[skunkbaxter]

I'm feeling baffled and thought I'd turn here to see if anyone has any input.

I'm a photographer, 40 yr old male. Being a longtime fan of the naked lady, I've become rather well versed with the many online forums and sites that cater to my tastes, from the blogs and user-upload sites to the curated free gallery sites, and over the past 20 years I've been blown away by both the quantity and quality of the beautiful women I've encountered on the internet. As you all know, the origins of most of these images are obvious: Paid models, voyeur/public stuff, amateur models, leaked smartphone selfies, and wives/girlfriends who get posted with or without permission. Yet there still seems to be an abundance of drop-dead, amazing naked girls all over the internet who appear to be wholesome, intelligent, classy, 'girl-next-door' ladies. And it's hard for me to believe that all of those women fall into the aforementioned categories.

So who are these normal looking women, and how do they come to find themselves happily posing nude?

You'll have to take my word on it lol, but I have a strong photography portfolio of 20+ years, a long client list, and a solid reputation for being professional. Yet the process of finding decent-looking women willing to be photographed (in a very tasteful, artsy way) seems hopeless. I've worked with a number of local and regional models on various personal and professional projects, and when brought up in casual conversation most of them seem generally reluctant to the idea of nude photography. (I have photographed a few nude sessions with professional models, mostly from Model Mayhem, with a prior complete understanding of what was involved in the shoot and they were paid. Sadly, especially where I live, the quality of models has decreased significantly over the years) I have female friends, but asking them to pose nude raises questions of intentions, as it would with any photographer in any situation: you must explain a reason for taking the photos, which is essentially limited to a) Fine Art Photography, b) some sort of nudity or sex-themed paid sight, in which the women are willing to be displayed on, or c) you're some dude with a camera with no real purpose who likes to take pictures of naked girls for his own questionable pleasure and the final intentions of the images are vague at best and will likely turn up on the internet at some point in the future, possibly staining a woman's good reputation amongst the community, her employer, etc.

And of course approaching random women on the street and asking them if they'll get naked for you and your camera makes you look even more sketchy, unless you've got a really sound purpose for the images (and typically a well-funded model budget.)

So what's the secret? Who's taking all these photos, and how do they find and enter into agreements to shoot them nude? While I'd love to get into more casual nude photography that doesn't involve hiring adult models, I'm just trying to understand how this seems to be going down all the time.

Any thoughts?