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Model photography and Glamour

Hi,
Let's introduce myself with a little story and my views on model and glamour photography.

My name is Frank Doorhof born the 6th of May 1971 and I have been photographing for as long as I can remember, however found model photographing only a few years ago and it's been going fast ever since.

In modelphotography I strongly believe in a few points which for me are the key elements in a good and strong photo.

First of all it's important that a photo tells you something, I hate the static pictures where nothing happens (never been a landscape photographer with passion, although I love to do it sometimes), also the picture have to tell you something about the person, in other words it should be a journey, some short some long.

As my main inspiration I see the work of icons like David Lachapelle and Erwin Olaf, those photographers can get a whole story across with one photo, and you keep revisiting the work for more information or hidden clues, or just for the experience :D

When knowing this it can be a guide line for your photography.

Take for example the simple portrait, a lot of photographers will photograph the model looking straight in the camera heads on a smile.
This seems like an ok picture but it won't survive on the wall very long, try to let the model look away and there comes a story, what is she seeing, what is happening, why isn't she looking in the camera.
Experiment with subtle expressions and complete the shot, add a nice angle and you're home free :D

Now crossing over to glamour we can complete the story.

Glamour over the years have gotten a bad rep by many people, being indecent, or what ever worse.
However glamour from it origin had nothing to do with er0ti_a or even lingery.

Glamour in it's purest form is making something better/more beautiful than it is in it's original state.
When getting very to the basics, the standard beauty portret COULD be called glam'r, because the model looks better than she is in real life (although most of the time when PS is applied).

For me however glamour is a little bit more.
Glamour should be accompanied by a certain tension, a certain feel, for me that's a little bit sexy or daring.
This should not mean nu__ (abbrev unclothed model0, one of the best examples I heard for glam'r photography was the simple photography of a wedding dress, show the bride on the back of a motor and it's a wedding photo, take the dress a little higher so you can see a bit of stocking and it's glam'r.

When someone asks me what I do, or what kind of corner they can put me in, I often reply Glam'r and Fashion but mostly Glam'r, the reason for this is that even with my fashion photography I try to put a little bit of tension into the shots, a little bit of connection to the viewer.

When you play with this it can greatly improve the way your shots are viewed by people.

Let's have fun on the OPF and ask what you want.

Greetings,
Frank
 
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Gary C-G

New member
Why have you banned people? Obviously because they broke the rules, probably repeatedly but could you elucidate with some examples please? I agree with moderation to a point but censorship is not something I support for an adult orientated forum, mainly because of the subjective nature of the beast. Thanks in advance.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Gary C-G said:
Why have you banned people? Obviously because they broke the rules, probably repeatedly but could you elucidate with some examples please? I agree with moderation to a point but censorship is not something I support for an adult orientated forum, mainly because of the subjective nature of the beast. Thanks in advance.

Gary, we try to ban not more than 2-3 people a day. Otherwise it looks bad. Some people use poor spelling, don't punctuate or just don't get it. So out they go.

By the way, this is not an adult-orientated forum, but one devoted to serious photography.

Asher
 

Gary C-G

New member
Thanks for the reply. I think you misunderstood my meaning of adult. By that I meant adult attitudes and behaviour not the other thing.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Gary C-G said:
Thanks for the reply. I think you misunderstood my meaning of adult. By that I meant adult attitudes and behaviour not the other thing.
Hi Gary,

My humor! Same with bannings, I must confess. This is an open forum and we just expect our friends to be considerate....and bring their own handcuffs!

The latter, of course, is a metaphor.

Asher

BTW, Real Names!
 
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nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Gary C-G said:
Thanks for the reply. I think you misunderstood my meaning of adult. By that I meant adult attitudes and behaviour not the other thing.
Gary
Asher est encore un grand enfant! he's joking!

For a change to real name, please PM Michael Tapes or myself with correct info and we'll do it for you with pleasure (can't find where I did put all my handcuffs! Michael, can you email me some please? thanks)
 
Now that is Funy...oooopppps, I meant Funny! I really did. I swear. I didn't study at University for this..Oh nooooooooo....Please let me off easy.

Bisous
Ben
 

Wojtek Kutyla

New member
Frank, thank you for sharing your interesting point of view - I totally agree with you :) Especially with the bit about "how glamour is considered to be bad and eeeevil" - because it is really considered like that...

