Naked, Naked, Naked: Exposing Myself

I've been thinking more about making nude art, with a goal of submitting for Nude Nite 2013.   It's oddly difficult to imagine taking naked photos of someone.  I have a profile on Model Mayhem and there are plenty of models who are available to do nude shoots in exchange for photos for their portfolio.  Still, it's a pretty weird thought.  I've never actually worked with a model before, although I would love to.  But nakedness makes things weird ("Nice to meet you, this is my first time working with a model, now take off all your clothes!") and also logistically difficult -- I really don't have nearly enough space/light to set up a decent studio in my house, and doing it outside would be potentially... illegal.


Anyway.  Obviously, the easiest and most accessible model would be me.  Boy, that's a thought.  I am very aware of the possiblity of photos with artistic lighting, cropped creatively, that could show nudeness but without showing flabby 45 year old horrors.  (I suppose a portrait of flabby 45 year old horrors might be artistic in itself, but I will leave that particular artistic statement for someone more courageous than I).  I don't hate my body, I really don't, but I'm not happy with how out of shape I am, and the idea of going through tons of photos of myself naked just seems like an exercise in pain.

There are many wonderful things about my loving husband. Sadly, willingness to be photographed naked is not among them.

Then I had the idea of taking a few close-up photos of my vagina.  (When I say "vagina" I am referring to all the various external woman-y bits in the vagina-y region.)  My husband was willing to help me out with this, and stood in as my guest photographer.

Now, I am not unfamiliar with the topography, but I guess I have never really seen my vagina that closely before.  Looking at it in a mirror is a completely different thing.  I was kind of shocked at how completely foreign it looked.

There is no way I could have picked my own vagina out of a photographic line-up.

My plan is to make digital fine art from the photos, possibly layering other photos and/or text.  It would be kind of neat to end up with something so different looking that people would have to stare at it a while to work out where the nudity was.  Subtle vagina.

The funny but somewhat unfortunate thing is, I keep forgetting that plugging my iPod Touch into the computer will automatically bring up iPhoto, which has the default setting of displaying the most recently uploaded photos.  So I'm looking for the new update for Angry Birds, and all of a sudden it's like OMG VAGINA.  Yikes. 

Life

Work is wearing me down.  There was always a certain amount of stress just caused by deadlines and things changing at the last minute and those miscommunications that are inevitable but still infuriating when working in any office situation, but now things are just so tense every day, all day.  I feel like I'm in a tiny cage in a big noisy room.  I try to step back to have perspective.  Things could always be worse.  I could be unemployed.  I could be one of those factory workers in China, eyeing the suicide net and wondering where I could get a knife.  If I can think of something worse, then I'm not doing so badly, right?

I'm still doing my 12-minute cardio workout pretty much every weekday, and it's amazing how much it's helped my hurty shoulder.  I used to have headaches at least once or twice a week, plus migraines periodically, but I haven't had one migraine and only very few headaches.  I feel better in general, too, and more capable of using my body in ways that should be a given.  Now, if I'm standing in the kitchen and I drop a spoon on the floor, that spoon doesn't looks quite so far away.  I haven't really lost any weight, but I didn't expect to with such a short workout.  Even without that, the physical effects have been surprisingly great.  One might imagine that this would inspire me to work out longer than 12 minutes, but so far that has not been the case.

The Adam Ant show that I was so looking forward to has been rescheduled for the end of September.  My heart is a little bit broken.  The good news is that my front row center tickets are still good, but I'm so disappointed to have to wait so much longer.  Apparently there were issues with his new album and the release has been delayed.  Given his mental illness issues the delay is kind of concerning, but I'm trying to stay hopeful.

I mentioned a while ago how I missed doing fine art.  I did the Nude Nite show nearly 10 years ago, and I was thinking I might submit a couple of pieces and try to be a part of it again this year.  I gave up that plan when the Adam Ant show was scheduled February 11, the very same night as the art show.  Now Adam has been rescheduled, but the submission date has already passed so it's too late for this year.  I'm determined to go for it next year.  I have time to work on it.

The thing is, I used to sit in my quiet, isolated cubicle, listening to corporate-approved "lite rock" music, enjoying a nice Christopher Cross song while typing little numbers into giant spreadsheets, and it was okay.  Now I sit in a tiny, tiny cubicle, struggling with programs that are still not working correctly, people walking around me and up to me all day long, hearing the call center din and it's like my brain just gets all clenchy, and it takes a long time to unclench, even after I leave.