Minda Debuts

Minda posed for her first shoot with me this afternoon. Most of the models that I have shot before were young, Caucasian male models. Today's shoot gave me for the first time a sense of what it is like to shoot a female model.

In a way, shooting models, whether male or female, is an identical process but seeing a woman as opposed to seeing a man requires a different way of looking.

It may be that in observing these differences I am simply succumbing to societal ways of looking at models but I think the difference is justified. In a woman model configurations of body parts that comprise the composition or focus of an image are vastly different. 

I would not focus on a man's nape when composing a shoot of a male model but in a woman the nape seems to me somehow an appropriate focus. It is an erogenous zone because in women this body part is often hidden by hair. Photography seeks not only to present familiar images from our lives in arresting ways but also to create an effect by the studious choice of elements rather than the whole sum of what is available to portray.

Then again the nape of a man might figure into my choice of elements to portray again depending on the effect on me of the model's pose. In a man, the nape might suggest vulnerability rather than erogenous attraction. But then, the curve of a shoulder whether that of a man or a woman often strikes me as a sensual focus, something elementally graceful that surmounts gender.

In any event, despite all these words that might signify nothing, today's shoot felt to me a different phase for exploring human images. Processing images after a shoot I am always full with gratefulness for what the model gives and gives with such kindness and generosity.