My friends tell me what to do

Hey, what's up? I'm Scott. Some of you I know, some of you I'm meeting for the first time. My friends have encouraged me to write some bit of detail about who I am and what I'm doing; kind of giving you a feel for ipanemic.com and the galleries and so on and so forth. I liked that idea so here we are.

But you may not WANT to know me. You might be here just for all the "hot ladiez." (Cut to girls-gone-crazy footage! Woohoo!!)

And that's fine if you are, I suppose. No, it is. Really.

But I'll give you some detail anyway. Actually, I just had an article published that kind of explains everything. An excerpt:

About eight months ago, I moved to South Beach, never having been to South Florida before, and immediately I was taken by the beauty of this place. It is so marvelously exotic and so uniquely beautiful that I wanted to capture every moment I could. With a point-and-shoot camera, I started photographing everything in site: buildings, sunrises, sunsets, guys juggling on the street, the homeless. Everywhere I looked was beauty.

A large part of the beauty of this place is its people. I was capturing some of it in street photography, but not much. Around December of last year, I made the decision that I wanted to move into shooting female models. I was getting some positive feedback on my street photography and wanted to turn some of that attention onto women as the subject. Could I capture the beauty there the way I was seeing it in everything else around me? It didn't seem like it would be difficult since the female form is naturally beautiful. Realizing that I had reached the limits with my point-and-shoot and knowing I needed to step things up to be taken seriously, I bought my first DSLR over the holidays and within a couple of weeks, ran an ad on Craigslist and subsequently scheduled my first shoot.

I shoot models regularly now and I enjoy it. It's rewarding on a lot of different levels. The models I shoot seem to like their photos a lot. And it seems that other people like the photos that we're taking together. And it makes me happy to know that, in some way, I'm making people happy with what I do. Plus, it's just fun.

As much fun as it is, it's also a lot of work. A LOT of hard work. (You perv. Stop reading double-entendres!)

Wax on, wax off.

Each shoot with a model produces somewhere between 1,000 to 1,500 photos; sometimes less, sometimes more. If you've been following me here or on flickr, you know that I'm only posting a small number of photos. I haven't posted more than 30 yet from any one shoot. And there are reasons for that, some of which may not be so obvious.

1. For each shoot, it takes an insane amount of time to go through the photos. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee you at this point that there have only been two shoots where I have at least SEEN all of the photos taken, if only for a split-second. I know. It's nuts.
   
2. Each photo that I make available, I work on after I take it. Post-processing. Whether it's simply color/saturation changes, or a full-on artistic rendition of the photo, I invest some amount of time into it. I might spend 5 minutes on a photo or I could spend two hours on a photo. Or longer. Five minutes is rare. I hand-pick the photos that I publish and pay great attention to how I think that photo will look best.
   
3. I just don't have enough time on my hands to make these photos available.

Like I said, it's a lot of work. Granted, it's work that I enjoy, but it's very labor- and time-intensive.

Enter the patronage system (aka Subscriptions)

I've come up with a patronage system. For the people interested in the photos of models, I've found that they generally fall into two categories: those that like my art, and those that like naked chicks.

If you fall into that second category, like I said, that's ok. This is probably a great place to be. The women that I shoot are absolutely beautiful and, honestly, I'm glad that you find my photos of them to be good.

But I'd like to believe that there's a larger part of you that fall into the first category; those who see that I'm actually creating art. Or, trying to at least. Maybe you like all of what I'm doing. The street photography. The portraits. The buildings. And maybe the models, too. GREAT!!!

Regardless of which category you fall into, the patronage/subscription system works for you and me. And us, collectively. The Patron/Subscription sysytem works for both of us because:

1. It means more of my work is availble to patrons
2. It allows me to invest more time into producing said work.

Fine, but what do I get?

Like I said, there are thousands upon thousands of photos that I've taken that I haven't made publicly available. By becoming a Patron, you will have EXCLUSIVE access to MORE photos; photos that won't be available to the general public.

Also, another special bonus available to Patrons Only will be "behind the scenes" photos so you can get an inside look at what happens during the shoots or just more candid photos taken with the models.

How often are updates?

I'm going to try to provide daily updates to Patrons. Once a day during the normal business week, I will try to update the patron area with new photos and/or video (more on that in a moment) to include either previously unpublished content from a shoot or new behind-the-scenes photos. I would like to produce 3-5 images a day or 75-100 images per month. That schedule may be slightly higher, it may be slightly lower depending on my schedule. I may have to increase the schedule, just to get everything out!

What did you say? Video!?

Yeah, maybe. I haven't taken any, but I was thinking it would be kind of cool to shoot interviews with some of the models or just to capture some of the stuff that goes on during a shoot. I'm almost always pleased with the way the photos turn out, but the shoot is half the fun, and it would be cool to bring people into it, kind of... to give you a sort of inside peek.

Alright! So where do I sign up!?

Right here!! There are two options right as you can see from these handy buttons below. The seven day trial rolls over into a monthly subscription so if you only want to sample to decide whether you want to join or not, then you may want to try that. The seven day trial is $4.95.

But if you like my photos enough that you're like, "Dude! I can't wait!!!"... then you may just want to go with the monthly option. The monthly subscription rate is $12.99. Whichever works best for you.

Here are the buttons that'll direct you to paypal. It's really pretty straightforward. (That last statement is for the benefit of the technologically challenged; they like art, too, you know. They also can read so I probably shouldn't be talking about them in parentheses. Hey, what's up, you? Glad you're here!)

(Those are just lovely, lovely buttons, aren't they? Nice. I may have to redo those.)

What else?

That's pretty much it. If you need to contact me, then just click on this link and you can write me a nice letter. And if you need to cancel your account, you can click on this link.

Otherwise, I think we're pretty much done covering me, you, and the whole patronage system. Thanks for you support!