My Life As A Farce

Get a different e-mail address than the one you currently use, reasons for this being: you’ll get a lot of mail, which, if you reply to any of it, will very quickly lead to spam. Some people will Google your e-mail address to find out who you really are and what else you have done in life. Best to differentiate, always.

Use a “stage name.” If really attached to your name, keep the first name and lose the surname, or whatever, but don’t use your real name. Reason for this being people Googling you, and stalkers. Even if exchanging e-mails, people often reveal themselves to be creepy well into several days of communication, and if they have your real name, trouble can ensue. Don’t bother paying for an account on any modeling portfolio site. When you first sign up, a free account and recent photos you that you feel best show you off are all that you need. Oh, and your stats. The bio portion is really just for people to brag about how great they are; it’s essentially a cover letter for your modeling resume. No one really cares, and few people ever read it (sad but true – I wish they did read it, as it would save a lot of hassle).

In your stats there are places to check off what sort of modeling you want to do. Most offers are for nudes, porn and fetish, also sad but true. Certainly 90% of all paying offers are for such. If you are willing to do the aforementioned, state very clearly what you are willing to do in your profile. For example, if you check off some form of nudity, explain what you’re willing to show, what your limits are, etc. For fetish, keep in mind that there are LOTS of fetish photos you can do that do not include nudity, so, for example, if you’re willing to do foot fetish, check off fetish and then state “foot fetish, no nudity,” o whatever your limits are. Foot fetishists pay EXTREMELY well and there are tons of them out there, particularly, for some reason, in Pittsburgh. Also in your profile, state very explicitly whether or not you are willing to “do” video, ie, make a video or allow the photographer to video the photo session. If you check off “adult,” make sure to be explicit as to what sort you are willing to do: softcore or hardcore, b/g or only g/g, etc. Another very important thing is to state your policy on “implied” nudity. If you’re not willing to outright do nudes, a lot of photographers will still be interest in implied, which basically means that while the photographer may see your tits, ass, etc., they won’t turn up in the photos. Such examples would be naked and lying on your stomach, under sheets, in a bubble bath, or other forms of obscuring whatever you don’t want to be seen. (I generally have a “no cellulite or stretch marks” policy, for example!)

Until you build a portfolio of some sort (at least four pro photos for your OMP page at the least), most photographers are straight up not going to want to pay you for your work. They’ll want to do “TFP,” or Time for Prints. This also translates to Time for CD if the photographer uses a digital camera. Get some prints to build your portfolio and then see what you can get. It’s best to work with at least two photographers in order to get your initial profile going, in order to show you in two different styles. (Not just “casual” or “lingerie,” but the style of the photographers can translate as very different things, and two different photographers are likely to show two very different sides of you.) Most photographers who don’t do nudes or fetish expect to be paid by YOU in order to work with you. Nude and fetish photographers will pay YOU to work with them (and most will pay an inexperienced model with few photos as models are harder to come by in those fields). If you’re doing this for money, don’t pay anyone (duh) to take photos of you. A lot of people say that’s necessary to start out, but it simply isn’t, even if you don’t ever want to do nudes or fetish. Simply hit up an art school or other various novice photographers (lots of places online to look for those) who are looking for models for projects in exchange for copies of their photos.

State in your portfolio whether or not an escort (male friends are best as male photographers like to say that significant others get in the way of shoots by distracting the models, and female friends are often pressured into being one of the models instead of being an escort – it is very, very important to have an escort of YOUR choosing who will NOT be modeling with you, because if anything, well, legal should come up, they are able to be an actual witness instead of another directly involved party) will be present at your shoots. I state that an escort will always accompany me, but in all honesty, that’s mostly to weed out the majority of the creeps from the start. I just don’t have anyone, male or female, who can accompany me to most shoots, and as a result I have had a few icky in-person experiences (though nothing too severe). I really don’t recommend this, and I urge you to not do this, especially if you’re doing porn. A model was murdered just this past winter in Pennsylvania while meeting with a new photographer and his female assistant. Both the photographer and assistant are up on charges, and while actual murder is rare, sexual harassment is not. Frequency of worse things falls in between.