– Chris St. James, Universe d’Artistes

You can mark November 7th down as a special historic day. Chris St. James, Blogger-in-Chief at Universe d’Artistes, has just posted his ONE THOUSANDTH article! That’s a thousand different issues, subjects, and bits of information that he has brought to us in the form of interviews, exhibitions, features, book and web reviews, and general information concerning photography centered around the artistic nude genre. You’ve seen me comment about him several times on this blog. For a while, he had to take a leave of absence from his charge to us, in order to tend to matters of his own health. His will to survive and then come back to us full-force is just a testament to how much this man lives to give. A lesser person would have resolved to a life of self-pity and depression. Chris chose to overcome and become more. Click on his link and scroll down to the Nov 7th post.

This is my message to him in honor of that celebration:

“What Cal Ripken, Jr. is to baseball…. What Brett Favre is to Football… Chris St. James is to photographic art nudes. I am glad and indeed honored to be able to call him my friend, despite the fact that we have never met.Over the last year, Chris has been invaluable to my growth as a photographer and as a writer. My blog would not be what it is today without his tuteledge and guidance.I am very thankful that he is an overcomer, a super-achiever, a survivor, and most notably a man full of genuine love which he bestows upon us on an almost daily basis.His prolific blog has helped countless photographers emerge from the dark confines of obscurity into the light of exposure and visibility.This is a very dedicated and committed man. I love him for it. One of these days we’ll meet, I’m sure. I am looking forward to it. Chris, thanks for being so strong and perservering for us! Your eternal Friend, Terrell”

On another note, this was also a pretty exciting weekend for me as well. As I have mentioned, I’ve pledged to concentrate on a few other things, rather than just the nude. Again, I am not giving up nude photography…I am just going to do some other things for a bit. In fact, Trixie is coming over this afternoon for some work and I have a few other projects that were already planned that I still need to follow through with. This weekend, I got to try my hand at some NHRA races at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Talk about AWESOME!! This was something new to me. I’d never shot race cars before and I quickly learned there’s more to it than shooting the nude. As with any subject, it requires its own perspective. I was instructed by the chief NHRA photographer that I’d have to shoot this pretty much like a portrait. I added a few things to that. I quickly learned that I needed to shoot from a lower perspective. Also an extreme wide-angle lens served very well…two things you don’t necessarily do in portraiture work.

So right now, I’ll post these images for you to enjoy and will speak more on how this all came about later. I gotta get ready for Trix.