Hand Me A Towel, Please

Taking more advantage of the gorgeous light in this bathroom.

One of the things you have to balance, as a model, when you're posing, is the naturalness of the pose. I learned early on as a self-portrait artist that a person's natural stances are not necessarily always the most aesthetic and flattering. I find, for example, the arch of the foot to be aesthetically pleasing, but to really showcase it in a standing position, you have to raise the heel, and that's not so often a perfectly natural position (I presume that much the same argument can be made about high heeled shoes). The midsection, also, often looks much more flattering with the belly sucked in and the torso stretched out (arched back, etc.).

All that having been said, there is a danger of going too far, trying too hard, which may in fact result in an aesthetic image from a purely technical standpoint, but could produce the impression in the viewer that the model's position is forced and unnatural. Now, this may be more or less of a problem depending on what kind of image you're trying to produce (and what kind of reaction you want). Whereas some figure artists may be concerned more with the shape of the body and the light falling on it, I've always been more of a portrait artist, in that I want to take pictures of people, and not just bodies.

Moreover, I've been thinking lately that my approach to erotic art is one that puts more emphasis on context than just what is exposed in the image. For example, a person stepping out of the shower, a person cooking breakfast in the nude, a person masturbating in front of a computer; the situation is as important as the figure in the image, and I think that that triggers a more psychological involvement and arousal in the viewer than simply an exposed body on display. So when it comes time for me to grab my camera, I like to think not just about "where is the light and what does the figure look like", but also, "what place am I shooting and what kind of potentially erotic situations could occur there?"

Oh, excuse me. I thought I just heard a knock at the door...