Bob Shell: Female Nudes

Portrait of Marion Franklin by Bob Shell, Copyright 2019
 

Photography and Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2019

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Female Nudes

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Why did I choose to specialize in photographing female nudes? That’s a question I was often asked at my lectures and workshops. My answer is that I know of nothing in nature more beautiful than the human body, particularly lithe young bodies unashamed to be naked for my camera. That’s why Marion appealed to me so much as a model; she was a natural nudist. Whenever we were in private places, off would come her clothes!

Some of my best models were referred to me by my late friend Ed Harper. Ed and his wife were both regulars at a nudest retreat near Richmond, and Ed was an avid photographer who often photographed women he met there. He’d refer the best of them to me, sometimes coming to my studio to photograph them with me. These young women were all completely comfortable posing nude, and since they were nudists, they didn’t have tan lines. Tan lines are the bane of photographers. Yes, they can be Photoshopped out, but that’s a lot of work. I once had a policewoman who wanted to model for me, The only problem was that she spent a lot of time outdoors directing traffic, so her arms where they weren’t covered by her short sleeves were much darker than the rest of her, which was relatively pale. I had to give up on her, because my Photoshop skills just weren’t up to fixing that!

Tattoos can also cause problems. One of my favorite models, who modeled under the name Elkie Cooper, had a bunch of tattoos, and I don’t know how many hours I spent in Photoshop when I wanted them out of a particular picture. In most cases I would not have gone to all that trouble, but Elkie had a magnificent body, and a wonderful personality, and brought my photo’s of her to life. Of course, when they fit the mood of the photo I’d leave the tattoos alone.

Skin blemishes are also a problem for photography as are scars. And I once had a model show up for a shoot with a real shiner of a black eye. She gave me the old “walked into a door” line, but I didn’t believe a word of it. We did what we could with makeup, and I posed her with her good eye toward the camera, and I don’t think any of the magazine’s readers saw anything amiss. When you’re on deadline you make things work.

My biggest peeve was when a model would make some drastic change in her look and not tell me when I contacted her to set up a shoot. I’ve had models cut off all their hair, change it to a weird color, put it in dreadlocks, get breast enlargement, gain a lot of weight, and so on, so that the person who showed up at my door looked nothing like the person I thought I was booking.

Why I chose to photograph women is simply that I don’t do well photographing men. Oh, I’ve tried, but I find the angularity of the male body much harder to pose. Of course, when I was running a portrait and wedding studio I photographed anyone who came in and wanted their picture taken (very few wanted nude photos!) I realized pretty quickly that I really didn’t like that type of photography, so I cut way down on the amount of this work by raising my prices until I was the most expensive photographer in the area. I worked a lot less but ended up taking in about the same amount of money. By the end of the 80s I was making more money from magazine work and the books I was writing than from photography, so I sold the business and moved on, only photographing things I wanted to photograph. I never looked back.

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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. Shell was recently moved from Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia to River North Correctional Center 329 Dellbrook Lane Independence, VA 24348.  Mr. Shell continues to claim his innocence. He is serving the 11th year of his sentence. To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, click here: http://tonywarderotica.com/bob-shell-meditations-on-cameras-and-the-state-of-the-photo-industry-today/

Katie Kerl: Flooded With Love

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Text and Photography by Katie Kerl, Copyright 2019
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Flooded With Love

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When life hands you lemons; zest them and add some flavor to your life. Not surprising to me, my life sure did balance itself out after my last post. 

My apartment flooded the night before Easter, the drain pipe cracked. Imagine you’re getting ready for bed. Have all of your family stuff together for the holiday. Then, all of a sudden you hear a waterfall streaming behind your walls. Water was rising then up from my floors ready to damage all of my things. 

I spent the better part of that night soaking up water, drying towels, wiping it up over and over. Had I not, my furniture would have been under three inches of water. My landlord came the next morning on Easter Eve to attempt to take care of it. He had no real success.

Upon my return from the holiday, I walked into a completely ripped up apartment. The floors taken up, all my things pushed to the “dry side “, and me standing there in disbelief. I dropped my phone, and just sat on the ground for a bit. 

While I am good with sudden change, I was not anticipating an uninhabitable apartment. Tears rolled down my face for a good ten minutes before calling anyone. Then I got it the fuck together. I was upset, there was nothing my landlord or I could do at that point. We had to wait until the next rain fall to see if it would leak again (which it did). 

