It was July in St. Andrews, which meant that maybe (if we were lucky) the sun might appear for 5 minutes. Donna and I slipped our way up the hillside, ducking under fallen tree branches and getting snagged on bramble bushes. Finally, our last obstacle...a barbed-wire fence. We draped sheets over it and lifted ourselves over into a beautiful open field.
Out came the cameras & off came the clothes. Yep, that's right. We did a nude shoot. Just to clarify...I was not the one who was nude :P We wondered if the little house at the end of the field could see us but at the end of the day we didn't really care.
Donna suggested doing a nude shoot because she has been collecting beautiful tattoos all over her body and she wanted to celebrate them. In the days leading up to the shoot I had that pit in my stomach — uncertainty over whether or not I should have agreed to do it.
I was worried about balancing on that fine line between fine-art and pornography, I suppose. I didn't want to harm my reputation but I also didn't want to miss out on an opportunity to try something new & create something beautiful. Then I remembered that I was the one who was in control of the shoot; I was the director and it was entirely up to me which photographs were taken. I could take the shoot in any direction I fancied and I didn't have to shoot anything that made me uncomfortable.
I am SO glad that I did this shoot with Donna. I realised that the trick to avoiding awkwardness during a nude-shoot is to just pretend that nobody's nude + don't look at her body, just look straight at her eyes the whole time. If you act like everything is normal, then everything is normal. Besides, it's not like we haven't seen it all before, right? :P
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You are awesome!