“How many Licks…”
“Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.” -Edward Weston
I’m starting to make some headway into this backlog of photo edits. I still have a ways to go, but at least I’m on a roll and have knocked out a good chunk of all I had to do. Well, the first of my September workshops is in the record books. I keep getting from the participants that each one is the best yet. I’m glad they’ve enjoyed them so much, but the pressure seems to mount each time I set up another model and location. This last model, Clarissa, was one of Jeff’s finds. He did a personal shoot with her and then recommended her to me for a workshop. I’m glad he did. This was a very interesting girl with a even more intriguing story behind her. She is a real trooper. This girl was certainly not bashful and she didn’t mind getting dirty. As you can see from the redness on her back, butt, and feet, she was all over the place. At times I was uncomfortable with her fearlessness. She got up high once but she could handle it. 
All in all the event was a success, but just like in most cases, I was glad when it was over. Just dealing with all the coordinations to set it up were mind boggling and this event brought on challenges that would have felled a lesser organizer with ease. But hey, I was up for the challenge and I prevailed! Hooah! The first image up top is courtesy of good friend and photog, J.L. Wolfe, who shot this most opportune image of the back of my head as I was focusing on the model. What a great shot!One of my other challenges has been to figure out what to do with the overwhelming response to my casting calls when I need models. I do one or maybe two workshops a month. I get way more responses than that and end up turning down excellent models or at least asking them to wait til the next one, which is when you lose them or never hear back. These girls don’t like to feel second to anybody. I tend to book fairly quickly. Most times, when a model sees my casting and responds, I’ve already met with someone, interviewed, and booked. Then I’m left asking them to wait for the next one.
I need more paid gigs for my Las Vegas Art Models Group. I do more TFP work for my independent art, but I put together my group to help get more paid gigs for models who might not have many nude venues to work outside of schools and universities or photogs who just want to see a girl naked. I considered acting in the capacity of an agency, but that’s not really where my heart is. I get requests for models, but they are not as consistant as I’d like. I’d much rather sponsor my own events, but then you get into the area of availability of photogs who’ll pay. My workshops are fairly reasonable, but in a recent lighting seminar in my other group, the Las Vegas Photographic Society, we had several people RSVP to be there and then only 1 showed up. I have my group advance pay to avoid this, but too many events will only result in less participation. I don’t have the market to sustain more events just yet. I must admit, if I had the means to pay the models out of pocket, I’d be holding an event every week. I’m sure that would grow the group well enough til the numbers support the effort.
At one point, I thought about creating a blog for my LVAMG in addition to this one. That’s a no-go. Maintaining a blog is not the easiest thing to do. Content, time, and the committment to maintain it can be extensive. So this makes me wonder why another fairly prominent art nude blog chose to shut down. Imogens, just made its last post recently. I have no idea why, but I did notice they moved their operations from Blogger to WordPress, then began posting less frequently. No explanation was given, but I kind of wish someone else were allowed to take it over and maintain it. There was some good stuff there.And I’ll end with a new link to a fabulous to the website of a young painter, Erin Jones. (Also, Click ->Here for her blog link). She’s a good friend of mine and has become the best living artists I know. I don’t make that statement lightly. The girl is good. I haven’t seen her do any nudes, but you’ll like her work nonetheless. Erin proved very inspirational to me despite her young age. She’s a 20-something emerging artist with the wisdom of someone another 20 years her senior. I miss our long talks, debates, and conversations. She’s got excellent insight and is someone good to bounce soul searching questions off of. Trust me, I take full advantage.
What a good post. I don’t even know where to begin to comment…pay for models, the work that goes into a blog, all issues of concern to me and many of the rest of us.
The photographs are just beautiful!
From the standpoint of a regular participant in your workshops, we (collectively) are trying to figure out how to afford shooting a paid model every week, which we’d all love to do, but finances may not allow. I’ve been trying to brainstorm ways to make this happen…either smaller groups – maybe 3 photogs who can afford a 3-way split on the fee, individual shoots for photogs with the big bucks, etc.
I’ve thought too about getting something going similar to your artistic drawing venues where people can see how the photogs work and possibly view unedited work via laptop or direct link to laptop – Honey tells me this can be done…
Regardless of how you solve this predicament, we all feel for you.