You can purchase either of these images as limited edition framed prints directly from me; please contact me for details.

It’s worth paying a good studio-based professional photographer for the occasional portfolio shoot. But look at their work first… if it’s the same photos time after time just with different faces, don’t bother. Those photographers with so little originality, creativity and imagination that they repeat the same shots endlessly, should be avoided like the plague. They’ll rip you off and leave you with sets of photos which are useless for portfolio purposes and which professionals will just laugh at.

Unfortunately this industry is dominated by such charlatans. Some will call you up because you’ve appeared somewhere on the net, and grab your interest by saying that some modelling agency, with a name borrowed from some fashion label or other, is interested in you, and inviting you to a free shoot. Of course nothing is ever really free. All the indications will be that you have to pay for the shots, and it won’t be cheap. But if you don’t pay, you won’t be considered for their agency. Actually in reality there is no agency, it’s just a photo studio. The shots, whilst ok photographically, will be just like the ones taken of the last 1,000 girls who happened through their doors, and the at least £500 you pay won’t get you anywhere in the modelling world.

The photographer’s past work is all-important, because it’s a strong indication of what you’ll get. Nothing is ever free. If you’re paying money, make sure what you’re paying for is worth having. If you’re not paying money, ask yourself why this is! Eyes wide open, girls and boys, or you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

If you want a proper model agency, try Envision Model Agency.

Jon Silver is a Sussex photographer based in Brighton.

Of course at this point I must remind you of an old saying which goes “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. It’s as true now as whenever it was first spoken or written down. But what does it mean?

Have you ever met someone who you didn’t find particularly attractive on that first meeting, but who you grew to like more and more, and as you grew to love them they became more and more beautiful? Or indeed the converse, where your relationship with someone beautiful falls apart, leaving you finding them uglier and uglier with every passing day. Since you can’t answer me before I write this next bit you’ll have to take it as a rhetorical question and I’ll have to assume you’ve answered “yes, how very insightful!”

This does all rather suggest that it’s how we feel about something that makes us see beauty or ugliness. The emotions that surface from deep within when we see something or someone are entirely shaped and crafted by our experiences, and those emotions in turn shape and craft the way in which we see everything. So let me take it a little further. Just admit to yourself that you’re prejudiced about something, just for a moment. Go on. Admit it. I know you’re prejudiced against something, everyone is – even if it’s Marmite or the snotty bit inside a tomato. There. See? So… you’re prejudiced. Now, imagine taking a photo of what you’re prejudiced against. Could you take a photo showing that thing’s beauty? If you’re a professional photographer who’s prejudiced in any way against gay people, could you photograph a civil partnership ceremony and find the love between two men or two women beautiful, and represent it as such photographically? Would you find the beauty in a size 24 bride? Or a disabled groom? If you’ve been a victim of racial abuse, could you still recognise the beauty in someone of the same race as your attackers?

One of the things I do when I teach photography is to make people see they’re full of prejudice, and once they’ve accepted it, help them to overcome it. Some people labour under the misapprehension that they’re not at all prejudiced, because they have a multicultural group of friends, or because their parents aren’t racists. But then I’ll show them a scene or an object and ask them to take a dynamic, interesting photograph of it, and they’ll say they can’t because it’s boring. There… spot the prejudice? I find new ones all the time, and it’s great fun helping people to learn to see the world through new, unprejudiced eyes.

Jon Silver is a Sussex photographer based in Brighton.

As part of what I do I offer a “boudoir” style service whereupon a customer can be photographed in sensual depictions of artistic nudity, either in their own home or in a studio setting. I also of course offer photoshoot parties, though these are normally conducted with clothes firmly on. However earlier this year, when I was approached by a group of six young women who wanted a group/party photoshoot done entirely nude, I had no problem with it. The reactions I got from other people were rather different. “Oh my God I could never get naked in front of my friends” was one of them. Another said “But why would they want to do something like that?”, to which I of course replied that they probably wanted to share a confidence-building experience amongst a close-knit group of friends who’d known each other since university days, and to get some beautiful photos of themselves. But I think the most common reaction from females was “Oh I’d absolutely love to do something like that but I would never have the confidence”. Of course the reaction of male friends was rather different, including growly noises sounding like Sid James from the Carry On films, and numerous offers to come and “hold the reflector” and such.

I’ve experienced quite a bit of this… generally outside the UK, where attitudes to nudity are markedly different, and where nudity is not always linked to sex or sexual desire. For example, in an Italian sauna, which of course is mixed-gender and clothing-optional, where my female friends said they “didn’t know where to look”, and from which my male friends emerged with a strategically placed towel and a broad smirk.

