who have radical convictions
- shock value


I guess this applies to just about any kind of photography re: greatest mistakes/clichés.

 

[dogbunny]

The clichés are things I don't like, the good stuff is what I do like?

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Hey Frank, that is a great post.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Most of the nude models these days must either be gymnasts or contortionists in the real world. The goal seems to be to pose them in the most unnatural positions possible. Boring and bizarre.

 

[filmtwit]

I think as someone already posted here, start by studying painting.
If take someone like Degas, their's generally a limit to which he'll show nudity and as such the picture draws you in to see what you can find, and what you can't find.

 

[Sparrow]

I think as someone already posted here, start by studying painting.
If take someone like Degas, their's generally a limit to which he'll show nudity and as such the picture draws you in to see what you can find, and what you can't find.

... I think you are projecting your own prejudice onto his work there ... there are many of full frontal Degas nudes

 

[celluloidprop]

it's not Degas, but there's always http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Origine_du_monde

 

[crawdiddy]

The nudes I dislike, artistically speaking, lack the awkwardness that makes people interesting. Conventional nude poses strip away the model's personality. There are almost no nude photos I actually like, as art. There are a couple of Erwitts I really like, the one of the mother asleep on the bed with the baby with her breasts exposed...

That is extremely well articulated. I agree. I really don't like nudes where people seem generic. No personality. I suppose the photographer may have attempted, and in many cases succeeded in distilling the essential "nudeness" of a subject. But all the idiosyncracies are gone.

Well said, mabelsound.

 

[Jamie123]

Hattie made Italian Vogue: http://www.vogue.it/photovogue/Portfolio/f5cf5dc1-6afa-4f62-935c-6524e1d26f14/Image You have to figure that her having a lot of tattoos and only being 5-5 or so - well she must be a damn good model to overcome that and get into one of the top fashion venues.

Not to knock that girl or anything but it is still just the vogue.it online 'photovogue' section. If I understand correctly that's sort of like a moderated flickr pool, i.e. you can submit your photos and every day they post a selection on the website. It seems like they might even print the best ones in the magazine.

Like I said, not to diminish that model's or the photographer's (who I think is a fine photographer which I follow on tumblr) accomplishments but recently I've been seeing more and more that some photographers credit their photos with 'shot for vogue.it' which, conventionally, implies that they were hired by Vogue for a shoot which would obviously be a much bigger deal.

 

[filmtwit]

That's true, but even in many of his full frontal's he'll obstruct your view, either with light, color, softness, a model's hand over her face, art direction, ect.

... I think you are projecting your own prejudice onto his work there ... there are many of full frontal Degas nudes