www.modelmayhem.com is a place for aspiring models and professional models and photographers where they meet up and eventually arrange to shoot pictures professionally (a paid job) or for fun so that both the model and the photographer gets to reherse and get some work done for their portfolio. I've done some with this girl, Monica Prata:
However, on ModelMayhem, I kind of noticed - by accident - that fairly many of the models wear less and less clothes. By looking at the stats for each picture you can rather easily determine that the more undressed, the more interest there seem to be in a picture.
There's a lot of the "I might be interested in a part in your movie" type of photos:
I mean, how can you judge a model talent by a picture like that?
But even worse. I mean in color and without the dress.
No, I'm not going to show you those fully nude ones. Some of them are truly fantastic and a work of art in every sense, some are a disgrace. Not all people are created to be photographed undressed. Simple as that.
But the numbers speak clearly.
I guess it is in part because aspiring models who want the cameras interest meet photographers off duty who want to ... well, hell. They just want to see naked skin. Maybe even touch.
The don't care about career of the model.
Anyhow, I saw this profile today. 17 years and from the Netherlands. That's kind of thrilling to find out if a a girl 17 year undress from that young age to get interest. Some do, you know.
But I was somehow relieved to see that she didn't even try to undress in any way.
Because she had an intersting expression.
17 years and you got something like that. It's precious and made me think what she could develop it to.
Thing is, undressing is not the way up. It's the way down. Ask any great looking married girl with kids if she regret the nude pictures she did when she was twenty or so.
With the internet pictures like that doesn't fade away as easily as they once did. And especially if you make a career of some kind, they might even haunt you because it becomes even more intersting.
And usually such pictures are not even great because the fool who took them was a horny bastard rather than a photographer.
Anyway.
So I mailed with this girl and told her I liked her stuff and felt I had to advice her, though I really know nothing about how to make it in the model business.
But keep your clothes on and develop your expression and that face. Look in the cool designer magazines and fashion magazines, what they do and how they do it. And aim for doing stuff like that, those of it you truly like and would feel good about doing as a career.
And then contact the biggest model agency in your country. Start there.
Start from the top. Don't work your way up the system.
Something like that was my advice. Which she mailed back and thanked me for, and told me her agent in Tokyo (of all places) had adviced exact the same.
I guess what I'm aiming at was this:
If you start to undress, you will likely never get dressed again. And if you start out with filthy photographers who just can't wait to get close enought to touch. And if you start out with small 'independent' model agencies...
Well, you might end up being very popular with that limited audience.
But if you want to become a model, start at the top as far as egencies goes. Do stuff you like. And start with some agency in your own country (because the chance they have clients and work nearby is bigger than an exotic agency on the other side of planet Earth who's just looking for some exotic foreign look to impress their local clients who anyway want local look).
And keep your clothes on, unless you really want to specialize in being photographed without, keep them on. Being nude can be a career to, but seldom leads to anything but nuditity. And usually ends around the age where football players end their career too.
And then choose photographers to do test shots with in the same manner as you would choose a car dealer if you were looking for a used car.
As said, I don't know much but at least that much I feel I know.
I might throw in this goodie. When I was young and did my first brochure as a designer - I was 18 or so - I asked a photographer to shoot the front page. It was simply a girl with a computer keyborad, full figure, just standing there to illustrate that this company did indata (type in data on computers and deliver it on magnetic tapes which was the high tech at that time).
Anyhow, I get a shot of a girl looking totally stiff, uncomfortable, not really typing, not looking like a competent typist, and actually not what I had thought of it to be.
Truly, I hadn't thought it could be a problem to just stand and look cool.
So we redid it and this time I was there with the photographer and we had choosen the most used and most professional model in town, like no 5 in the country.
Apart being very good looking, especially at the moment when I had to fumble (I was 19 years and she was 25 or so) with her Levis trousers to set them straight ... I'm having a moment here, sorrry ... apart from that - and my hands were shaking too - she said something that will always live with me.
She said: "Who am I?"
She of cause meant; who am I supposed to be, what is my job, who's the audience looking at this...
What is my character so I can get into character.
Okay, so I'm this very reliable typist who type very fast and precise, get things done, doesn't talk to anybody about what I get to type, and I'm fresh and would love to get more stuff to type from the executive directors looking at this brochure. Got it.
See, that is professionalism. And it worked too. That company used that photo for their next three brochures over 12 years even they changed ad agency for each brochrue they did.
She didn't just stood there thinking "I'm so hot," "I'm sexy," "I'm gonna be a star" and "I'm going to be on a cover."
Well, she might have thought that too.
But mainly she was aware she was on job as a model and was supposed to illustrate something for the thing to work. And it did.
I guess that was why she was the top 5 in the country at that time.
Even I never saw her nude.