So, as a male, heterosexual photographer, I’m often asked how I cope. Why don’t I go to pieces when surrounded by nakedness? The answer is of course that I have managed to detach sexual connotations from the nude human form.

I think it stems back to something that happened when I was 13 years old. That summer of 1980, while Sebastian Coe & Steve Ovett were becoming British heroes of  the track, I spent one whole month in Copenhagen on a foreign exchange trip with a the family of a Danish boy called Jenz. He had two older sisters, who of course I fancied the pants off. Being the summer, and particularly fine weather, I was taken to various beautiful sandy beaches where there were a lot of people who were not only topless, but many of whom were completely naked. As a hormonal adolescent teenager I was all at once excited, aroused, amazed, disgusted, shocked, outraged and, most of all, most terribly embarrassed. I was after all the product of a British middle-class upbringing where nudity was just… not a part of life. Of course, within a few hours I had worked out for myself that I was the one with the problem, given that nobody else seemed to be reacting at all to the scenes of nakedness, let alone displaying any outrage or indeed embarrassment. A whole month of this did inevitably leave a lasting impression.

So, back once again to Britain, with its humorous nudge-nudge-wink-wink Carry-On “phwoaaaarrrr” attitudes to nudity. We clearly don’t find breasts a problem, since they’ve been gracing our breakfast tables on Page Three since the early 1970s. You can even find topless sunbathing on British beaches now. But we never quite made the transition to the mainland European acceptance that just because someone is naked, it doesn’t have to be sexual.

Thankfully in the photographic representation of nude beauty, we can take the image firmly away from the men’s magazine and place it in the realm of art. However I have hopefully shown with the latter of these two images that even erotic images don’t need to be explicit.

Photos are of Charli-Louise, a new model who is very confident and seemingly unaffected by her Britishness in so far as it relates to nudity.

Jon Silver is a Sussex photographer based in Brighton.

One is my local forum on Flickr. The other is GoSnap, founded and run by Simon Smith. It’s populated by beginners, intermediates, experts, amateurs, professionals… and so far it’s a supportive and positive place where people can really thrive at any level. It’s not just a forum, and perhaps that’s why it works so well. You can get ideas for stuff to photograph, take up challenges in the Projects area, or learn new skills in the Academy.

It’s free to join, and could just give you back as much as you’re prepared to put in… which is, after all, what communities are all about.

Sign up for free at www.GoSnap.co.uk.

Most women don’t feel beautiful most of the time. Men see this a lot. Unfortunately most of them are entirely ill-equipped to help. If you’re male, you’ve probably witnessed this scene. Your favourite woman looks gorgeous, but she doesn’t feel it. This can happen for all sorts of reasons, not least pregnancy & childbirth, when she feels like a beached whale, those flowing locks of beautiful hair just get in the way, and those bounteous boobs are no longer remotely sexual. As a result, she does one of two things. Either she withdraws, or she over-compensates. She dresses down, stops looking after her appearance, doesn’t want to go out, and the one that really hurts is the loss of sex-drive. As a man you feel so helpless, so utterly useless, and alas you’re apt to take it personally. It must be you. She doesn’t love you any more. Maybe she’s having an affair. At the other extreme, she becomes totally obsessed with her appearance, and end up wearing far too much makeup, dressing in clothes that really don’t suit her and can even appear rather slutty, and worst of all she projects it all back on you. You’re a slob, you’ve got fat, you don’t love her any more.

In either of these situations you need help. Both of you do.

Of course it’s not just women in relationships who suffer from a lack of self-esteem. You can be left feeling like nothing after the break-up of a relationship – particularly the woman of a certain age left for a younger woman. Teenage girls can be affected in all sorts of ways, and it’s not just the self-harmers who have major crises of confidence. Parental break-ups, an unhappy mum, a seemingly uncaring dad, general family issues – all are triggers, not just the big stuff like rape or abuse.

The Unilever/Dove Campaign for Real Beauty thing petred out after initial promise, probably because everyone saw it as just a big public relations exercise. There have also been quite a few programmes on television that attempt to address the problem. Dear old Trinny and Susannah had a good go in What Not To Wear, but their approach was never holistic enough to my mind. But Gok Wan has really hit the nail on the head with How To Look Good Naked on Channel 4 – where real women with real bodies and real confidence crises are seen going through a formulaic process which helps them to see themselves as they really are. It’s not difficult, and I hope the formula works long-term for all the women who appear on the programme, rather than being just a quick-fix for TV. I get that feeling about the ubiquitous photographic makeover sometimes – it’s like a sticking plaster for major organ failure. The only criticism I have is that sometimes the women could do with losing a few pounds if only for health reasons, and I hope the boost in confidence they get from the programme helps them achieve this long after the cameras have gone away.

