I started this project for fun and to learn more about studio lighting and photography.

I tried to enjoy as many of the different types of photography I could. Digital technology changed photography allowing me edit it like my digital art.

When I went to art school I noticed that many artist seem to develop a style that is recognizable. I preferred to work in series’ and projects, so this is one of my projects. Another one of my series is shot from directly above the model and I have a sample to show.

After years of shooting with natural lighting and a handheld flash, I knew I needed to teach myself studio lighting. I wanted to do a long-term project that used the same lighting with a colored background that could be separated so I could arrange them, eliminating perspective in the shot and putting it back in the computer. Before when I was shooting on location, the background was so important to the photo, but for this project, the background isn’t.

Our bodies are amazingly beautiful, and shooting the nude figure is classic and can be edgy and erotic. I wanted to find an activity that would show them interacting and tried several things, but swords seem to be a good medium distance activity. Different cultures around the world seem to share time periods of swords, so I thought its appropriate.

In 1997 it began with a list of 47 poses I wrote out describing facial expression and body position. I would ask my friends to be in it and learned a bit about human behavior. In a way it was an interesting social experiment. In this period I shot 35mm and just lit with a soft light from above with a blue background.

By 2000, I got a small collection of friends in it and put them together in 11 standard 19 layered collages. Out of list of 47 I created a slideshow of examples of what others did, which helped then, especially since a majority of models in my work so far hadn’t done much modeling.

In 2002 I started using medium format film and still was using a blue background.

In 2006 I noticed that most of my time editing the work was putting white behind the model, so I decided to just shoot with a white background. It seems to be a delicate balance of lighting the background enough, but not so much that it bleeds around. Started shooting with a Digital SLR.

Each model is shot individually in the studio and arranged later. Originally I had intended to put them into a timeline much like a comic book, but in the process of proofing, I put a large collage together (in 1999) and it was so impressive that became the main series.

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