Glamour nude photo tips

Glamour Nudes Tips

Getting Published, Glamour Photography, How to Photograph Nudes, Modelling, Portfolios

There’s a lot to think about when shooting commercial glamour nudes.  So here’s a few glamour nude tips with more from other photographers at the bottom of the page.

My glamour nude photographs are published on book covers, calendars and in magazines. Glamour can mean anything from a film star in a revealing dress, to swimsuit pictures on a beach or full frontal nudity. Glamour nude doesn’t always mean totally uncovered so here is a small portfolio of  my most popular photos.

Glamour Nudes Tips

Shooting glamour nudes for commercial use is very different from creating fine art nudes. For a start, depending on the use, there are constraints on what you can and cannot show. Book covers can feature nudes but often the depiction of nipples or genitals would lead to the books rejection by the major online distributors. Even a bit too much of a bottom showing could mean they could not promote it in Facebook. Some glamour magazines and calendars are OK with discreet nudity whilst what is left of the men’s magazine market wants to see everything, and in great detail (generally with boring lighting). Read: The Future of Photography – Is the still photograph a dying art?

Where is it Going to be Published?

The definition of and taste for glamour nudes varies from region to region. One of the pictures above (bottomless girl in the white top in front of a window) has made it into several Russian newspapers but would no longer be considered for a UK paper. Alamy stock library happily sells some of the above worldwide but rejects others as glamour. Publishers have rejected the same images as ‘too arty’ and ‘not arty enough’. Several of the models are loved by the Germans but ignored by the UK market. Most of them are too fat for far Eastern eyes. and too thin for the Spanish. See. Perceptions of Perfection Across Borders

Read But is it Art? for my definitions of glamour and fine art photography

See the new range of Naughty Greetings Cards

So What Do We Do?

If you are shooting for a specific client make sure you get a detailed brief. The brief for the Scrapyard Girls Calendar Shoot included in year one ‘topless no nude’. Year two changed to ‘discreet arty but glamourous nudes’ and year three changed again to as before but black and white. The format of the calendar was A3 upright so it was obvious to shoot upright images but there are a lot of horizontal format calendars out there so always check.

If you are shooting on spec or for stock the key is variety. So many publishers have said ‘love that pic but I wish it was vertical (or horizontal)’. ‘Have you got one that does/doesn’t show nipples, pubic hair or the model’s face.  

fetish glamour nude

Don’t Expect Clients to Like What You Like

Sometimes the weirdest or most boring shots will sell over and over again whilst the images you thought were absolute winners languish at the back of your files unloved – except by you. One publisher I worked for got fed up with using my cover images that featured bottoms (his brief) and loved some of my other images so used them. Sales of those books dropped by thirty percent so we went back to bums.

Read more about Shooting Erotic Book Cover Photographs

I’ve already mentioned geographic preferences for particular ‘ideal’ body types. Models can also be loved or hated by different publishes or client in the same country. And don’t think it’s a man thing. Women can love or hate images of women with equal ferocity. If you are shooting pics on spec for an established publication look at the images they are already using. Try and adopt a similar style and type of model and hope yours’s are accepted before the editor changes.


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Creative Nude Photography shows you how to go beyond the norms of conventional glamour. The book contains sections on the concept, but is it art plus practical advice on finding models and camera techniques. The final section shows examples of creative nude projects

Want a hard copy to read? Printed edition available here


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