This is one of the posts that Ella had begin before her accident, and I’ve been working to try and finish it today.

During the journey, I got a little distracted by the need to, as Ella has done previously, get my man involved in SL, for the simple reason that his and my views on private, nude photography don’t dovetail with those of Ella’s, which became apparent as I was writing it, and so we (‘Mr Pookes’ and I) spent a while today getting him avatared up. We’ll come back to him later on. In the meantime, in italics, is the bit that Ella had written, with the idea of developing further (note: all posts in draft form can be seen by other staff members prior to publication, and we regularly will read each other’s work and bounce ideas off one another accordingly).

On holiday, the camera comes out, and photographs get taken. We’ve all probably got a photograph in a box or on a hard drive, of ourselves in swimwear, or posing in Times Square, beside Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower. Memories of the event, a way to prove that we were there in clothes and hairstyles now as wretchedly out of date as a cigar box full of yellowing snaps from a previous era.

As a naturist, I know that we take photographs of us doing normal holiday stuff, the exception being there are no clothes. No different from anyone’s trivial, mundane holiday photographs other than the lack of clothes.

As a result of this being part of our holiday routine, naturist beach activities interspersed with visits to local landmarks, I confess we don’t feel a need to have a vault of ‘naughty’ photos somewhere, unless you include the naturist holiday photos. We don’t categorise those as remotely ‘naughty’, I have to say.

Let me ask this question, though. Is there anyone reading this who hasn’t either posed for or been the subject of ‘naughty’ photos in the era of digital technology? Few, if any, will be putting their hand up and saying ‘no, I’ve never done that’: even me if nude beach photography qualifies as ‘naughty’. Because digital technology has allowed all of us to take, for fun, for a laugh, for arousal purposes, nude photos of a partner, or allowed a partner to take nude photos of us.

It’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, it has led to an explosion of voyeuristic type photos easily taken on a smart phone, an invasion of others’ privacy. On the other, it has probably made each and every one of us more comfortable with the idea of being photographed nude, and viewing the results instantaneously.

And I suspect that it’s the smart-phone generation, those still under 30 and, in many cases, under 20, who have embraced the ‘nude selfie’ as an expression of both their own nudity and, by extension, sexuality.

Ella

So let me pick it up from there. As I said in my pre-amble, I do take a slightly different view to RL nude photography, in that ‘Mr Pookes’ and I do indulge in it on a regular basis. No, it’s not us sending ‘taken in a mirror’ full length nudes. ‘Mr Pookes’ is a professional photographer, and away from ‘the day job’ (weddings, portraits) he still likes to capture ‘art’ or ‘erotic’ photographs that sometimes have me as a muse & model. That may be a backlit, silhouetted breast, for example, unidentifiable as me. It’s just a silhouetted breast.

The photos above aren’t of me, I should add, although some photos of me, and others taken by Mr Pookes are online (but using those would create circumstances where I could be identified…not the purpose of SL) although you get the idea of the sort of photos I pose for. (The third photo I can positively identify as the work of Helmut Newton)

In SL, and on SLN, we’ve occasionally tried to undertake, via Harry & Diane’s work, similar ‘arty’ kind of photos as well as simple naturist travelogue photos while zipping around the grid.

As I’ve said, me standing in my undies or less in the bathroom mirror and sending them to my beloved isn’t how we roll, mostly, but there have been times where I have done that when I’ve bought a nice bit of lingerie I want to share before he gets home 😉

But many do. A quick check will reveal that there must be thousands upon thousands of nude and semi-nude people out there who’ve done just that.

I’m not going to ‘shame’ anyone by plucking some random nude selfie off the net (who knows? They might be delighted), so instead I’ll illustrate the point with the photo above. Who amongst us hasn’t posed nude, or semi-nude, in a bathroom or bedroom mirror? Very few.

If the naked selfie isn’t the thing, then admit it, you’ve wandered into the bedroom to find your other half on the bed, snapping away on their smart phone as you wander around nude, hair in a towel. Or been photographed in the bath. Who amongst us hasn’t, in one format or another, been the subject of a naked photograph in the digital photography age?

Pookes