Chapter 11: Nobility

“JUST KEEP YOUR BATHERS and a T-shirt on,” Dale said. “We’ll start with a few poses like that. Warmups, you know.”

We’d stopped at a pub for lunch and I’d had a beer, so I was feeling no pain. Aussie—pronounced ‘Ozzie,’ I learned—beer is powerful stuff. I took a seat on Dale’s little posing platform. The women went to work. Dale could tear off a sketch in a couple of minutes. She called them warmups. Then Jane approached me.

“Are you ready to progress?” she whispered in my ear.

“I’ve really no choice, have I?” I chuckled. I was going to pull off my T-shirt but Jane’s hands beat me to the hem.

“You know, I really don’t have many opportunities to explore a man’s body without him expecting to jump into bed,” she said. “You don’t expect to just jump into bed because I’m undressing you, do you?”

“No, of course not,” I said.

“Yet,” she finished as she pulled my T-shirt up and off.

She spent a moment running her fingers over my back and then around to my chest. She definitely stopped to play with my nipples a bit.

“I’ve always wondered why males have nipples,” she said. “You don’t feed kittens from them.”

“Kittens?”

“I’ve a friend who got herself up the duff. Now she has a kid hanging off one teat all the time. The cats kept hanging round while she was feeding her infant and she got to squirting a bit of milk at them thinking it was funny. Now she can’t feed the baby without a cat trying to nudge him out of the way.”

“That’s a colorful expression,” I said. “I think the reason men have them is exactly what you are doing.” She pinched my nipples slightly and I felt the jolt in my cock.

“Good enough for me,” she said.

She stepped back and focused her camera. I glanced over and noticed Dale was nude. Jane saw it at the same time.

“Oh my! Well, you are a nudist and this is your own home,” Jane sighed.

“It’s so much more comfortable this way,” Dale said. “Don’t feel obligated.”

“I might not today, but this doesn’t need to be a one-time session. I’m rather getting into the idea of learning more intimate ways of posing my model. I don’t think I’d try this with a rando male in the studio,” Jane said. “Now give me that strong severe look you had a minute ago, Nate.”

I’m twenty-one years old, fairly strong, and healthy. But no one is going to take pictures of me to study the muscle structure of my stomach. I’m not a weight lifter. But when Jane got me out of my swim trunks, I don’t think she was all that interested in my abs.

“You see what I mean about always needing to work around seeing the knob when you have a naked man. I mean, there it is, just sticking straight up in the air. I’ll need to put something in front of it or position you with your back to me.”

“How’s this?” I asked. I shoved my prick down between my legs and clamped them shut on it. Hidden from view.

“Oh. Well, I personally liked it the other way, but this will make a better photo. Dale, what do you think?”

“I think he needs to hold that position for a little while so I can do a more polished sketch. Why don’t you work around him with your camera and get different angles of the same pose.”

“Capital idea.”

The women worked on their pictures. During the afternoon, Jane had dropped most of her clothes and was working in her bikini. That certainly wasn’t going to make my cock go down. After fifteen minutes with it trapped between my legs, though, it began to deflate on its own.

“I think I’m finished for today,” Jane said, putting her camera in her bag.

“Yes, I can get Nate to pose for me again so I can polish this,” Dale said. “You showed a great ability to get Nate into interesting poses.”

“Thank you very much, Lady Jane,” I said. “It was a fascinating experience.”

She stepped up close to me, her bikini covered tits just touching my bare chest. My cock started responding again.

“Although it implies a degree of intimacy we have not yet reached, I think when we are alone together or with Dale, you could drop the honorific and just call me Jane,” she said.

“That is an honor, Jane,” I responded. She stepped closer and trapped my growing cock between her thighs.

“I can hide it, too,” she said. “And since I am, you could give me a kiss before I go to my hosts’ house.”

It started rather gently, but with my cock between her legs and the feel of her breasts pressed against my chest, our kiss became quite passionate.

“You must think of where you want to photograph me, just as I will be thinking of the next time I photograph you,” she whispered. “And when we are sitting across from each other having a beer sometime this week, I want to know exactly what you did with Krista when you carried her behind the changing screen.”

Jane pushed away from me and bent to pull on her shorts and top—a view that I was so fixated on, I almost forgot to grab my own clothes. Even Dale was dressing as she planned to drive Jane home. That was quite an experience.

“This week, we are going to share more of our personal style with each other,” Josh said after we’d reviewed the prints that we all made over the weekend. He didn’t spend much time critiquing them, but said that seeing the print after the session was a reward that we were allowed to give ourselves. “Today, we’re going to board the bus and go to the William Ricketts Sanctuary where we’re going to have Ari introduce us to his type of portraiture involving both humans and nature. Joining us will be Amelia and Charlie, who will be our models. You will need both your fast action camera and your field camera. Pack everything up and head for the bus. We leave in fifteen minutes.”

