CPFCSSWO: Week 4, Day 3

Post Push-up Pump

Sit-ups: 45, 50, 45 45, 70

Squats: 40, 45, 40, 40, 80

Push-ups: 29, 33, 29, 29, 40

CPFCSWWO: Week 4, Day 1, Column 3

Squats: 29,34,29, 29, 80

Sit-ups: 32,38, 32, 32, 51

Push-ups: 21, 25, 21, 21, 32

CPFCSWWO: Week 3, Day 3, Column 3

It is week 3, day 3 of the Camera Play for Couple Six Week Workout. It’s getting hard. I might have to put on “Gonna Fly Now”!

Sit-ups: 33, 44, 30, 30, 56

Squats: 30, 38, 27, 27, 50

Push-ups: 22, 30, 20, 20, 40

HNT: The Thigh’s the Limit or Ribbed for Your Pleasure?

The Thigh’s the Limit or Ribbed for Your Pleasure?

I flew into a minor rage trying to make this photo. First we tried as a self-portrait, with the camera craddled in my hand and Peggy holding the mirror. But the LCD screen is burned out on the camera and without the instant feedback I couldn’t get the framing or the coverage I wanted. So we switched to Peggy holding the camera, but I could tell that there wasn’t enough light for her to hand-hold, and that the resulting images were going to be a bit blurry.

The very first week I ever assisted on a professional photo shoot, for a photographer named Lou Manna, he warned that if I wanted to enjoy my personal photography, I should avoid making a career of it. There’s a long distance between the little bit of extra effort that can make a snap-shot into a keepsake, and the time, equipment and attention to detail that goes into making professional images, and sometimes my pride falls into the gap.

Anyway that’s not what I wanted this photo to be about. My little outburst aside, what I wanted to talk about this morning is Showing and Not Showing.

In our Real People, Real Life, Real Sex series we’ve explored what happens when you completely ignore the show/don’t show paradox and just treat the sex act and people’s sex organs like it is just another beautiful human experience. In our erotic documentaries we don’t tease, we reveal. Instead of being coy and flirtatious, those movies are candid and frank, and I think that’s what makes them special.

But what is covered or not covered, seen or not seen or half seen is also a very real part of our sexual lives. Flirting is often as much fun as doing, and showing/not showing can be a lot of fun to play with in erotic images. Sheer fabrics are one of my favorites because they flirt with all of those ideas all at once. I think that’s also what I like about stockings and garters – the mix up of what’s covered and what’s exposed.

The wool sweater has been with me since high school, purchased at an army surplus store on the plaza in Ashland, Oregon. The town’s gone considerably up-market since then. The last time I was in Ashland there was a fern-bar in the place where the army surplus store used to be. (You can still get sweaters on the plaza, but now they’re made of plastic and marked “Patagonia”.)

The leg-warmers I got at Penn station after seeing a photo of a friend, and remembering how much I liked seeing them on the legs of the first girl I ever kissed, in junior high school. She was a dancer, and I still remember going to her recital where she danced in a Fossesque “Steam Heat”, with leg warmers and a bowler hat. Yow!

Anyway, I didn’t get them for myself, I got them for Peggy, in the hopes that she’d wear them while we did things that I thought about , but never did with my junior high school girlfriend.

But I took to wearing them myself. The truth is, I don’t much like clothing, I find it clingy and restrictive; and working the way I do allows me to indulge this particular quirk. If I’m cold, I’ll put on a shirt, and if that’s not enough, a sweater, and if that’s not enough, a hat. So one day last Winter, finding that shirt, sweater and hat weren’t enough, and being too cheap to turn up the thermostat, I donned Peggy’s leg-warmers. 

Of course it’s not just about keeping warm, is it? (It’s seventy degrees here today.)

Camera Notes:

Not so trusty Canon PowerShot SD770, auto every except manual override to turn the flash off. Primary light source is a big window to the left of the frame. There is a compact fluorescent overhead, and you can see the difference in the two different color temperatures of the light sources in the very slight wash of color on the background. iPhoto for cropping and little tweaking: saturation boost, contrast boost, sharpness boost, and a bump to the shadow details.

Getting the cropping where I liked it was hard. I knew I wanted the feet just in, but fussed over the top edge for about 10 minutes till trying higher and lower until it seemed “just right”. I like the way the base board hits just at the lower hem of the leggings, but I suspect that’s just one of those happy accidents. There’s no shame in taking advantage of them when they happen.

Happy HNT! Go hit up Osbasso!

CPFCSWWO: Week 3, Day 2, Column 3

No photo. Just failure numbers:

Sit-ups: 50

Squats: 46

Push-ups: 35

If you’ve got number, post’em! Thanks for helping me stay motivated!

Week 3 of the Camera Play for Couples Six Week Workout

 
33 Sit-ups

Have you been keeping up? Things have been spotty here at Casa Comstock with the Camera Play for Couples Six Week Workout. Some flu-ish thing came home from school with our eldest daughter and we’ve been pretty mopey the past week our so.

