Recent Professional Works

[HarperPhotos]

Hi Ashley,

Hope you don’t mind but I have a bit of of a play with your excellent image.

Version one I use Power retouch lens corrector plug in
And version two I use Imagealine which unfortunately is unavailable.

I would like to know your thoughts?

Regards

Simon

[amsp]

Willow, the pose I saw is more appropriate for someone like David Beckham than a young boy. The image is age inappropriate and sexualises a young boy.

I'm sure that you would not want to pose young girls the way you pose your adult models. Why should it be any different for young boys.

Cheers,

WTF? I don't know what planet you live on but that photo isn't even bordering on inappropriate. In fact, the only thing creepy here are your comments.

[tom b]

There is nothing wrong with this image that a t shirt couldn't fix. Pretty simple.

Cheers,

[Kirk Gittings]

A shoot last week for RMKM Architects-University of New Mexico Gallup Campus. Objective? A design competition. The first (back) is a hand blend of 5 exposures trying to preserve the setting sun on the copper skin while having a twilight on the rest of the image.The second (front) a simple flat stitch at the "right" time.

[Kirk Gittings]

Hmm the second won't post. Ahh it is still a tiff. I'll try it here:

[feppe]

Willow, the pose I saw is more appropriate for someone like David Beckham than a young boy. The image is age inappropriate and sexualises a young boy.

I'm sure that you would not want to pose young girls the way you pose your adult models. Why should it be any different for young boys.

Cheers,

It's a sick society when the first thing that comes to one's mind when seeing a picture like that brings forth thoughts of sexuality.

[HarperPhotos]

I would change you comment from sick society to sick individual.

[tom b]

I've been in the NSW Education Department for over 30 years. This has involved police checks and annual child protection training. Twenty years have been face to face teaching and the last ten years have involved producing online resources.

In my line of work there are strict guidelines for the use of children's images. The people I've worked with are very protective of children. As I said in my first post there is a duty of care. When I saw the post of the child my training kicked in, I could never use that image in any resource that we produced.

I take great offense at being called sick, my first thought was for the welfare of the child.

Cheers,

[henrikfoto]

To my eyes it's nothing wrong with this photo at all.
If this is sexual it's getting bad....

[Jeremy Roussak]

Just tilt your head to the left and it will be straight again.

If only I'd thought of that! Thanks.

Jeremy

(edit: I've just tried it. The left-hand side now slopes upwards)

[Jeremy Roussak]

It's a sick society when the first thing that comes to one's mind when seeing a picture like that brings forth thoughts of sexuality.

As Tom Lehrer sang in Smut, nearly fifty years ago:

For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)

Jeremy

[TH_Alpa]

It's a sick society when the first thing that comes to one's mind when seeing a picture like that brings forth thoughts of sexuality.

+1

I don't understand it either. Mad.

Thierry

[NikolaBorissov]

Silvia for Harper's Bazaar
NYC, Oct 2011
H4D-40, HCD 28/4, 100 ASA, f5.6, 1 sec, 1x580 EX II, 2nd curtain sync

[Jeremy Roussak]

+1

I don't understand it either. Mad.

Thierry

Some years ago, Michael posted a photograph entitled Lolita. It provoked a huge storm of angry discussion on exactly these lines, in which a good deal more heat was generated than light. Several members of the forum, some of whose opinions on other topics had been valuable, left and have not been seen since. It was an unpleasant episode and not one which ought to be repeated.

It would be a shame in particular if this thread, the longest-running and most-read on the entire forum (I think) were to disintegrate and to have to be closed.

Let's leave it at that.

Jeremy

[ChristopherBarrett]

Thanks Ashley, that's an interesting thought.  I think it has more to do with the subject matter.  The bulk of my work is commercial interiors and, at least in the US, propping the shots to feel more "cozy" wouldn't really feel appropriate.  I think you'd find my hospitality work and some of the residential stuff to have a more comfortable or feminine sensibility to it.  In the end I'm a modernist, though, and severity suits me.


Kirk, awesome stuff, Man!

[Rudy Torres]

Hot Dam Kirk, That's just good.

- Rudy / El Paso, Texas

[feppe]

I've been in the NSW Education Department for over 30 years. This has involved police checks and annual child protection training. Twenty years have been face to face teaching and the last ten years have involved producing online resources.

In my line of work there are strict guidelines for the use of children's images. The people I've worked with are very protective of children. As I said in my first post there is a duty of care. When I saw the post of the child my training kicked in, I could never use that image in any resource that we produced.

I take great offense at being called sick, my first thought was for the welfare of the child.

Your response confirms what I said earlier, it is a sick society which produces such a reaction. Outrageous conclusions fueled by manufactured fear needs to be confronted, otherwise reason will not prevail.

For the record I didn't call you sick.

I'm done here.

[tom b]

As a teacher you have to make a student aware of the dangers in society. Don't talk to strangers, don't put your details on Facebook etc. As a studio shot there is nothing wrong with the image. Posted on the internet, that is another ball game, as I intimated in the first post we have a duty of care to make sure that we do not make children vulnerable to the dangers in society. I was interested in the safety of the child no matter how innocent you feel the image is.

Cheers,

[amsp]

As a teacher you have to make a student aware of the dangers in society. Don't talk to strangers, don't put your details on Facebook etc. As a studio shot there is nothing wrong with the image. Posted on the internet, that is another ball game, as I intimated in the first post we have a duty of care to make sure that we do not make children vulnerable to the dangers in society. I was interested in the safety of the child no matter how innocent you feel the image is.

Whatever you do don't google "Sally Mann", you'd get a brain aneurysm for sure. Don't open a mail order catalog or visit the beach either for that matter. All that "training" of yours has obviously made you paranoid and quite frankly I find your views disturbing to say the least. I'm done here.

[fredjeang]

It's a thought that struck me a number of years ago Chris - when I realised I was standing in a room full of 'guys' (client, art director, assistants, etc, etc) all trying to decide what to do - and none of us really had a clue as to what appealed to 'them' i.e. 'females' - who where usually the target market that the images were being produced for and/or created to appeal too.

Totally changed my whole approach to photography after that - and I now try to surround myself with females, if that's the client's main target market - because no matter what anyone says, they are very different to us and see things very differently too.
Things that we will often 'ooh & aah' over, will leave them stone cool - and as part of our job is to produce images that will help our client's succeed, then knowing what appeals to their target market and makes them go 'ooh & aah' - I would see as being very important.

Hence my question.

That's interesting.

I follow this idea. I tend to be like Chris, I like severity in the esthetic and this is very, very yang (to simplify).

Yes, the female view is key, because different.


Some photographers have gained a lot with their wifes on set, because they ad a vision that generaly escape to us, and often commercialy relevant.


I met Testino in Madrid, everybody knows that he's gay. Like Lagarfeld, they have something I 've never seen in other fashion photographers, something crucial:
When people like me are in fact shooting the talent, the girl in 90% of the cases; those are shooting the product: the clothes. Very different! and much more efficient.

They understand fashion, they understand the fabrics, they see on set if something's wrong with the folds, they know the problems they will find with this or that brand because of the fabric used,
and they see the way we do not, because they have a lot of female in their genes. I've seen some comments on set about a trouser that has a problem, nobody could see it, not even the stylist, but then you say...oh yeah!...it was so obvious, but nobody could see it.

I'm very much on balance male-female on set for that reason.