Into The Archive, Part 1 — Bishop Jackson

This is my second pass at this post. I sat at the computer typing away for an hour this morning at 4:00am just for Squarespace to freezer one me (Squarespace’s site, not my browser) and I was forced to refresh the page to get out of the freezer and by doing so lost the entire post. So this isn’t what I wrote this morning and is me trying to remember what I wrote this morning, but I think it’ll still be a nice read.

I was going through some of my older work a few days ago looking for photographs to add to my print shop. While doing this I started noticing that I really like a lot of the work that I created back in the early days of learning photography; I liked it then, but with every passing year I get closer and closer to where I want to be artistically and just think, “Yeah, the old stuff is that good compared to this.” So now, there’s a new segment here on the blog called “Into The Archive”!

What I’ll being doing with these blog posts are selecting photographs from my older work, sharing them, and telling a little story about them or related to them/the shoot. So let’s start with this one.

When I got into photography, seriously, I didn’t have the goal of jumping straight into nude photography, although I was inspired by a lot of it. For the first two and a half years, from 2015 to 2018, all of my work was fashion and lifestyle based. This was for two reasons: I hadn’t built up my skill to a level that I thought I could take the nude photographs that I’d want to, and I didn’t know anyone willing to pose nude. And a third thing that I’d also though about: Not a lot of people are willing to pose nude for a male photographer if they don’t have any work already showing that they’ve done it and do it well.

In comes Allie Summers! I know that I came across Allie on Instagram, but can’t remember how exactly. Maybe it was seeing photographs that another photographer that I was following had taken, or maybe it was through the “redheads” account that I was following. Yes. If you know me, you know I love a ginger. I had been interested in photographing Allie for at least a year or two before I decided that it was time for me to just go ahead and jump into the nude photography thing. I saw that she was traveling to where I was in early 2018 and decided to reach out to her.

There was a little nervousness at first being that I still hadn’t photographed anyone nude, and based on how I viewed the works that she’d done, I felt that her level of nude modeling was higher than my level of photography. But everyone has to have a first time. I don’t know how much of my work Allie had checked out after I reached out to her, but I feel like that could have been something she believed in as well since she immediately said she’d be up for a shoot with me.

There was also some nervousness leading up to the shoot even though she’d said yes and we had a date, time, and location set. Being a man meeting a woman for the first time who was going to pose nude for him in her hotel room in a city that she is from. Now that might sound like I’m referring to her nervousness. Nope! I’m referring to mine. Now Allie was great, and once we met and talked for a quick bit, (And I mean quick. She was taking of and putting on wardrobe within 5 minutes of me walking in the room. Obviously her comfort was greater than mine. But I guess it has to be.), she made it a comfortable situation. But going in the idea of something going wrong or just being in the room with a crazy person could have led to a very bad situation for me. A woman with a man she doesn’t know in her hotel room while she’s naked. It’s just something that you HAVE to think about doing this. There are so many ways that can go wrong with the wrong person. But again, Allie was great. We worked twice after this.

But as far as the photographs go. These were taken in March of 2018. Very early in my photography journey. A time where I hadn’t yet fully gotten comfortable with directing people, while also still trying to figure out how to photography. This was one of those shoot where I just let the model do what they felt they wanted to do and just followed them with the camera, only giving direction when I saw them do something I like. Now this wasn’t done intentionally, I just didn’t know what I was doing yet, and I worked this way for the first four or so years of my photography journey, having just started to get comfortable with giving direction recently.

What you’re seeing here are re-edits that I did back in 2021 when I first made the switch from Adobe Lightroom to Capture One. I’d learn a lot about editing photographs between the time these were taken and picking up Capture One, so I really like the edits on these, especially the color, more than the original edits I did. But one thing that I don’t like, and that I think is a result of learning Lightroom from people on YouTube, is that converting my Nikon NEF files to DNG files may have made them render weird in Capture One. I was using a Nikon D3200 back then, and most, if not all, of these were taken with a kit lens for that camera, but there are photographs from a bit after this time that I hadn’t converted to DNG that look great. The clarity and focus just seem to be off with these. Maybe they look better to you.

This was a shoot that taught me a lot. It got me comfortable with the idea of shooting nude women (being in the presence of them and not making them feel uncomfortable by me seeming uncomfortable). And it also allowed me to gain some experience in how to work with and photograph nude women. This was the first of three shoots that I had with Allie. Unfortunately, I think she may have retired from modeling or is doing it quietly away from the Internet. Our last shoot together was in July of 2019, and I haven’t been able to get in contact with her since mid 2020 when I was working on my first book, Create. Some of those other photographs may pop up in a future “Into The Archive”. But I hope that one day I can reconnect with Allie and create something new with her. There have been so many advances in my talents and skills as photographer since our last shoot. I never got to shoot her on the Hasselblad! C’mon, son! Imagine what we could do on some medium format film. Maybe I’ll have my first large format camera when we reconnect. We’ll see.

I hope this is something you enjoy. Older photographs and story time. I might do this once a week. Maybe twice a week depending on how many dope photographs I come across in my old work. I might even pull out some photographs that I don’t like. There’s one shoot that I had that gave me NOTHING good, and it was all because the model gave me nothing. Maybe I’ll tell a story about that. It probably won’t be as long as this one, but it might be fun. Until next time…