None the less, days missed or not, I’m up to Week 3, Day 1, Column 3 of 100 Pushups, 200 Situps, and 200 Squats. You know how it works, you do reps according to numbers on your day/column and then do the last set to failure. Here are my failures:

Sit-Ups: 33

Squat: 40

Push-Ups: 30

That’s good enough to move on to Week 3, Day 2, Column 3; which we’ll tackle on Wednesday.

Till then, if you’ve bust out your reps, let me know and I’ll post ‘em here!

HNT: The Yummy Mummy Club

Tony and Peggy pose for the Yummy Mummy Club

Peggy just submitted a 5-tips bedroom photography article to run in the Yummy Mummy Club later this Summer, and the editor wanted a picture of us, which makes sense. But since the only sexy pictures we have are decidedly not for publication, we had to come up with an idea quick!

The above is a riff on the famous Anne Lebowitz picture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I think we look better!

HNT: A Sarong for Reihan Salam

A Sarong for Reihan Salam

A confession.

For all of my bluster and enthusiasm for risk-taking, there’s one thing I’m terrified of: not being taken seriously – and part of what this blog is about for me is to make a very deliberate attempt to let my guard down and loosen up a little, and this is part of a larger self-improvement project to force myself out of my comfort zone.

To that end I’ve been reading and commenting at TheAmericanScene.com, a conservative group blog; a place where people who believe in erototoxins get the benefit of the doubt, and people like me, well suffice it to say, I am somewhat of a curiosity.

And that’s where I came across this post featuring a Youtube clip of rising star of the right-wing blogosphere Reihan Salam rapping about, um, well, I don’t know what he’s rapping about, but he’s rapping:

Reihan also makes a confession about his longing to wear a sarong:

Some years ago, a beautiful woman told me that she thinks more men should wear sarongs, and this left an impression on me. The trouble is that I know my limitations, and I’m pretty sure there’s no way in hell I can pull off a sarong. I might be able to pull off a sarong if I were wrestling multiple grizzly bears at the same time. But that hasn’t happened in weeks. Moreover, the pro-sarong woman — full disclosure — sort of shattered my heart and ate it. And it wasn’t even an entrée: it was a side dish, like sauteed spinach, yo. Only it was my heart. Damn you! Earlier today, another beautiful woman told me that wearing a sarong would represent a serious lapse in judgment, and I guess I’ll defer to her superior wisdom.

I am a long devotee of the living “the sarong lifestyle” and I think Reihan would totally rock a sarong; and I said so in the comments, but so far no images of Reihan wearing one have surfaced on the internet. And despite what I hope will be an ongoing effort to force myself out of my comfort zone, don’t expect any YouTubes of me rapping anytime soon either!

Camera Notes

This was shot on a very foggy afternoon in our front yard with our Canon PowerShot, auto-everything, with the zoom lens on widest angle. Auto everything because the LCD screen is on the fritz and that’s the only damn way to change the setting. Wide angle because that exagerated the perspective an makes the objects in the background much smaller than the subject. Peggy took about 8 shots in about 5 minutes.

I imported them to iPhoto and tweeked the look with the following settings: Exposure +.39 Contrast +100 Highlights 56.5 Shadows 11 Saturation 80 Temperature 17.9 Tint -1.6 Sharpness 1.00 Reduce Noise 14.2.

The light quality on a foggy day actually has a soft, wrap around everything, no harsh shadows quality that can be quite lovely. But it’s also very blue and very low-contrast. I boosted the over-all color level quite a bit and added more contrast, then brought the shadows and highlight back (a little on the shadows, a lot on the highlight.) Then I warmed up the color balance and tipped the tint away from the green side to the purple side. Lastly I added a dose of sharpness and noise reduction to give the photo a slightly painterly look.

This all stuff that years ago I would have have done with additional lights, reflectors and filters, and probably would even today if this were a “professional shoot”. None the less I’m pretty impressed with iPhotos ability to take a pretty dull light and dress it up enough that I’m happy with it.

I also like the way I look in the photo. Yeah, my belly looks bigger than I’d like, but I think my arms and chest look powerful, and the rendering  feels “honest”, if that makes any kind of sense. I also like the way the sarong sits on my hips. There’s a certain easy confidence that seems to express how I feel when I’m feeling my best. It’s nice to see the camera can capture that.

Seven Questions and Answers with 13 Messages (An Interview)

I’ve been a photographer for nearly 25 years. As mentioned on our About page, bringing the camera into my bedroom is something that feels as natural and sexy to me as lighting up a bunch of candles or taking out a bottle of massage oil. Making photographic mementos of my lover and our lovemaking seems as normal as making photos of any other important part of my life.

But photography and sexuality have an uneasy relationship in our society. While being sexy (in varying degrees) is often a public act, sex itself is mostly a very private act. Photography can make the private public, with or without the consent of the subjects, and with or without the consent of the viewers. That one-to-one analogy that makes photography so vivid can also make it tremendously confrontational; and while I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with being confrontational about sex, I do think that we too often see that confrontational effect as being the very essence of sexual photography.

In our “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex” series, Peggy and I have tried to present a view of cinema and sex that is less rooted in confrontation and transgression, while maintaining a sense of erotic urgency. We’ve tried to present sexual joy as a part of a rich, wholesome life. Here at CameraPlayForCouples.com we’d like to continue that exploration by presenting photographing sexual joy as a part of rich, wholesome life as well.

