Writing The Short Story: The Last Nude Photos

One of the great fantasies that I was able to make come true for myself as a young man was to take photographs of nude women.  Years later I got a couple of flash fiction stories from the experience.

How many of you men have ever fantasized about photographing nude women?  How many of you women have ever fantasized about posing nude for the camera?  I was surprised at how many women do have this fantasy or would be willing to do it under the right circumstances, especially when they are young.  When I was a young man I had a short career as an amateur photographer of nude women.  My first nude model was a girlfriend.  She posed for the hell of it.  I gave her twenty bucks anyway.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the late 1980s I was a student and then a member of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which was a school for people interested in photography, video making and film making.  I was a film student.  My specialty was Super 8 color film with sound.  As a student I made several short films and after I graduated I made one full length film that was premiered in the schools screening room and even got reviewed by one of the local weeklies.

The screening room seated only 60 people.  Over 100 hundred people packed into the little screening room.  I had to stand in the back to watch my own movie.  I played a serial killer.  And yes, there was a lot of fake blood and female nudity in the film.  When the film ended, I got a prolonged ovation.

It’s easy to get young women to take off their clothes to be in a film when you are an up and coming local filmmaker.  It’s also easy to get them to pose nude for photographs.  That’s the story.

Well, my film career sputtered.  But I did end up taking the photos of several nude young women.  Years later as a flash fiction writer, racking my brains for a good flash fiction idea, I realized I had never written about my experience as a photographer of nude women.  I eventually wrote two flash fiction stories based on that experience.  You can read one of the stories here: The Last Nude Photos.