We all scrambled to get our equipment together. I wondered about Jane’s 8x10, but it turned out she had more equipment with her than the rest of us combined. I wondered when I saw the size of the trunk she took through customs. She did have a smaller view camera in a 4x5 size and said she only used the 8x10 when she either was in a studio or had an assistant to help cart and set up her equipment.

We got everything loaded and boarded the bus for the hour drive out to the sanctuary. It was not at all what I expected. I thought it was going to be a place where I’d see kangaroos and such. Mostly, the wildlife was birds and small animals. The real attraction was all the sculpture throughout the sanctuary. A guide met us there and told us Mr. Ricketts still lived at the sanctuary, though it had been purchased by the government of Victoria to preserve it as a public sanctuary. Not many people came around during the week, so we had a nice run of the area.

As we spotted areas to take pictures, Amelia and Charlie worked with us to pose. Josh reminded us that it was a portrait photography course and the sanctuary was a setting, not the focal point. There was so much of interest there that it was hard not to focus on the sanctuary itself. I used a lot more film on the 35 than I expected to.

I finally found an interesting location for a portrait and went to talk to Amelia and Charlie about posing there. I had to wait my turn.

“Do you have any difficulty posing together in an ... um ... intimate setting?” I asked them.

“You mean nude?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. Sorry, I should have been explicit.”

“As long as the photo is not explicit. I’ll pose with Charlie, but I won’t bang him,” Amelia said.

“Perfect.”

After we’d paused for a lunch, it was my turn. I’d watched Ari spend all his time photographing Charlie. Dom had photographed Charlie and then Amelia. Jane had only photographed Amelia, not wanting to test herself with another male model yet. I led the two to a stone bridge on the path. It arched over a brook and I explained to the two what I wanted. I had my camera set up at one end of the bridge and asked them to take positions in the middle. Then I started working them toward the shot I wanted.

I coaxed them out of their clothes, spending equal time working with Charlie as with Amelia. When I had them fully nude, Charlie was facing me and Amelia was in front of him, leaning over the stone railing of the bridge tossing pebbles into the brook.

“Charlie, just gently touching Amelia’s shoulder if you would please. Now turn just a bit to your right so we hide your junk behind her hip. That’s good.”

I snapped another shot on the Nikon. I hadn’t yet taken a picture with the Linhof. I went up to the two models and began to adjust Amelia’s position.

“You are very beautiful, Amelia. It’s always a pleasure to work with beautiful people. Charlie, isn’t she lovely?”

“Objectively, yes,” Charlie said. “Personally, I find you more attractive.”

So, Charlie swung toward Ari and Dom. I’d learned pretty well from Devon not to be shocked by that.

“Thank you for the compliment,” I answered. “I think you are lovely, too, though personally, I find Amelia more to my taste. You are here for stage dressing. Here, take a nice big bite out of this apple if you would and hold it just about here. Now, Amelia, I’d like you to raise your hand a bit. We aren’t showing your vulva here, but I definitely want to see your breast. Yes, just here.”

I brushed my hand up her side and over the curve of her breast as I positioned her arm. I stepped back and checked the composition, then moved back and tilted her shoulders slightly.

“It’s rather nice to have the attention of someone who prefers women,” she giggled. “I was thinking all the boys here were queer. Even her ladyship didn’t seem particularly excited to be posing me as much as relieved she wasn’t posing Charlie. Oh. Do that again. If we’re going to show my breasts, the nips should be nice and pointy.”

I gave her breast a little squeeze and stepped back to the camera. Nearly perfect.

“Amelia, I need a slightly wicked look from you. Charlie has just bitten the apple. Savor that bite, Charlie.” I leaned in close to Amelia and whispered, “He doesn’t know he’s only the latest to have fallen to your temptation.”

The expression was perfect. I adjusted the tilt on my front standard and took the picture. Then I turned the film carrier and returned to the couple. I moved Charlie’s hand so he was ready to take another bite as I stroked down Amelia’s luscious backside.

“He’s only a moment away from the next bite. Do you think this would be a good place for him to sink his teeth?” I asked as I squeezed her buttock.

“Oh, yes. I rather like that,” she said, wiggling her butt in my hand slightly.

“Charlie, completely clueless as to what is in front of you. Focus everything on the apple.”

After another squeeze of her butt and a quick tweak of her nipple, I went back to the camera and took the picture.

“That’s it,” I said, going back to them. “Let me help you dress.”

“I promised Ari he could help me,” Charlie said. “I’m hoping to work with him again sometime.”

