Lauren, seen here on the blog previously, has never been in Playboy. But someone out there thinks she has. See, it’s funny — every week when I check my server logs, I see that someone has searched for the term “lauren potts playboy” in Google and landed at my site as a result. The search always comes from the same place — Maryland. I can only deduce that it’s the same person, week after week, searching and clicking on my site.

Now, I’m not naive. There could very well be some hot girl in Maryland named Lauren Potts that this person is searching for. But it ain’t this one.

Here’s Lauren in her underwear, which is as close as she’s gonna get to Playboy. Sorry to disappoint.

Shortly after I got back to Toronto, I made this cute little 2″x3″ photobook with Apple’s iPhoto software and mailed it to the newlyweds as a surprise.

To say they were ecstatic is an understatement. They quickly asked for a dozen more to send to friends and family, for which I was happy to oblige.

A thank you card arrived in the mail recently from Emilie and Jahir, and lo and behold, my images were staring back at me on the front of the card!

I was super flattered by this and still a bit speechless, even now.

Emilie and Jahir are expecting their first child, and I hope to get to Montreal sometime soon to see (and photograph!) all three of them.

Enjoy more photos from the wedding below!

Though you can’t tell in this photo, Christine is a ginger kid. Pale skin, freckles, and red hair. In the three years or so that I’ve known Christine, she’s successfully transitioned from a popular nude art model in Halifax, Nova Scotia to a popular photographer. I feel lucky to have photographed Christine three times before she got out of modeling, and this shot was done the last time I saw her in Halifax.

I very much adhere to the “keep it simple, stupid” philosophy while shooting. I shy away from studios, large sets, assistants and even lights. These shots with Christine were done in a university dorm that I was renting, and I laid down a giant plastic tarp purchased from a local home improvement store. I got a ridiculously large bag of flour from Sobey’s across the street (they had no small ones!) and then poured it on Christine to get her battered like chicken. Or something. As I wasn’t traveling with any sort of lighting set up beyond a hotshoe flash, Christine brought over her Octabox for lighting. I fussed over the position of the light so much that Christine was ready to punch me by the time I actually started shooting photos.

Clean up was a breeze! Christine showered off the flour; I just folded up the tarp and threw it away, and left the bag of flour behind in the dorm for someone else to wonder, “what the hell was going on here?”.

There’s a couple photos from this series on vtography.com, but I’ve never showed this one before. It’s always fun to go back and look at old photoshoots — often times there are photos that jump out at me that I didn’t notice the first time around. Yet another reason why I never delete images, even the duds.

Lauren, like many of my subjects, is not a “model”, but she does a damn fine job pretending to be.

Technical details: Nikon D200 with 17-55mm lens zoomed to 45mm @ f/2.8, 1/40, ISO 640, natural light from an adjacent window. Makeup: Lucy Dekranian.

Note to self: leather couches and water are not a good combination. The resulting photos aren’t too bad, though, and I can thank the stellar Samantha for that.

I’m not sure how Chip first came to my attention, but I imagine it was from one of the many photography and/or modeling sites that I frequent. What I love about his photos — and what I wish I could do better — is a mastery of hard light. Chip’s photos are typified by harsh shadows, overexposed skin, and as alluded to above, lots of naked people.

Looking at the photos is better than reading about them, so go look at Chip’s blog and his website. It’s worth it to wade through the stories of medical problems and football games to get to the great photography.

Some of you may wonder what the big deal is. You’ll see a lot of overlayed images, blurry, fuzzy, out-of-focus subjects, and a parade of grain scattered across each photo. There’s a difference, of course, between screwing up a shot on your point-and-shoot camera, and doing these things intentionally for dramatic and/or artistic effect. Chip has mastered the latter.