Oh BTW, this is her face. Why she can’t bank on it is bullshit. 

Get a good look in because I haven’t shown these in years. 

This of course, is the ultimate Model Mayhem shot, with Tiana Hunter no less. First nude I ever really tried, April in Buffalo, six cops came “to investigate”. I only post it while cringing because I don’t like these and yet it will popular! 

However if you ever do need a really great naked model, Tiana is the best. Period. 

Old picture of a former Penthouse Pet made in a $70 hourly in Studio City. I reject most everything about this picture now but it was how I found my limits. 

If I use her name in the caption then I get thousands of hits and start getting emails from this one stalker who followed her cross-country. 

Anonymous asked: While I like your large format nude portraits, I find your post on photography projects to be offensive. You degrade and therefore seem to dislike people who do "projects" and certainly are opposed to student work because it prescribes to a model taught by art schools. Why chastise others, like young students, for making work, albeit sometimes not good work, and opposing it simply because he or she can from a privileged background?

Great, 1% of my photos show boobs and that’s what they zero in on…. I guess we’ve learned what sells?

I’m not dissing anyone simply because he or she or it came from a privileged background or was lucky enough to go to an art school. I’m opposed to their mostly mediocre pictures. Not all projects are bad - Bruce Davidson, Robert Frank, and many others have made very successful ones. But what I am complaining about is that with today’s format, everything has to be packaged as a project, regardless of the photographer’s intent and working methods. 

I only use the rich kids opting to take the easier, obvious pathways to make my point. But yes, art schools are for the rich, and, from what I’ve seen, kids with poor reading comprehension and limited rhetoric skills. 

It’s a good bet that many of the greatest photographers would have their images rejected at the large portfolio reviews because their work lacks “sufficient rigor to maintain the narrative” or some such artspeak bullshit. It’s that review process that I have the most contempt for… I really don’t care how young Taylor or Aspen spend their college trust money. 

Cheap!

I guess the boots are better in color. 

Stupid Boots

Shannon 

Photography Projects

Seems like a way to pad a portfolio out with a bunch of boring extras. How about doing a “project” of nothing but greatness? 

The worst are the “projects” created after the fact because these damn portfolio reviews steer everyone towards the “project” model. Santa Fe, Aperture, Portland, NY… they all arrive at the same solutions - and it makes for easy, fast reviewing! One size fits all. Worse than an $100k student-loan MFA. Just another trend extended towards photo editing, probably because people can really churn a lot of stuff out with their digitals and the internet. Meh, most of it shouldn’t get past the Flickr stage. 

Bruce Davidson did a “project”. Robert Frank did a “project”. The crap I’m looking at is just stabbing to see what sticks. No confidence or attitude, those over-educated eyes. They’re so timid and whipped that they can’t even say something is true, much less beautiful. Hell they’re even scared to be ironic. Just stand back and document anonymously, cold as death. 

The blog I saw today was comical because all the photographers had to be privileged children… one guy shot his family’s resort cabin… “full of memories”. An undoubtedly cute girl tip-toed into the Ghetto to find young men with grills. Someone documented their traveling salesman father flying first class, the “last of his breed”, her dear old ~Dad~! Of course it’s all upper-middle class white kids shooting and it’s bland and predictable as fuck. But maybe they shouldn’t feel so bad since I’ve seen many internationally-recognizable shooters not doing much better.

It all looks like people are calculating what they shoot, forget the emotion or intuition. Photographing in such careful accordance of the expectations of academic art lacks integrity to me. The elements of chance and rebellion are essential to photography, yet it is difficult to find portfolios of inspirational photographers willing to take chances or counter the prevailing aesthetic. 

So where is the good work? Who isn’t pretending they went to Yale?