The Airbnb he got me for the week was deceiving. The photos were great, but it was an actual shit hole once I got there. It had a lovely brown stained couch and bed. At this point I was exhausted.

Its funny how people show up for you when you need them no questions asked. I was in the middle of my emotional breakdown, and my on again boyfriend tried to help me. At first I said no,  I wanted to deal with it on my own. I feel like I’m very fortunate to have many people help me in bad situations, but I do like to handle my own problems, or at least try first. 

In this circumstance, I was just too upset at what my place looked like to think about anything else. I did accept his help after going to see the damage. We went to the Airbnb together. He took one look at that space and said, “There’s no way you’re staying here.” We stayed at The Le Meridien in center city that night. 

One day I’m living in Queen Village. The next day, half of my things are moved into his place in Northern Liberties. To say I was feeling displaced was an understatement. 

My landlord let me know that it was going to be at least a month, if I could even go back there. “A FUCKING MONTH?!” More feelings of panic arose, feeling like I didn’t really belong in his house after we were trying to work things out. I didn’t want to force something we hadn’t discussed, or freak us both out. He asked me to stay anyway. 

It is a great experience so far. Part of me wonders if my flood was the universe pushing us together like, shit or get off the pot. 

I guess we will just have to see about that part. 

He cleared out an office he never used to give me a Closet/ dressing room, and my own terrace. That’s really an important thing when you’re staying / living with someone to have your own area to be yourself, whether it is for yoga & house music, or video games and watching John Oliver. If you let things go you both like to do it just is not going to work out.

Is this the best circumstance to move in with someone? I am not sure yet, but is there ever really a right time? He shows up at all of my best /worst moments, and reassures me it’s going to be ok. I think it actually just might just be this time. I feel lucky to have that kind of person in my life. 

If living together works out great, if not at least we gave it a shot. Being too afraid to move forward with someone often times is what breaks you apart, and can bring you back together. It feels good to have someone wanting that next step. 

I did have other options. I could have moved home for a month, stayed at an Airbnb, friends’ houses, or got a new place immediately. It wouldn’t have been the same though.

We spent a sunny Saturday in Atlantic City doing a little shopping and rode the Ferris wheel. Taking our minds off both of our life stresses, my flooded apartment and his new growing business. Making time to experience new things together was always a road block that seems to have been cleared. Both realizing the importance of down time and relaxing.

If someone wants to be your umbrella when they are still fighting their own storms; that just might be real LOVE. 

You’re going to have a lot of what if’s in life. I didn’t want this to be one of mine. The apartment flood was upsetting sure; none of my stuff got ruined though. My whole life changed in 24 hours. I’m surprisingly ok with the change. I had posted this on April 9th on my Instagram. Boy if my intuition was ever spot on this time. 

“When you start to feel uncomfortable with your day to day, change is coming. Embrace it until you get exactly what you want. “

                           – Kerl up with Kate 

Cheers to change friends! 

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Katie Kerl

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About The AuthorKatie Kerl. Born 1984. Raised in Drexel Hill,  Pennsylvania. Education: Drexel University studied Behavioral  Psychology. Occupation: commercial/ residential  design Philadelphia resident since 2011 . Hobbies include: Foodie, whiskey drinker,  fitness , cooking  , tattoos & house music lover. Instagram:  @kerl_up_with_kateEmail: Kate.Kerl32@gmail.com. To access additional articles by Katie Kerl, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/katie-kerl-balance-your-life/

 

Bob Shell: Meditations on Cameras and the State of the Photo Industry Today

tony ward cameras meditations industry photography
Tony Ward. Self Portrait. Copyright 2019
 

Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2019

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Meditations on Cameras and the State of the Photo Industry Today

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The first professional level camera that I ever used was my father’s Exakta VX1000. It was an odd beast, obviously designed for a left-handed user, with the film advance lever and shutter release button on the left of its angular body. It had shutter speeds, as i recall, down to 16 seconds, and an internal film knife that let you cut off part of a roll of film if you wanted to develop just a few frames without sacrificing the rest of the roll. That camera was my father’s pride and joy, and he’d saved money for some time to afford it. In those immediate postwar years Japanese cameras were considered junk, and the German photo industry was top dog. The Exakta cameras were made by Ihagee in Dresden, Germany, I have that Exakta now at my house in Radford, just waiting for my release. It came to me on my dad’s death in 2000, along with the rest of his photo equipment. It has the 50mm Steinheil lens, a lens that will focus very close; almost a macro lens, and is super sharp. The Exakta VX cameras were mechanical masterpieces. The VX1000 had a top shutter speed of 1/1000 second, while the less expensive VX500 only went to 1/500. My father got some great photos with that camera. It had no built-in light meter, so you used a separate hand meter or guessed exposure. I got to be pretty good at guessing, plus the black and white films we used were very forgiving. You could miss by quite a bit and still be able to pull off a good print in the darkroom. Of course, we developed our own film and printed the photos in our basement darkroom. For a while my father was the photographer for the Easter Seal Society in Roanoke, and the job came with the privilege of using their very nice darkroom so we would do our developing and printing there.