It's a shame :/

Very interesting stuff you're writing about - and I look forward to your further contributions! :)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Well glamor works in several ways. It's a self-energizing circle fed by creative visoin, artistic magic, deception, seduction, delusion and delight of the creator and the hunger of the viewer.

It communicates in an attractive way what's modern and alluring.

It gives a "high", a "fix" not found in the mirror; alluring beauty.

Then they raid stores like hungry female hyenas attacking a lioness for her kill. They shop ruthlessly.

After the raid, they parade, showing off their hunt to not men but other women!

It shows their rank as an alpha women.

Asher
 

Tom Hunscher

New member
Personal definitions

Words seem like definite things and obviously you have given this a lot of thought, but as I was reading your post I was thinking that the more specific and elaborate definition of glamour or any other sort of photography, the fewer people are going to agree with every point until one reaches a point where few people agree with it.

While words are definite things (or can be) what they represent tend to be clusters of disparate things. (Just think of what the word "dog" encompasses, for example.) Like it or not, real language is defined by actual usage and not by one's personal linguistic quirks and taste.

As a matter of fact, if one takes the full breadth of definitions (as exhibited by how the term is actually used) glamour ranges from porn through the most conservative kind of boudoir photography and on into some kinds of pinup photography. (Would Bettie Page in a bathing suit be glamour? Some would say yes, some would say no.)

When asked what glamour means, I will usually refer to related terms like class or glitz to distinguish it from porn, but of course where does that leave Bettie Page in a bathing suit or a really well done and creative example of softcore men's magazine photography?

In the end, much as we'd like to control how terms are used, it is how we (the public at large) use them that gives them their meaning. Lexicographers no longer prescribe as they did in the early and mid 20th Century but merely record. The "right" way to use a term is any way it's commonly used.

A friend of mine once said something which I'll attribute to him for now, though I suspect someone more famous said it originally, and that is "Art is what someone says is art." You could say the same for glamour. Glamour is what someone says is glamour. It may be good or bad glamour in the same way that a bad boy is nevertheless a boy. However, whether an example of glamour is good or bad isn't writ on the sky by God; it's a matter of what the someone believes.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
"Art is what someone says is art."

You could say the same for glamour. Glamour is what someone says is glamour. It may be good or bad glamour in the same way that a bad boy is nevertheless a boy. However, whether an example of glamour is good or bad isn't writ on the sky by God; it's a matter of what the someone believes.

Well, in spite of my respect for your academic philosophy background, which I respect, I must object to such simplistic P.C. (politically correct) dismissal of more careful definitions.

Glamor can be defined reasonably well and I will start this process.

Here in OPF, it cannot be that anything someone thinks is glamor is "glamor".

Why not? Well because otherwise people would have no guide as to what to expect in a forum as anything would therefore come under glamor! OPF has to be able to self-regulate and we do this by having a clear community understanding of each rooms scope of interest.

How to define glamor?

A. First we might start by seeing what we could exclude.

Pictures which:

  1. Demean
  2. Are designed primarily to expose crotch areas for arousal
  3. Are snapshots of women with no reference to form or beauty
  4. Display sexual acts
  5. Involve children
  6. Are cruel
  7. Deal with excetory functions

B. Now we can come from the other end, as Frank has implied, to say that Glamor might in general include pictures showing

  1. attractive women
  2. attactive clothes/props
  3. interesting composition
  4. generally glowing healthy skin, eyes, lips and teeth and well groomed nails
  5. posture and/or expression to someone inside or outside the picture or to the viewer
  6. implied potential even invitation for some flirtation, romance or daliance


  • saucy
  • suggestive
  • downright baudy

There's my $0.02, all of it.

The next thing is to see the images.

  • Does the girl look like some one to flirt with?
  • Does she look like someone to to give you a dose of something you'd rather not get. Is it subtle or is it crude.

The pretty playful woman with allure to flirt with is, in my mind the essence of glamor. She's fun, healthy, alluring. When it's that, it's fine here.

When it's crude, she behaves like a whore and you'd be ashamed for your daughter doing that, it's not!

Our pictures should be such that the majority of our audience would not reasonably object to their teenagers viewing, (unless there are deep religious (moral) objections which is another matter entirely!)