One of the ways that we’re going to do that is by sharing the technical and conceptual knowledge that Peggy and I have acquired in the nearly 40 years we collectively spent exploring sex in a photographic context, but re-shaped for today’s everyday digital image-making tools. The other thing we’re going to do, is highlight people who are making photographs and enjoying photography in their relationships in ways that we think illustrate and expand upon our ideas.

Mine!

13 Messages is a camera-play blog maintained by the male half of a married couple, mostly photos of him, with occasional photos of his wife or the two of them together (as above.) Photos range from plainly-voiced documents to moody fragments. 13 Messages is an anonymous blog; their faces are never shown. Between images  and copy, the overall tone of the blog is grown-up, playful, with just a hint of wistfulness.

 I called out 13 Messages in my second post, This is What I’m Talking About! because I love, Love, LOVE the above image. This image gets at the very essence of what we want to celebrate here at CameraPlayForCouples.com. It’s sexy, connected, playful, and thoughtful. It’s artful and spontaneous. It is erotic without being confrontational. It’s defiant and it’s sweet.

After I made that first post, I sent a note asking if they would like to be interviewed for CameraPlayForCouples.com. I’m delighted they said yes!

1) How old are you? Are there any other particulars of your life that you would like CameraPlayForCouples.com readers to know about you?

I’m 39 and she’s 37.

2) When did you start taking pictures of yourself? What prompted you?

I started after I bought my first digital camera in 2002. I didn’t start taking nude or semi-nude pictures of myself, however, until I discovered Half-Nekkid Thursdays at Osbasso’s blog.

3) You wife makes occasional appearance on your blog. Did/does she have any concerns about your self-portraiture? What did you talk about before putting pictures of yourself online?

She has the usual concerns that most folks do. We just hope that we can continue to have the fun that taking and sharing pictures gives us without it affecting our professional or family lives in a negative way.

4) Do you have rules or guidelines for the images you make, or for the images you put online?

So far, we just try to keep our faces unseen. Beyond that, we don’t really put a lot of thought or rules into the process.

5) I love love love the “Mine!’ image. Can you tell us the genesis of that image, both conceptually and practical realities of pulling it together.

We had bought some body paint earlier in the week and found the Wet Paint sign that I thought we’d be able to incorporate some way into a photo shoot. As for her writing “Mine!” on my back, that was a last minute idea that we both got a kick out of.

6) Have you thought about what you would say or do if you were “outed”?

We’d run, we’d hide, we’d probably delete the blog. Of course, it’s fun so we’d probably start back up again soon after.

7) Do you feel like you’ve learned anything or given voice to anything through the process of photographing yourself and your wife?  What advice would you give, either technical or philosophical, to someone who wants to turn the camera on themselves?

While I don’t feel like I’m doing anything at a level where I can give advice to others, I will say that my wife and I feel that our marriage has benefited by our semi-weekly photo shoots. Even though life keeps us busy and exhausted (three kids and two relatively low wage jobs between us), taking pictures of our nude or semi-nude bodies does something to keep the sexual interest alive. Not only does it give us that time to really remind us that we desire one another, but posting the pictures on the blog and getting positive comments reminds us that we are desirable to others. That, of course, keeps the self-esteem at a healthy level.

—

The Camera Play for Couples Six Week Workout

On my way to 100 squats

Thanks to Hubman and Ell, the HundredPushup.com challenge has evolved. It is now the Camera Play for Couples Six Week Workout; a six week program of push-ups, sit-ups, and squats.

Today Peggy and I did Week One, Day One of the HundredPushups.com program and Week One, Day One of the TwoHundredsitups.com program.

We also did our initial test for the TwoHundredSquats.com program.

The results?

Peggy did 76 squats and I did 100. (That’s me around squat #50.)

Why is the image so blurry?

I’d like to say it’s art, or that it’s the camera’s fault, but the number one issue is vanity!

Mostly I like what I see when I look in the mirror. I’ll be brushing my teeth and think, “My goodness you’re a handsome devil. No wonder all the women go crazy for you!’

But something weird happens when I actually see photos of myself. My arms and shoulders get smaller, my belly gets bigger. My ass, which looks large and powerful when I look at myself in the mirror just looks big and fat in a photo. My back, which looks like it had a mild acne problem in the mirror, looks like a WWI battlefield in photos.

I don’t imagine I’m much different from the average person in this respect, and as photographer, I know the “me” that people see is a lot closer to the “me” that I see in the mirror than the “me” I see in photos. Nonetheless, I don’t especially like feeling this way about my photographic image. Do you remember that scene in AMERICAN BEAUTY, the one where Lester Burnham goes jogging with his gay neighbors?

“What are you trying to do Lester? Are you looking to put on some muscle or increase your cardio?” they ask as they start to pull away from poor Lester, already sweating and puffing.

“I just want to look good naked!” comes his plaintive reply.

Me too Lester, me too. Tomorrow it’s Week One, Day One of TwoHundredSquats.com!