Completely random

This is possibly my scrappiest post ever, consisting of two images which are related and a third which is utterly unconnected. Let's start with the pair, the first of which is, itself, a pair...

I love this trick, now played by many photographers, of having a dressed/undressed model in the same position, side-by-aide, though I don't really approve of the headlessness -- the whole point for me is to enable us to see the extraordinarily powerful influence that clothes have on our reaction to portraits, which is trickier when the head isn't there. Though this model has a very lovely body so I do forgive them all.

Same model in the next shot, but this time it's an "x-ray" image where a clothed shot is superimposed on a naked shot, to excellent effect:

See? Interesting but in a very different way to the clothed/unclothed image, despite using exactly the same elements. How fascinating is that?

On a completely different topic, here's a photo of the late, great James Dean:

This Sex God/stud puppy would, today, be nowhere near "fit" enough to be a sex symbol (just look at the natural curves of his stomach flesh). How tragic is that? A society so artificial that we could no longer lust after a contemporary James Dean...