Hay fever has kicked in and the flowers have started to bloom, which means it will soon be warm enough for location nudes.

Photographing nudes on location can be interesting in a number of ways, are you focusing on the background and having the model be incidental to the photo, are you focusing on the model with an interesting or different background, are you photographing them somewhere just to show you can, or a mix of all of them perhaps?

Then there is the risk involved in it, of being seen, possibly upsetting people, even legal problems in some places as they can fall into a bit of a grey area legally depending on where you are.

Most of the risk falls on the person being photographed, so I always keep to locations they are comfortable with. Within the area around Canberra there are lots of places to choose from.

I will generally pick places where there are unlikely to be other people around to see us, or for places where there is a higher chance of being seen, choosing to shoot at a time when there are less likely to be people around.

This is one of the reasons I do a lot of location photos at night, another is that I like to work with the light that is available in those locations, or with backgrounds that are only possible at night.

Often I will try to work only with the light that is there, other times I will use a torch, such as a keychain torch that I used in the photo above with Anne, or a more powerful one with an adjustable throw. Sometimes I will use a flash, but not often as they tend to throw too much light.

With enough environmental light you can get interesting effects like the movement in the next photo with Mea Culpa. I had originally planned to have stars as the background and to use a torch on Mea, but the weather decided on clouds, which reflected enough light from Mooloolaba that I didn't need the torch at all. By having Mea pausing for a few seconds then move throughout the exposure we were able to create this effect.

It took quite some time for me to feel comfortable about photographing nudes on location, and even longer till I felt I could do them in an urban location. In fact I started doing so because the model's comfort level was higher than my own and I followed their suggestions, such as with the photo above with Rei in front of the National Portrait Gallery.

If being photographed on location is something you would like to do, I am available to commission for location nudes and know of a range of locations that suit different comfort levels.