10 Years Later. How Time Flies!
Wow. It’s been 10 years this week since we got our first publication. How time flies…
I had only been shooting boudoir and glamour for about a year at the time and had been wanting to do a Christmas themed set for the very first time. 10 years ago, I was shooting a lot with local models to help learn lighting and posing techniques. Back in the day, as I was just starting out in this business, it was common practice to post model calls online and Courtney Mac was the first to get back to me at the time. We had chatted a couple of times previously about shooting and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. 🙂
So, I bought a pre-lit Christmas tree from Walmart, wrapped a few empty boxes and our set was ready! Courtney provided her own makeup for the session and my wife was bored, so she came along to assist.
I had no intentions at the time of trying to get anything published, but Courtney sent one of the photos to non other than Maxim Magazine and they jumped on it for a web feature called “Holiday Hotties” and although to date the Maxim release form was the more restrictive I’ve ever actually signed, it was pretty cool top have our photo posted front and center on the main Maxim web site and featured for 2 weeks in a set of 12 images under the “Holiday Hotties” banner.
10 years. Hard to believe. Courtney is now married with children and no longer actively models, so I won’t include her last name, but we had a lot of fun shooting this and I wish her all the best in her new life.
I’m a little more selective over what I’ll sign in a magazine release now. Maxim required 1 full year after publication that I couldn’t use the images for *anything* at all and as you can see from this sample, they didn’t even put my name on the published image. But hey, it *was* Maxim, which was probably the number one men’s glamour magazine of the day and it made for some pretty cool bragging rights at the time.
Looking back, I wouldn’t change much. I’d probably better plan the background and I only use professional Make Up Artists like our favorite MUA Bryana these days. I’d probably use something more consistent for the fuzzy base. That pillow stuffing was messy and hard to control!! 🙂
The original edits were almost embarrassing when I look back at them, so I decided to re-edit them using my current standards and techniques. In the end, other than the crazy over processing, I’m still happy with the images. Hope you like them as well.
That said, I wonder what I’ll think of these “digitally remastered” versions of the images 10 years further down the road. LOL!
