Fooling Around With Focus

I'm not one to withhold sight of my own nakedness, but it does fascinate me to experiment with contrasts and the power of suggestion in order to amplify the impact of nudity (whether on the page/screen, or just in your head). So I was playing around with narrow depths of field the other day, and I stumbled upon the idea of taking the same shot in and extremely out of focus, then merging the two images in different ways, to play around with suggestion of a form vs. revealing the form. I ended up with three different variations.

Fogged Glass

The first one I call "Fogged Glass", because that's precisely what it resembles - like wiping your hand across a foggy mirror after getting out of a hot shower (which I've tried to take a picture of several times, but it's really hard to work out the angles in time before the mirror clears up). You only get to see certain parts - and it's not the explicit parts - but I think it creates a powerful illusion, like there's something exciting lying just beyond one's sight.

Censor Blur

The second one uses the fog in what is a fairly traditional form of censorship, to blur out the the subject's genital area. It reminds me of the "cloud bikini" cosplay I did once upon a time. Although that was actual material covering me, and this is a visual effect, the cosplay was a simulation of a panel from a comic where the cloud was used in just such a way - as convenient censorship. An interesting question that this image raises, for me, is whether this would actually constitute "nudity". There is nothing between the camera and my naked body to block my genitalia from sight, yet the focus renders it so blurry as to be utterly benign. It's like hiding in plain sight.

Cloud of Anonymity

The third one I call "Cloud of Anonymity", because it uses the fog as in the last one, but this time to obscure the subject's identity, while leaving the genitalia exposed. A lot of people use this technique to share explicit photos online, while reducing the chances of it coming back to bite them in the ass by harming their reputation in some way. I always thought this approach was tacky, and somewhat cowardly, opting instead to own my forays into nude and erotic modeling, but there are certainly circumstances where it provides some measure of welcome security to vulnerable parties. After all, I'd rather someone feel comfortable sharing anonymously than not at all!

Together, these images remind me of a clone shot I did a long time ago, that I've actually been meaning to recreate some day. Soon, I hope - stay tuned for that!