Paul, I'm 47 and I'd rather look at the old stuff you post here than the generic plastic clone shit that passes for porn these days. 90% of today's "modern" websites might as well just have one scene - because every video they have is identical to the one I just watched a minute ago. Different faces and different bodies perhaps, but its still the same scene over and over and over. And if you watch enough, the bodies and faces don't even change.

Unfortunately for old guys like me, there is no way to find the great original smut that I grew up with in the late '70s and '80s and early '90s :upsidedow That old crap wouldn't sell, anyways... :error

Keep posting your old stuff. I appreciate your work.

Didn't see your post because I have you on ignore. But did open up one so here goes.

For stills I used strobe lights. Usually 1 @ 6 o'clock and 1 @ 2:30 o'clock to the girl. The front light was my key light and with an exposure meter set the aperture of the camera. The side light was usually half a stop higher than the key light and filled in the background and lifted the girl off of the background. Front light had a soft box and higher than 6 foot the side light same hight and through a shoot through umbrella.

For video I used cheap lights they use to illuminate buildings, builder use them and great for small rooms. Used a similar set up with both on shoot through umbrellas. Again using a light meter to get exposure right. You need to balance the video camera to get the color right. Easy today with digital video.

I see lots of posts from photographers saying they don't need or use a light meter. Without it your relying on knowledge you might not of built up and hit and miss. Using a digital camera and taking a series of test shots still leaves a photographer the task of taking level readings from lots of different areas to see if the light is doing exactly what he requires.

I see shots for top glamor sites where the exposure on the face is too high or the exposure on the feet too low. The over all lighting is uneven. All this can be found out by using a light meter and taking readings from all points of the model, head to toe. And points of the location. A goof light meter will also read reflected light. This is light that hits the lens and cases this effect.

http://www.paulmarkham.com/temp/lara.jpg

Near the top on the left is flare coming off a back light. Also the picture is soft, not the effect I wanted. If I want soft I use a diffuser filter so I can control it. That mistake cost me money. :(

And made me more aware of the benefits of using a light meter. :)

You can't shoot good pictures using lights that are meant for video. Buy some strobe lights, books on lighting and experiment to get the lighting set up you like.

All rooms and locations will set their own problems and demands. Shooting into a white wall is going to give a totally different lighting to shooting into a black wall or no wall at all, like a large room of outside. Shooting in the forest is different from shooting in a wheat field.

Good post.

Even the greatest idea for a porn scene gets boring after it's repeated 20 times. Yet sites still think churning out the same old scene, shot by the same shooter time after time is the key. Once you've seen a girl fucked in the back of a van 20 times it start to get boring.

Had an interesting chat with a custom shooter a little while ago. And a custom buyer more recently. The shooter doesn't send a girl home who isn't doing her job right. He keeps going trying to get something out of her.

The buyer still accepts content that isn't coming up to the standard he needs. After repeatedly telling the shooters what's needed.

The shooter is encouraging a bad attitude from models. The buyer is doing the same with shooters.

When I shot for magazines the amount of content sent to an editor was 10 times what he needed. Competition for the sales was high. If your work was not spot on it didn't sell. If the girl didn't do the work the way I needed she went home with no money.

Because I wasn't shooting for the fun of it and to lose money.

I use my lights in a similar way, the soft box burnt out when I began using a 250watt halogen, it melted the plastic, so have movd to fluorescent. Im just getting too much white now though. Now I only use the 2 umbrellas.

What lamps are you using? & do you ever use the reflectors to bounce the light backwards to the model?

I know what you mean with shooting in forests. If you get the light right its great but otherwise, the light beaming through the trees can really give some awkward lines & shade areas you want lit.

Because of affiliates who promote them.

Never used a soft box on a tungsten light. Have seen them on fluorescent lights but those lights are diffused already and careful balancing will get it right. The problem with them is high lighting certain areas which in better end work is essential.

I use to use 1,000 and 500 watt lamps.

If you get too much white use the white balance facility.

Have used umbrellas to bounce light but it lessen the control of the light, so shoot through is the method I preferred.

Another problem of shooting in the forest is the lack of clean blue light, it's filtered through green leaves and bounces off brown leaves. Can be a bugger with film. Unless you know what filters to use. Uneven light can be used to your benefit.

A girl can be successful if she gets enough traffic. But all the affiliate can do is send surfers and prepare the way. The conversions and retention are down to the shooters ability to capture her talent and her talent.

Unless you want to send traffic to a site that pays you less than other sites. Most affiliates will soon cut traffic to a girl who doesn't make the best out of their traffic.

It's crazy how much magazines used to pay for photo shoots.

