Cara

Cara, a photo by Rich Burroughs on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Cara's another model that I waited a while to shoot. We met last year and were excited to work together, but we were both really busy at the time. Things came up and it never happened.

She contacted me recently and I was very happy about the timing, I thought she'd be great for my Polaroid project. It was a bit of a stretch for her, she's done mainly pinup work and my images are a lot more low key and natural. It was the first shoot she'd done like that and I think she did a really nice job.

One thing I really like about Cara is her curvy figure. I've had people make comments to me about how thin the models I work with are, like that's a personal preference of mine. The reality is that models, especially experienced ones, are likely to be pretty thin.

I'm not knocking the thinner ladies I've worked with at all, I really don't book someone to shoot with unless I think they're lovely in their own way. But I grew up in a time before the pressure that's on women nowadays to be thin wasn't nearly as strong. The first nude images of women I can remember seeing were the Playboy Playmates of the 1970s, who were often very voluptuous women. That was the ideal woman I was presented as a kid.

Cara also has a lot of ink. I know some photographers who do fine art work that really don't like tattoos. I think those photographers are trying to capture what they see as classic nude images, and the ink doesn't fit for them. I love tattoos if I think they're well done. They're so common with younger women nowadays, it seems like someone wouldn't be reflecting reality to exclude women with tattoos from their work. It also would really narrow down the pool of available models -- I know some amazing ones that have quite a bit of ink.