I’ve slacked for a couple days while preparing our backyard for new grass. Time to play catch up. What better way to start things off than with a nude of our favorite Asian model Anna!
Title: Taste
Created in my modest basement living room studio using a Canon 5D, Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8L lens, Alien Bees B800 strobe and red seamless background paper. The model is my lovely wife Sharon.
You can own a copy of this in print as this image is published in my book, available here: http://www.blurb.com.
See you tomorrow!
Knowing already what I wanted to blog today, I started off writing a title for this post. I quickly changed/shortened it after sharing a chuckle about it with Sharon. Here is the original post title: “A Nude-A-Day .. AKA Ray’s NADs!”
LMAO!
A Nude-A-Day
So, this is the beginning of a new project with something fans and followers might like on completion. I am going to post one nude photo each day for one year. At the end of that year, I will publish a book containing all photos, from day 1 to day 365.
What you might see is a nude or implied nude of Sharon, any of the models I’ve shot with who have signed model releases and any clients that released their images for me to use in my blog or portfolio and anyone I work with from this point forward who release their nude images. It may be something new, it may be something old, it may be something from my book Akey Style: Exposed . Sometimes it will be an artistic nude, sometimes glamour.. but always more skin.
Day 1
Today’s image, my second and most recent muse, Ms. Jo-Ann Carrington, captured during a special session that Jo-Ann decided to do as tribute to Marsha Hunt.
Until tomorrow..
I have been working for the last year and a half on what I envisioned to be a 200 page book encompassing a number of styles or genres of photography. However, working a day job takes time and energy away from my passion: Photography.
Needless to say, summer of 2010 passed quite quickly. Winter was a lot of studio work and spring has been fun yet I have not yet taken the time to go on a journey this spring/summer.
In any case, my 200 page book is on hold because I have such wonderful models at my disposal and my personal boudoir/lingerie, implied nudes and nudes collection is massive. So rather than shoot more and delay the complete collection, I chose to publish one volume (of which I’m sure future volumes of this genre will follow). This, my first portfolio style book is a volume of highly polished Boudoir, Lingerie, Implied Nudes and Artistic Nudes.
I chose to self-publish because, simply and realistically, I had no budget to hire the company that has courted me for probably a dozen months to promote any book projects I may consider. This first book is self-published through Blurb.com.
I thank-you for your support, wherever you are.
The nude figure is such a fascinating creation. There isn’t a single man-made object that emotes such unfettered beauty. Man (or woman), however, does have the ability to portray that divine creation in many ways.
Some choose to show the beauty through emotive and romantic portraiture, others choose to juxtapose soft, romantic skin against the texture of a rough wooden shed or barn and yet others choose to show a raw side of this form that others opine as something other than beautiful. to me, it is all beautifully divine.
When I capture and create a photographic image, particularly a nude image, a boudoir image for a private client, a figure study that I feel will add to my collective body of work or a glamour image for a beautiful model, I am capturing the beauty of the figure in front of my lens as I see it. I must create a beautiful image. To do so, I must “feel” something about the subject. Feeling something about the subject creates a powerful image. If I don’t feel something, there is no point in even trying.
Perhaps Helmut Newton said it best when he said, “My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.”
The beautiful figure in the image above is a figure study that will be featured in my book. This image was created in my studio during the young woman’s first nude session.
Until next time..
Ray
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Ray Akey Photography
http://akeyphoto.com