Paul, thanks. Ill try get some brighter lamps. I do have a cpl of 500watt sodiums & metal halides that I havnt tried yet. I need to buy the starter motors & housing for them. I have a 300 metal at the moment it does pump out some nice light.

The sodium is so yellow, I thought that bouncing off the back wall with the metal hal pointing on the subjects, may create a nice light :)

I didnt realise that about the blue being soaked up... thats why the photos change different when lightening them on PS. I do try not to change my pics by PS but just occasionally you need to brighten one.

Its great to mess about with lighting and find the difference in photos, makes the job worth it more :thumbsup

:2 cents::thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:pimp:1orglaugh

i just smelt an old phart.

They wanted the best for their customers and could afford it. I suppose the two things are linked but the deciding factor was the number of magazines that could go on a delivery van and on a shelf. It limited the titles.

To get on delivery van, which was controlled most times by a distributor and not the publisher, the magazine had to sell in high numbers. To go on a shelf, the magazine had to sell in high numbers. So magazines paid for content that was right for their readers, not the cheapest. Most prices were fixed. We got extra for a large spread, centrefold, front cover.

An editor requiring 6 sets a month would get 60 submitted to him. You got it right or you didn't sell. There was no place for bullshit, buddies, marketing, or being a "Bro" if your content didn't get the readers approval you didn't sell.

Videos broke that mold and started to list more and more titles. At first some saw a benefit in sales. Then when everyone else listed more titles the benefit was lost. So some produced more titles and the merry go round got real crazy. Over all sales didn't increase enough to cover the extra production for the extra sales. And production budgets were cut.

Except with a few companies, Hustler, Vivid, Evil Angel, Anabolic, Private. They kept their production budgets high and their sales reflected it. As others lost sales due to customer dissatisfaction. Customers for porn are repeat buyers, lose one on a brand and he doesn't come back. For some of those who kept quality high it works well, even today. With the Internet hurting their businesses. For others they are giving away their content for pennies, scrambling for business.

Have you seen the process repeated on the Internet?

I'm just an old phart who's still making money from porn after 33 years. Thanks for reminding people maxjohan. :thumbsup

This depends if you are the whore or the john, a john see's it one way and a whore see's it another.

what turns a $5,000 girl into a $25,000 one?

Whether or not she shows up?

BTW?? Is this hourly, daily, weekly, monthly....????

A bad deal could turn a $5000 dollar night into $25,000 yearly hell...

eek!!!!


Sabby:)

Of course. But when you look in the mirror and all you see is YOU... its over. You may not think so.. and you may prove me wrong... hate me forever... edit my posts...


Sabby:)

Some girls can show up and still don't know how to make the shooter or publisher money. They can show naked flesh till they're blue in the face but they haven't got it. With some just that extra little ingredient is missing, with others the whole recipe is wrong.

The amounts $5,000 or $25,000 are nominal. It could be me saying "What makes one girl worth 5 times more than the next girl?" Or "What makes a girl filler content and what makes her a pornstar?"

So here in my opinion is what makes a girl a pornstar rather than a naked piece of flesh.

Personality is the most important thing. Nearly very girl I shot or met who went to the top in this business had personality. Some only had it on camera, most had it all the time. Sabby I've known girls who YOU is good enough. Whether looking into a camera or the mirror what they had was good enough and only needed a little honing to make it great.

Sexuality. For video abso-bloody-lutely. It's what makes one girl stand out above all the others. It's what makes the viewer sit up and see HER, along with her personality and not what she's doing or being done to her. Very rarely do you meet a pornstar who doesn't get sexual pleasure out of what she does. OK maybe 0on some scenes like Vivid where they shoot it stop start all day it's tough. But when she's aloud to get on with it, she's in there enjoying herself.

Freedom. Without the freedom to express her personality and sexuality to the camera the two elements are lost.

Individuality. So many scenes and girls leave the viewer today thinking "OK that was nice." In 2010 nice isn't good enough. Not sure it ever was, today it's definitely not good enough. The girl has to stand out as I said before, as an individual. On camera.

Good looks you would think are the most obvious and required. In porn it's not always True. Donna Warner or Roxanne Hall could never be described as good looking, but they both brought that little extra to their work that made cocks hard. Good looks help but not essential. Just pretty will do.

Today is the day of the Tube site. No porn consumer HAS to buy. He's spoiled by a deluge of mediocre porn on Tubes. To get him to buy you have to offer him so much. He's KING and God like never before. Unless your girls stand out and the shooting stands out he might as well keep his CC in his wallet. In fact many do when it comes to buying porn.

Because he's not presented with enough reasons to buy.