Chronological catch up part 1: picbod - nude V's naked

I've been incredibly slack at posting online recently my progress for the picturing the body module. I could go on about the reasons but lets just summarise that my attentions were distracted by some personal issues and a loss of direction on the project itself, but this is where i'm at divided into weeks of work.


Nude Vs Naked.

The images i shot for nude V's naked polarised our group and knocked me on my arse in terms of constructive critique. The images shot for it i don't wish to put up on this blog again, i put them up briefly on the lead-up to that week, however after that session i pulled them down. They were very loosely based around exploring the more erotic side of the model's personality and were more driven by her than me. It was something she requested and i was happy to oblige however it was also to see how far i was capable of pushing sexually charged nudity without feeling too uncomfortable.
This was actually a really important step in my development as a lot of my favourite photographers deal with nudity and sexually charged images relating to their private lives. Part of the criticism i received was the shots were very staged which they were, however that was the whole idea. These were confidence building exercises, for both myself as a photographer shooting someone close to me and for my model. Who is also someone i share a close relationship with. After taking the photo's i felt more confident in essentially showing a bit of flesh, in a more natural environment because i'd now done it in a very staged way. I'd stripped the emotion from the images and turned it into a quite technical exercise and the model received the confidence required to be a large part of this project and the main focus of my lens for the next few weeks as i intended to explore our relationship, or at the very least capture her spirit as my final submissions.
What ended up happening is i lost a lot of confidence as i showed them to people which may have been a bad idea. Im a found believer in group critique but i also believe that sometimes it really damages the cause of the work. This is definitely one of those cases. Because of that reception 4 weeks on no one has seen any of the images taken that followed it and i completely lost focus in the work. I felt i needed to play safe, i had to subscribe to other people's theory's rather than push forward and develop my own. Its take 4 weeks to pluck up the courage to just even write the above.

I did continue to work through the blank spot. 4 weeks of random attempts and lost scribblings. Over the next few updates i'll show you where i've got to.