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About The Naked and the Lens:
A Guide for Nude Photography
by Louis Benjamin

The Naked and the Lens is the pivotal guide for inspiring and teaching photographers to create fine art nude images, from concept to post production, with professional results. Whether you've never shot nudes before, or you just want to make stronger images, this book covers everything you need to know, including lighting, direction, and artistic interpretation of the nude form.

The book also discusses the best ways to find models and covers important legal considerations. It features a digital workflow based on RAW capture and post-production with Photoshop, and demonstrates how to use a gray card to obtain the most accurate white balance. The lighting section even includes ways to produce studio quality effects with inexpensive hot-shoe flashes by adapting them to umbrellas and soft boxes.

More than just a technical book, The Naked and the Lens aims to inspire photographers to make more creative and expressive work by showing examples from photographers around the world, and by discussing the ideas and history behind fine art nudes. The interviews on this web site and in Part Four of the book show how working artists make photographs and approach their work. The interviews also tie together elements from the first three parts of the book to illustrate how you can create striking nude works of art.

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Part ONE – Concept

1 Gallery

2 Undressing Fine Art Resources

3 The Body Itself — A Survey of Modes Resources

4 The Nude in Context Resources

Part TWO – Pulling Images Apart

5 Light, Shadow, Color, and the Qualities of Lighting Resources

6 Composition Resources

7 The Camera is Not an Eye Resources

Part THREE – Making Images

8 Working With Models Resources

9 The shoot Resources

10 Digital Technique Resources

Part FOUR – Exploring the Practice

11 Interviews Resources

Bibliography

ISBN 978-0-240-81159-8