Cloudboy Loc: Orlando, Florida, USA

When I went back for my MFA, I considered how we use nude life drawing in our learning of drawing and painting and how that's also influenced photography. I also thought a lot about my body as a multi-sport athlete: runner, hurdler, diver, soccer midfielder, basketball player, and skateboarder. As a runner, my primary sport at the time, I was especially keen to consider how we consider runners' bodies—undoubtably athletic but skinny, light, missing the same definition as the male ideals like Brad Pitt at his "Fight Club" best. I also wanted in this photo get that sense of dark, slightly creamy, Renaissance-inspired lighting.

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BigRed01 Loc: Corona de Tucson, AZ

Love the lighting but not excited about the busy background

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

I have a contention with regards your statement, "I considered how we use nude life drawing in our learning of drawing and painting and how that's also influenced photography" I believe you are putting the cart before the horse here. I do believe that it is photography that has influenced the learning of drawing and painting in our era. I see a photograph posted here and no single image made by an artist's hand in a studio.

Further, this quant notion that photography is painting and/or drawing with light does not serve the strength of photography as an artistic form of expression. One of the primal elements that sets photography apart from the other fine art images is TIME.

Cloudboy Loc: Orlando, Florida, USA

My point was how life studies, whether nude or draped, can inform both photographic practices and also drawing/painting, but as you know, for many decades the latter influenced the former greatly—and photography was compared greatly with painting. Now, perhaps we at this point in history are beyond such and maybe photo and film/video/cinema have become a more major cultural force largely separate from fine arts visual arts practices stemming from drawing and painting? I think that's possible. For my purposes though, I started taking these nude self-portraits so I could draw from them, then I became interested in them for their own merits. That's just how the process was for me. Here's an example of one of the pencil drawings and like the photos, I had an imperative to make it contemporary, including my beanie, sneakers, and in this case a respirator I used while working on paintings I was also doing at the time: