Shooting in the buff.

A recent post on Sportsshooter.com about photographing a nudist college professor has reminded me of a funny assignment I had last year at a nudist resort. It was for the Lifestyle section of my paper, and I had to get images that would both tell the story and still be able to run in a family publication. I had never been to a nudist resort before. I have been to both beaches and lakes where some people went nude, but never a whole compound of nakedness.

I met the reporter at the main office to begin our day. To my surprise, she had brought her cousin to the assignment. I can think of plenty of assignments a family member may want to tag along on, but this is not one of them. Let's face it, most of the people that go to places like this, just like in life, are not exactly models. Let me just say that I don't think that the cousin came just because it was a nudist resort - more like the cousin was in town and did not have anywhere else to go.

We were taken around by some of the resort's management, who, of course, were all naked. They asked if I would be joining them in the festivities, but I said that I would pass. After I got over the fact that I was at a place where everyone was nude, I could concentrate on making usable images. I'll admit it - I was a bit embarrassed at first.

This is not the kind of assignment where you shoot first and ask names later. I had to ask if I could shoot the pictures and then let them get back to what they were doing before I got there. Some people said no thanks, but others could not have cared less. The key was going to be making images that had other objects blocking the no-no areas, like at the end of original Austin Powers movie. Also the strategic use of cropping came into play.

This assignment was shot last May before the busy summer season, and the resort was not that crowded. I found enough folks to make the images I needed, and it was actually kind of good it was not busy. If I had a lot of naked people running around it would have made it tougher to keep out the parts that could not be published.





After all my hard work, maybe hard is not the right word to use in the post. After all my work, they only ran the shot of the guy reading the paper and one I did not post here, of a couple in the pool, next to the side, blocking their bodies. I guess my shots were still a little too risky, but hey that is what my blog is for, right?

I think one of the best perks of working for a newspaper, as a photographer, is all the interesting people and things I get to meet and do. This was a unique experience.

I can only imagine the sunburns these people get.