I must have been 12 or 13 when I “souped” my first film, and printed the pictures. Wow, that was a miracle, watching the images appear in the developing tray under the red safelight! I was hooked but good. And the pleasant addiction never went away. That sense of wonder has been lost in today’s digital world. Not that I’m down on digital, I’m not. I was an early adopter of digital, but never thought of how disruptive it would be to the business I love. Suddenly, almost overnight, major photography companies found themselves in the buggy business while automobiles took over the roads. Some companies made the transition and survived, but some didn’t.

A prime example of corporate head-in-sand blindness is Kodak. Essentially they invented the digital camera, and their electronic sensor division made, and may still make, some of the best digital sensors. But did they build cameras to house those sensors? No, they just sold those sensors to camera companies and gave away that market sector. Yes, there were Kodak professional digital cameras, but Kodak just bought Nikon and Sigma film cameras and modified them with their digital sensors and electronics. They shut down this operation some time ago. You can buy a Kodak branded point-and-shoot digital camera today, but it’s not made by Kodak. It comes from a manufacturer in Asia. So far as I know, the last cameras actually made by Kodak were some APS film cameras made at a Kodak factory in Mexico, where they wrestled with serious quality control issues. The last Kodak black and white photographic paper was made at a Kodak facility in Brazil. Rochester, NY, once “Kodak City” has seen the Kodak workforce drop radically, and people there can no longer look to Kodak for lifetime employment. It’s really sad to see this great American company go down, victim of bad management decisions. The same thing happened to Polaroid, another victim of the digital revolution. Both Kodak and Polaroid were instrumental in getting average Americans to make photographs. None of us in the photographic press anticipated the rapidity of the digital revolution, I’m sorry to say.

And now, there is another digital revolution going on, this one moving faster than anyone could have predicted. It is being driven by the cameras built into cellphones. These tiny cameras keep getting better and better. Last year saw the front covers of Rolling Stone and Conde Nast Traveler shot with iPhones! With cell phone cameras so good, many are asking, “What’s the point of carrying around a camera?”. This is a good question for the vast majority of people. And it’s sending ripples throughout the photo industry. You probably didn’t know that those compact point-and-shoot cameras were the bread and butter of the camera companies, and sales of those cameras provided the R&D money for advanced SLR development. Some companies saw those simple cameras making up 85% of their revenue. Where will that money come from now? I foresee a few camera companies going bust, unable to stay in business from SLR, high end mirrorless cameras, and lens sales alone. I’d say that Sony and Canon have the best chances of survival, as both companies are very diversified, with many other product lines to provide income. Fuji has a good probability of survival, too. I wouldn’t bet serious money on the survival of the others. At the very high end, where digital cameras sell for $ 30,000 and up, companies don’t need to sell many to survive, so it’s likely that Hasselblad, Leica, and Phase One will hang on. At least right now you can’t shoot a Times Square billboard with a cellphone, and there are other applications which require more pixels than even the digital SLRs can produce. Serious photographers will want more image control than phone cameras allow, and for things like wildlife photography only a long lens will work, so cellphone limitations will keep up a demand for more capability. To see beyond about ten years my crystal ball becomes hopelessly clouded.

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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. Shell was recently moved from Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia to River North Correctional Center 329 Dellbrook Lane Independence, VA 24348.  Mr. Shell continues to claim his innocence. He is serving the 11th year of his sentence. To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/bob-shell-music-photography/

Portrait of the Day: Laura

Tony_Ward_Studio_portrait_of_the_day_Laura_dutch_model_Amsterdam
Portrait of the Day: Laura. Amsterdam 2014.
 

 

Editor’s Note: To see more pictures of Laura as well as other pictures and films from Tony Ward’s erotica collection, click herehttp://tonywarderotica.com/category/membership-account/