The Third week- Andreas Bitesnich

After doing Anders Petersen's course, some people advised me not to do Andreas Bitesnich's course and continue doing personal research with Lorenzo Castore. Fifteen males had signed up for Bitesnich's course and I was tempted to change because there would be so much male testosterone around. But the Bitesnich course was the first reason why I decided to go to Tuscany this year. And after doing Petersen, I was interested in finding out more about what Bitesnich had to offer. I wanted to see the other side.

Andreas Bitesnich has a talent for shooting nudes. When I asked him what his motivation to shoot nudes was, he simply replied that it was his job. I find Bitesnich disarmingly honest. The other students in his class were in awe of Bitesnich, but they were all looking for his technique. For me, he had little to teach me, I knew most of the lighting techniques he used and the photoshop techniques he used. But what he did teach me was how the techniques can be refined and pushed. For example, in his photoshop editing, he said that he liked doing extreme edits where formally, his histograms are not full, but his end results look good and if the result is good, who gives a fuck.

I kind of went into over drive mode this week. I knew all the other students would be doing nudes. These guys palms were sweating when they were photographing nude female models. Cupped breasts, the sexy curve, the intense come hither look. Whether you like Bitesnich's work or not, at least it is not tacky. But after learning about being close to life and death in photography, I could not just make pretty pictures. I needed something more. So I did a series of diptychs, of a nude coupled with a still life of countryside or a factory site. I tried to explore the juxataposition of man's structures and nature's structures. Bitesnich was open to what I was doing and thus I had a good week.

I am sorry that I am not posting images right now. I realise from last week's postings that my images are coming out too dark on windows computers. My images were edited on a Mac and they have much more shadow detail. So I will have to edit my images again before posting. Brighter images like those I did in the first week with Philippe Pache look fine on a PC screen, although the originals have a lighter feel. But my images are much darker now and loose a lot of texture and feel if the shadow detail is lost.

Am off to the airport to fly back to Singapore now. Will be back real soon.