articles/Glamour/reflectionsonnude-page3

Reflections on Nude Photography - part 3 of 1 2 3

Published 01/12/2008

Another interesting change has been the type of images that go on the wall. One third of income comes from wall-sized images; 30x40 and 40x50 inches is the most common. The sculpted nudes usually wind up in living rooms and great rooms. Any image that does need to be in a bedroom, such as a bedroom image, usually winds up in a main room.

This is usually to the surprise of the client who often comments she cannot believe she is planning to put the image in such a public place. But because it is created as art, it fits. Size seems to make the statement. Smaller prints wind up in bedrooms, dens, and private bathrooms. Large images are usually placed in more visible places.

Who patrons show the images to has changed. Back in the early days, few would show the nudes to anyone but close friends or just husbands. Now we get feed back, that no matter how conservative the patron was, within six months there are very few people in her social circle who has not seen her images, even the racy ones.

Which explains our high rate of model releases. About 70% or more of all our patrons give us model releases over all their images and are thrilled to do so.

Age ranges is interesting. The oldest was in her 90s, but that is rare; 60s and 70s not so rare. The norm is the 30 and 40 year old. There are huge budgets involved as well. We have patrons who in one year and several sessions have spent $64,000 on prints. A surprising number have spent between $25,000 and $35,000.nude in water

We have learned that delivering an exceptional experience will bring patrons back several times over the year, each time investing nearly as much as the initial time, often times more.

The personality of our patrons is interesting, most are leftbrain folks. The creative process fascinates them, especially when they are in it. Our largest group comes from some aspect of the medical field, followed by the accounting field. Who would have suspected?

We don't do a lot of exotic Photoshop work to a client's image, especially approaches that alter their shapes, unless we are creating art for them. Beyond blemish retouching, scar removal, we leave them pretty much as the camera found them. Of course with lens and lighting techniques, a lot can be done.

• Reflections on Nude Photography page 1
  
• Reflections on Nude Photography page 2
  
• Reflections on Nude Photography page 3
  

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