Who knew?

Your place or mine?
Originally uploaded by stevenjude

I posted this on Flickr yesterday. It's still a little clean looking and I intend to yellow it ip a little but I liked the idea of somebody modeling urinals and besides it's where the poor girl had to change. So not a great image but it has attracted some interesting groups... "girls using urinals" seems to be a whole area of the web that has hitherto escaped me. And I can't say that I'm sorry.

It seems that when it comes to pictures and the internet the really money is in the margins. The narrower your niche the more the people are willing to pay. Not that I'm being paid.

Which brings me to the question I was asked. "Why pay for gas to get to an event, then pay an entry - just to take pics that you're not going to sell or publish?"

The answer is two-fold. The easy one is that I want to get better at this photography thing. And the best way to do that is to take more pictures. So I'll do whatever I need to be out there taking pictures.

That of course begs the question - "but why do you want to take pictures?" - which is altogether more complicated. I guess that the easiest anyswer is that it's the quickest way to get what I have in my head into the world. Not that I ever had this shot in my head. It was an improvisation. And that's what I like. Just having to think. To be responsible for an idea from beginning to end. To have to sell the idea to a model (who is also working for free) and then adjust as they bring their thoughts and experiences to bear on it.

I loved this weekend. Two of my models had no experience. So we made it informal. We laughed some. I moved them around. We tried things. Two were experienced - so we got the shots fast then just relaxed and had some fun. One was up for something new but caught in what she usually does, so we started big and dialled back.

But other stuff happened too. The hotel had no electric sockets on any of the floors we used. So I lost my lights. My flash lost its feet so I couldn't mount it on a tripod. The areas with good natural light were booked by people who'd used paypal - so I was either flooded or in the dark.

But we coped. We got some shots. We left feeling more creative than the people we passed on the street and in the knowledge that the world now had more art in it - even if it was bad art.