We Become Professional Erotic Photographers
This chapter is about how my little photography company was rebooted. But first I need to tell you how it died several years before. It seems I was shooting photos for a local charity's Christmas fundraiser. My nephew's girlfriend wanted to learn about professional photography so I enlisted her to be my assistant for the day. One of her jobs was to put the gear back into the minivan. But, it seems she forgot to put my good DSLR inside the van, but rather she put it on the roof. Well...... it stayed on the roof for a good while, long enough for me to get up to 50 mph. My photo business ended up in pieces on the highway. It was several years before I was able to invest the money in a new professional grade DSLR. Thus, my glamour photo business went moribund for several years.
It was fortuitous that the prior Christmas Paula had bought me a Nikon D300. So that when the owner of Timberline Lodge asked me to become their staff photographer I had a new professional grade camera to do so. In July of 2012, Paula and I went together to Timberline Lodge Resort for the first gig with my rebooted company and camera. Our professional intent however, did not keep us from having a good time.
We arrived in the about noon. First off was to shoot photos of the physical facilities before the resort filled with the weekend guests. I shot indoor and outdoor photos, and in a few I asked Paula to act as a guest to highlight this was indeed a nudist resort. Afterward, we had time to lounge around the pool naked for a while before setting up my portable studio. By prior agreement with the owner, I was to use the main room of the playhouse as a studio as long as their guests could watch me do the shoots and we left a few beds still available for those who wanted some afternoon sex there. Sure enough, while we were setting up the studio, a nice looking couple came in and had a seat in a couch that sat next to where we were putting together my light boxes.
We exchanged pleasantries then as casually as could be the woman goes down on him… oh, did I not mention that they were nude when they came in, as were both Paula and I. So, while I’m getting the light boxes onto their stands, I can’t help but watch her blow him. Before we had finished, they moved to one of the beds and began to slowly make love right in front of us as if doing so was something everyone did every day. They weren’t performing for us, but they weren’t the least bit concerned about having sex literally a few feet away from us. This, I thought, is just what I write about on my blog, sex as a natural and casual part of everyday life.
Once we’d finished Paula gave me a blow job as well, then pushed me down on a bed and mounted me. While she slowly fucked me, the couple moved from the far side of the room, to a place right next to us. We and the other couple watched each other for a good while as we all had languid afternoon sex.
The lights set up and sex complete, we went back to the pool area for dinner. I’d brought my portfolio of 8x10 prints with me so as to drum up some business. I must admit I never get tired of people looking through it and telling me how good my photos are. OK, I'm vain about my art, but what artist isn't? We didn’t stay too late at the Friday party in the resort's clubhouse as it had been a long day and we were exhausted.
The next morning, from 8:30 AM till past noon I did a series of nude and erotic photo-shoots of resort staff and of Paula for use on Timberline’s website. We began early with a number of shots of Paula and staff relaxing nude at the pool before the resort's guests began to recover from their late-night partying. The trick was that Timberline’s current web-host would not allow full frontal nudity so I worked to avoid that, yet get the idea of the nude environment into the photos.
The owner set me up to shoot several sets of photos during the late morning and early afternoon. She'd scheduled two women for nude glamour sets and two couples for erotic photos. The playhouse proved to be a great studio location. The dark colors, multiple beds at different heights and the mirrors all helped me to create the photos I wanted.
First we shot a series of Paula so as to test out the light set-up before a pair of lodge staff members came down for their glamour nude shoot. Paula, by this time in her life, had become an experienced model and was able to show by example what the job entailed.
Neither of the women had ever posed nude before; but, since they worked at a nude swinger's resort they were not uncomfortable about nudity. Significantly neither were classic beauties, but rather quite ordinary women. Taking a page from the methods of the great 1920’s photographer Albert Chaney Johnson, I’d brought a box of wraps to use instead of lingerie to get the images I was seeking.
When we had set up the day of shooting, I had just planned on doing glamour but Dianne, the owner, asked if I could shoot some romantic photos of couples making love in the playhouse. This was not the first time I’d shot erotica and the space gave me great control over the lighting. I must say I was quite pleased with the results. One of the female bartenders and the manager of their club (who happened to be the grand-son of the resort owner's) put on quite a sexual show.
Initially I told them to behave naturally so I could watch how they interacted in bed. I had them move into a variety of positions until I decided the best one for what Dianne wanted, given their relative body shapes, was for him to sit up and for her to sit in his lap.
As I had found in other cases I had to repeatedly remind the guy that he needed to follow my directions. He kept wanting to fuck while, since I had been instructed to get romantic images, I needed him to stay still. With Paula on hand to move the lights for me, we got the job done in about half an hour. The woman's enthusiasm made for great photos. Her face made me wonder if she'd been wanting to have sex with him for some time. What was interesting is that they had been friends for a couple of years, but had never been sexual nor romantic. In some ways this made directing them in the shoot easier since they both approached it as simply modeling for advertising for the resort.
The second couple was another female bartender and her brand new husband. I mean, brand new like they had gotten married the prior weekend. Their newlywed status colored the photos... in a good way. I shot a series of nudes of her before asking her husband to join. Again I gave them a little time to acclimatize themselves to being on stage before I began giving directions. In their case, since he was so much bigger than her, I shot most of the photos of him laying on his back while she rode him. What I could not miss was that they never actually had sex. I thought that odd, but I thought it inappropriate for me to comment. It was only at my next trip to the resort they told me they were waiting for me to tell them to and they asked for another opportunity to model.
One challenge was the fact that I was shooting in a room full of spectators. That was a first. As one of the people in the room was the resort's owner, I too was performing as I shot. Additionally the mirrors made it tricky to shoot some angles without getting me in the frame as well. Oh, since it was a nude resort, I was shooting in the nude all day.
In the afternoon we took a break by laying out by the pool. The owner asked me to shoot some photos of the nude volleyball so we got the staff and a few regulars in the pool and I shot photos of a few games to be used on their web site. We cheated a little by putting all the females on one side so I got a lens full of tits in many of the frames. After the game, I shot some images of Paula and staff hanging out around the club. It was tricky not getting the “guests" in to the pics, but the photos were all that the owners had hoped for. The best photo was a shot I set up of a row of people’s buns as they tanned on the chaise lounges.
That night, we went to the party at the clubhouse; but as much as we liked the idea of playing with our new friends, we were just too tired to wait till 11:00 or so when the playhouse would fill up. We crashed early.
All in all it was a good weekend.
As a post script, once I got home to work on the images I realized that the mirrors in the playhouse had not been sufficiently cleaned. The streaks in the glass were very distracting in the photos. It took a good deal of time with Photoshop to correct that mistake.
But what I did get were a bunch of good photographs for which I had model releases for me to use the images in my portfolio.