In keeping with digging out good material from old archives, here is another one. This set, featuring Elisabeth, was shot in November 2009.
A new photography event surfaced in 2009, FotoWeek DC. This week-long festival is designed to feature photography throughout the art galleries and in other venues throughout the District. One of the events that debuted that week, was called Nightvisions. The concept is, everybody meets and checks in at a central location gallery for a cocktail, then the participants grab their cameras and head out into the city to take photographs for a few hours. Around 2 am, everybody heads back to the gallery and uploads 10 images for a panel of jurors to review. The panel chooses 1 image to print in 12x18 format that will hang in the gallery for the remainder of the FotoWeek event. This year, the event was being held the evening of Nov 7th into the morning of Nov 8th, which happens to be my birthday.
I invited my friend Carly, her boyfriend (at the time) Joao, my friend Elisabeth who was willing to model for me during the evening, and one of Joao's friends to join me in running amok in DC for the evening. Being primarily a fine art nude photographer, and Elisabeth being one of the better fine art nude models in the DC area, we felt it was our duty to create some fine art nude photography to contribute and hopefully enhance the artistic value of the image gallery.
So off we went to start the evening.
Being early November, it was a bit on the chilly side, and as you can see, we were pretty well equipped for keeping warm. We started the evening at the gallery as planned, then headed out for another drink before we really started photographing things in earnest. But I still couldn't resist shooting a few "city scenes" and things that caught my eye on the way out, like a miniature Russian car parked in front of the Spy Museum.
After a couple of beers, it was time to get to work. We chose 3 locations for our fine art nude sets. DC is a major city, and so we had to choose our locations fairly carefully, and shoot "guerrilla" style, so as to not end up having to explain why Elisabeth was running around without any clothes on in the chilly air of a November evening.
Our first location was a water fountain that is located just in front of the Capital building.
This was a beautiful architectural piece to work with and we spent about 15 minutes working there before moving towards the reflecting pool where there is a nice monument, and which wasn't right on the street. I think these are my favorites of the evening.
After finishing up there, Elisabeth was getting pretty chilled so we decided to move to another location. We lost one member of our party (Joao's friend) when Elisabeth made a joke that employed some, well, let's say "uncouth language." So we had to detour back to her hotel to drop her off. Anyway, onward and upward for the rest of us. Literally.
The last nude location that we shot was on the grounds of the National Cathedral, which sits up on one of the highest points in DC. I know, some folks out there will undoubtedly be appalled that we were photographing nudes on the grounds of a church, but I was taught that man was created in the image of God. I don't think he would mind our showcasing one of his creations in conjunction with a building erected in His honor. In any case, we were discreet and quick and got some good images there before the cold air drove us back into the car.
So, off we went again. By this time it was about 1:30 am (Happy Birthday to ME!!!) and we were all ready to find some food. DC is a big city, but sometimes it is a challenge to find a food place that is open at that time of the night. We ended up at the Johnny Rocket's in Georgetown, which was conveniently located right across the street from the gallery. Just for fun, I snapped a couple of photos while we were eating our fries, then we headed over to the gallery to get my images uploaded. Most of my image submissions were nudes, but I did include a couple of other shots from the evening, including this one from Johnny Rocket's which was the 4th to last image I shot that night.
I'll give you one guess which image they chose to print and hang for the show. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't the shot in the elevator. Give up? Yep, the shot from Johnny Rocket's. So much for getting nude art into the show. Oh well. I had a great time with some very good friends and it was a very fun event that I've tried to do every year since. As always, hope you enjoyed the images. Oh, and in case you've forgotten, prints are available.
Tyler
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