A telling experience

It can be pretty disheartening, or even sometimes downright inspiration-deflating, when I've been talking with someone about shooting and they've been really stoked on the idea, but then suddenly, out of the blue, I discover they've blocked me.

Sometimes they didn't even mean to, like with that infamous Instagram glitch that especially happens to Private accounts. Sometimes they changed their mind on what sort of concept they wanted to shoot or their financial situation changed, and they didn't realize they could simply talk to me about it. Other times, like the latest time this happened, it's a jealous boyfriend.

Actually, I had to deal with two jealous boyfriends yesterday. One wasn't so dramatic. A friend I've shot with several times wanted a friend of hers to experience the liberating joys of posing, and we are hoping to all shoot together soon (perhaps tomorrow). However, this new gal (my friend's friend) has a boyfriend who isn't crazy about her showing skin, despite how comfortable she is with her body. So we are gonna have to hold back, and I told her that her boyfriend is welcome to come the next time we shoot, so he can see what it's like and I can be sure to honor their boundaries.

But I had another recent experience with someone I've been talking with for over a year, and who's been planning to save her first professional nude shoot for me, and who's been so outspokenly supportive of my images and my styles. So it really hurt when I discovered she'd suddenly blocked me. It took me about a week to finally reach out to her and inquire what happened. She apologized, unblocked (and refollowed) me on her own volition, told me about her boyfriend and his issues, and everything is okay now. I sure am glad I reached out to find out what happened, or I'd probably be pretty down about this one for a while.

I share all this because it's important to me, when I see an image, to know that everyone involved truly showed each other respect, honoring each other's boundaries, and shooting what they all agreed (at the time) was genuinely what they wanted. Especially when something potentially controversial like naked skin is involved, I want the process to be nakedly honest, courageous, confident, humble and mature. These are "adult images," so in the process of making them, we should then act like adults too.