Only by attempting to define what might be "glamor" can we get a robust forum going that people will support with posts, comment and shared experience.

Asher
 

Tom Hunscher

New member
Further discussion on the defining of "glamour"


Well, in spite of my respect for your academic philosophy background, which I respect, I must object to such simplistic P.C. (politically correct) dismissal of more careful definitions.

Glamor can be defined reasonably well and I will start this process.

Here in OPF, it cannot be that anything someone thinks is glamor is "glamor".

Why not? Well because otherwise people would have no guide as to what to expect in a forum as anything would therefore come under glamor! OPF has to be able to self-regulate and we do this by having a clear community understanding of each rooms scope of interest.

How to define glamor?

A. First we might start by seeing what we could exclude.

Pictures which:

  1. Demean
  2. Are designed primarily to expose crotch areas for arousal
  3. Are snapshots of women with no reference to form or beauty
  4. Display sexual acts
  5. Involve children
  6. Are cruel
  7. Deal with excetory functions

B. Now we can come from the other end, as Frank has implied, to say that Glamor might in general include pictures showing

  1. attractive women
  2. attactive clothes/props
  3. interesting composition
  4. generally glowing healthy skin, eyes, lips and teeth and well groomed nails
  5. posture and/or expression to someone inside or outside the picture or to the viewer
  6. implied potential even invitation for some flirtation, romance or daliance


  • saucy
  • suggestive
  • downright baudy

There's my $0.02, all of it.

The next thing is to see the images.

  • Does the girl look like some one to flirt with?
  • Does she look like someone to to give you a dose of something you'd rather not get. Is it subtle or is it crude.

The pretty playful woman with allure to flirt with is, in my mind the essence of glamor. She's fun, healthy, alluring. When it's that, it's fine here.

When it's crude, she behaves like a whore and you'd be ashamed for your daughter doing that, it's not!

Our pictures should be such that the majority of our audience would not reasonably object to their teenagers viewing, (unless there are deep religious (moral) objections which is another matter entirely!)

Only by attempting to define what might be "glamor" can we get a robust forum going that people will support with posts, comment and shared experience.

Asher


I understand where you are coming from, and I support banning crotch shots, for example. But you are going way, waaayyy, beyond that into areas that are really going to amount to some individual deciding what glamour is based on his or her personal taste, which seems inconsistent with an "open" photography site that really doesn't want to censor.

1. Let's start with "images that demean women." What does that mean? I happen to know that many of the models who pose for the most extreme sort of n*des don't feel demeaned and actually can't wait to see themselves as soon as the images are available. THEY are not demeaned. That leaves some nameless third parties. The trouble with that is that SOMEONE is likely to feel demeaned by any glamorized or n*de image and feels nobody should be doing such things.

2. Aesthetically, you don't judge the value of art by its intent. Aesthetically, art is judged as it is, as though you discovered it without knowing its utility, and of course in its purest form, art is not utilitarian at all (mink-lined toilets and so on). You can judge art ethically if you want, but that isn't a road we want to go down, is it? E.g., "I don't want to read Ezra Pound's poetry because he was an arch conservative and Nazi-sympathizer." Mel Gibson may be less than an ideal person in everyday life, but Apocalypto was an excellent and well-made movie. That said, I've seen some gorgeous pudenda and if someone finds that stimulating and arousing, his interior psychological life is his business. If we can't have privacy in our own heads, where can we have it?

3. Snapshots with no reference to form or beauty. I'm not sure whether what is being proposed is a prohibition on snapshots no matter what the quality, or snapshots which ALSO make no reference to form or beauty, either way I find it interesting that such a roundabout way has been proferred to say no more than "We don't want photos which aren't pretty." What makes a photo a snapshot? That it's not a formally posed shot? I take and sell a lot of photos that fill that bill and yet people don't think of them as snapshots! Why? Because I know how to compose a photo. But what of people who are trying to learn to make pretty pictures? And once again, inevitably people will disagree about whether particular images are pretty.

