I receive many inquiries from women who are older than the typical models one sees in the media. They want to know if I do nude photoshoots for women over a certain age. My answer is always yes, but I write back with a few questions that will help me create the kind of images they are imagining.
The first question I ask is if there are certain parts of the body they want to show off or hide. The answers I get back vary a lot. Some moms want to hide their stretch marks or scars. Others want to show them off as proud battle scars. If a woman is into physical fitness, she might want to show off her toned muscles. Sometimes they have a great smile, attractive breasts or pretty feet. Sometimes she has a very attractive feature that she is not aware of and I have the fun of discovering it during her photoshoot.
I recently worked with a thirty-something model who helped me illustrate some concepts that you might find interesting. The image below illustrates the importance of the face in determining both a person's age and their personality. As you can see, this model has age signs around her eyes. Some clients want me to remove these with Photoshop, which I can certainly do as you can see in this example of facial retouching with Photoshop. But personally, I like to leave these age signs more or less as they are. Maybe it's because I'm an old guy now myself. I think it makes a woman seem more interesting, experienced and intelligent.
Jenna with the Sigma 50 Classic
If I back up a little, the age signs are less noticeable and there are other pretty things to attract the viewer.
An almost full body portrait makes those pesky wrinkles inconsequential! The angle of the lighting helps too.
I shot this sans-face image for another blog post I'm planning, but decided to use it here since it shows how perspective control can change or emphasize the proportions of the body. It was taken with a 50mm lens which is usually ideal for this type of portrait. In this case the pose makes body parts closer to the camera appear larger and the parts farther away look smaller. It's a great way to change the model's proportions if you wish to do so. This particular model had legs that were naturally a bit large, so I wanted to make them look smaller.
I also softened the skin to hide small blemishes and sun damage. Most clients appreciate this, but I always ask first.
To illustrate how different lenses change the perspective and therefore the proportions of the model, I took the two shots below. The first one is with a 135mm lens. I had to back off about 16 feet from the model to keep her in the frame. Notice how her hips seem quite large in relation to her shoulders? This effect can be useful for portraits where you want to reduce the apparent size of someone's nose, but in this case it is not appreciated! Can you imagine a client saying, "I want you to make my ass look bigger?"
Let's go back to our old friend, the 50mm lens. As you can see the hips look much smaller now. You really have to use the right lens at the right time!
Thanks for reading this blog post! If you are interested in having a photoshoot of your own, please use the contact form to drop me a note.
A sex-positive photographer serving your private photography needs.
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