Makeover: a service provided by some photographic studios where you get far too much makeup slapped on by the girl who answers the phone and then shoe-horned into a whole load of really cheesy poses for some photos which are heavily airbrushed and digitally altered and set in soft-focus before you’re sat down in front of them and made to buy them for far too much money with the aid of bright lights in your eyes and thumb-screws before being released into the open air gasping for freedom. OK but you get my point.

I don’t do makeovers like that. I hate the term makeover because it conjours up the aforementioned makeover studio monstrosity – but I have no idea what else to call what we do at Southdown Studio. I think all women are beautiful – and all I have to do is make them feel it, because then I can photograph it. With sensitively applied makeup, custom designed for your colouring and facial structure, you start to feel more confident. I help you choose items from your available wardrobe that do good things for your figure. When I take a photo you’ll like, and show you on the back of the camera, you’ll start to feel even more confident. I’ll help you achieve poses that show off your natural shape. It may begin to dawn upon you that you’re actually quite good-looking. You’ll spend the next hour or so with growing confidence, gradually feeling more beautiful. The results will be amazing – a complete transformation. Best of all you get to hold onto that feeling every time you look at the photos. You can look at them as often as you like for free, in the comfort of your own home, and without some pushy salesperson looking over your shoulder, breathing down your neck and pressurising you into buying them. When you do choose to buy a print or CD, it’s at reasonable prices and on your terms. The most important thing about my makeover photos though is that they’re generally in no need of airbrushing or digital enhancement – in other words instead of looking great once someone has completely altered your image, you look fantastic just from what the camera pointed at you has seen. Since the camera never lies, it simply must be true. Job done.

A girl came to see me recently. Her mum realised her daughter’s confidence was at rock-bottom, and brought her along for a makeover. The young lady started out terribly uncomfortable, and quite scared. She had been looking forward to the experience but now she was here in front of the camera with her professional makeup job, she felt quite intimidated. She told me that her boyfriend rarely compliments her, in fact quite the opposite, meaning probably that he calls her fat or ugly or worse. To me she wasn’t fat, or ugly, or particularly beautiful, but I knew this could change if only she started to feel different about herself. She said she wished she’d had a drink before she arrived. So I tried to help her to relax without alcohol. Deep breaths, a good line in distracting conversation, lots of questions about her. It’s like a date really, but without the intent. She started off not liking her images but then I changed to an unfamiliar angle. She immediately liked the photo and started to relax. Of course then it snowballed – she became more relaxed and confident with each iteration and eventually went for her last change of outfit, into the lingerie her mum had bought her for Christmas. Within minutes she was looking every bit the fifties pinup, like the tasteful but ever-so-slightly risqué classic Hollywood glamour photo, where the eyes draw you in seductively past the heaving bosom and the full red lips and hold you there mesmerised by her unquestionable beauty (regardless of the knowledge that the woman in the photo had a terrible personal life). You can see the change happening through the photos, and if you compare one of the earliest with one of the last, the difference is astounding – to the point where you might question if it’s the same girl. Needless to say, the girl loved the photos, bought loads, gained a major boost in her confidence, chucked the derogatory boyfriend, gave up smoking and now has something to hang onto whenever she’s not feeling so beautiful, to remind her how good she can feel AND look.

I’ve helped female friends feel better about themselves just by giving them a bit of time and attention, usually around the shops. Patiently sitting in a shop and commenting honestly but constructively as she tries on a few outfits, perhaps. Or chatting away to her as she chooses makeup colours. Basically chaps, forget the football and the pub sometimes and remember your lady needs a bit of preening, as do you. Girls can help each other out as well. Next time you go shopping, actually say what you think as your short-legged friend emerges from the changing room with short-legged turned-up low-waisted skinny jeans, flat shoes and a wide low-slung belt. Stop saying “oh yes that’s so cool on you” and try nudging her towards clothes that actually work for her figure. She’ll might just start doing the same for you, and before long we’ll hopefully end up with a far more happy, content and confident nation that has a proper understanding of what beauty really is.

If you’re in the Brighton or Sussex area, and would like to try my version of the makeover photoshoot experience, you’ll find Southdown Studio’s makeover services for Brighton & Sussex here.

Jon Silver is a Sussex photographer based in Brighton.