In terms of the "not formally posed" standard of a snapshot, consider the following photo, since it was just taken walking around and the model mugged a bit without my direction, so I was just taking a picture of someone and simply found the moment to trip the shutter instead of demanding a certain pose to result in a certain premeditated composition:

RajSample03.jpg

True, this shot has been post-processed some to make it look like an illustration for some kind of 1950's LIFE Magazine advert, but I think you can see that the photo was a good snapshot before I did that. I took this photo by walking around with the girl and just snapping shots whenever I felt some good would come of it. Isn't that what a snapshot is? So, I think we can't exclude snapshots per se and probably can drop that part of your definition. A photo isn't bad or even unglamorous because it's a snapshot. I gather then that someone will be deciding for us when something isn't beautiful enough to be seen in this forum? Well, what if the excluded person could learn from some criticism? How can that happen? So, if something isn't "glamorous," will it be scooted outta here before anyone gets a chance to see and comment on it? That doesn't make much sense, so I hope that isn't the plan.

4. No sexual acts seems a good standard depending on what you mean if only because you aren't excluding minors. Out of curiosity, what is a "sexual act," though? Is a kiss a sexual act? (I, myself, have found kissing to be quite a turn on.) How about a casual touch of a breast? Any part of one person's body under another person's undergarments? Or are we talking about the sex acts where bodily fluids are being exchanged? Further definition seems in order if you want to control things through definition.

5. Naturally, kiddie porn is <i>verboten.</i> Beside the fact that it's patently illegal in every civilized country, it's the abuse of a child. However, your wording implies something broader. Are images of those children who compete in the pre-teen beauty pageants forbidden? what about a 15 or 16 year old posing non-erotically in a bathing suit as for a bathing suit catalog shot just so that a customer can visualize the suit on a person? Mid-teen girls wear tight jeans and miniskirts and just love to mug for the camera. Are those shots excluded? While everyone will agree that highly eroticized images of underage females (or males) are ethically reprehensible, the sad fact is that a pedophile is going to appreciate any beautiful image of a child in the way that a mentally healthier person will not, much the way you and I might think Jessica Biel looks mighty hot even fully dressed. It's just hard to know where to draw the line here. Maybe you need to be a bit more specific in that regard because you want to be clear through definition.

6. Where the images "are cruel." This is a bit underdefined. Is it if the image is in some way an act of cruelty (such as if it affirms a negative stereotype)? Or do you mean where cruelty itself is being depicted, as in a bondage or boot and whip type of image with presumably consenting models? I don't think I've ever seen a glamourous bondage image or leather fetish image. Anyway, some clarification is needed here as well if precise definition is the way you want to go.

7. Images which deal with excretory functions. I've seen some cute urination photos (and I'm reminded of that famous peeing boy statue up in...where? Copenhagen?). But, yes, such images while not perhaps beyond redemption per se, are nevertheless difficult to bring off in a way that most people would find tasteful. I don't think you'll find too much resistance from most people, myself included.
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Tom,

As you know, it is very difficult to define anything, that can be accepted world wide, even for physical, individual things, such as a colour or linear measurement. I think Asher, Frank, yourself and others have a fairly good idea of what is acceptable on opf, bearing in mind that folk from other cultures and background may have different views of what is 'acceptable'. So, could I suggest you post only 'middle of the road' images, but for the ones you think may be pushing the boundaries link to your images on your site, so that they do not appear in line. Gradually, the boundaries will become more defined.

At the end of the day, opf is Asher's baby, he works hard to keep it civilised, to make it a place where folk can drop in and socialise. The rest of us are merely involved, associated with its content. Its content is more or less defined by the folk who post, there has been very little censorship required so far, afaik. There is an area for more contentious issues, maybe that is where we can let our hair down, and explore closer to the boundaries.

You have enough images on your site, which ones do want comments on? Of those, which are the ones you think are OK to post here, in line, on opf, in the glamour section?

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Glamor can be defined reasonably well and I will start this process. . .

Well, if we are outside the realm of rigorous scientific notation, anything can be defined, in that anyone is free to posit a definition. But let me not belabor that.

I'm afraid that here I have to invoke a test I often used for questions that have been posed: "If we had a 'good' definition of 'glamor', what would we do with it?" (Said another way, "what would it do for us?")

For example, a role that might be played by a "good" definition of glamor is this:

"I see that Guillaume d'Image has announced a new branch of his Web site devoted to glamor. Wow! I'm so glad I know what glamor is, since now I know what to expect there."

Really, now.

An interesting definition of glamor is that presented by the American Heritage Dictionary:

"An air of compelling charm, romance, and excitement, especially when delusively alluring."
 
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