“You can definitely help me,” Amelia said, taking my hand and pulling me just off the path where we weren’t observed. I brought her clothes with me. “You don’t need to hurry the process though. My nipples are tingling. Maybe you could ... um ... kiss them and make them better.”

I did. But with everyone else waiting for us, I wasn’t able to give them or any other part of her body the attention she deserved.

On Tuesday, we went to a small village northeast of Melbourne where Jane guided us through her process of photographing a model. This time she used our male model of the day. I think she felt secure in that there would be no getting the man naked in the village. She did set up a good image just at the door of a local inn where he looked rather sinister as he slouched there.

We each got a turn with the models. Ari and Dom both tried shots with the two models looking like a couple—one with them eating in the restaurant and one at a filling station with a car he borrowed from a customer. Clever.

I liked what I saw in Jane’s rather sinister pose of the guy and took both models to the railroad station. I positioned the woman on a bench looking more or less toward me up the tracks. The man, I placed in the shadows a few feet behind her. I set up the 4x5 on its tripod and composed the scene on the ground glass. Then I went to adjust their positions. This would be tricky. I was using fairly fast film in the camera and opened the lens to the full f/1.8 opening of my fastest lens. I focused carefully on the guy and took the first shot. I wasn’t sure what was going to work best, so when I flipped the film, I focused on the woman and shot a long exposure with a smaller aperture.

Setting and shooting the entire scene only took about fifteen minutes and I was done. I hadn’t even snapped a reference photo with my Nikon. Just two pictures on the Linhof.

We went back to the studio and once again spent the rest of the afternoon in the darkrooms.

“I’m feeling the pressure,” I said late that night as Dale cuddled me to her. “I haven’t given a recommendation of where to do my shoot. I appreciate that you offered your studio, but Sunday, I noticed that Jane was having a hard time getting angles that didn’t scream it was an artist’s studio instead of a photography studio. We should take your picture in your studio, not a random model.”

“So, what is Attic Allure?” Dale asked.

“Intimate glamour photos offset with incongruous props that allow me to expose an inner character of the model. Adrienne told me that in France it was called boudoir photography.”

“Boudoir? As in bedroom?”

“That’s where most people feel intimate. You’d be amazed at the number of models I see who want a picture in a bed or a bedroom setting. Keeping that interesting has been a challenge. I don’t have a dozen different bedrooms in my studio, so we use a single bed against a blank backdrop and decorate the bed in all kinds of different ways.”

“So, what you really need is a place with at least four different bedrooms, one for each photographer. And you need models who are at home in each of those bedrooms.”

“That would be perfect. Just ... uh ... four women who share a house and each have a unique bedroom. And all four willing to model nude in, on, and around her bed. I’m dreaming,” I laughed.

“Get dressed,” Dale said, hopping out of bed and grabbing for her clothes. I jumped up and started dressing.

“Are we going out?”

“Yes. I know just the place.”

“A hotel really won’t work. All the rooms look the same. We need to make each one unique,” I protested.

“Fear not.”

I followed her out the door to her car.

Wednesday, Dom led our exercise. His specialty was architectural background and he’d located a pretty remarkable building that was under construction. Our models were both men and wore hardhats. The building itself, the Plumbers and Gasfitters Employees Union Building, had interesting modernistic lines, and the guys had props they could use, like wrenches, a blowtorch, and some architectural plans. And hardhats. The one thing they had to wear was their hardhat.

We did have a good time climbing around the area we were allowed access to, positioning the models, and dealing with the heat. It was close to ninety degrees that day and that gave me an idea. When it was my turn to work with them, I got them out of their shirts and poured some water over their chests. I suppose oil would have had a more stable glistening to it, but the water really looked like they were working hard and sweating. I found heavy hammers and gave them each one to hoist. I liked it and the guys definitely didn’t mind the cooling water out there in the sun.

“Want to go someplace and pour water over me?” Jane whispered as we were leaving the building.

“Oh, Jane, you know, I couldn’t just pour water over you. I’d want to dab it on with a sponge and then make sure it was spread evenly over your naked body with my hands.”

“Christ, Nate! You haven’t told me yet what you did with Krista behind the privacy screen. Or, for that matter, with Amelia in the bushes while you were supposed to be getting her dressed,” Jane said.

“Well, sometimes women get very turned on by the idea of modeling nude. I hate to leave a woman hanging, you know?”

“I know you don’t fuck them. Just give them a little hand?”

“And sometimes a tongue,” I added. She actually moaned.

“As you know, Nate has a style he calls Attic Allure. I’m told his mistress calls it Boudoir Photography. But it’s difficult to put four different boudoirs—which, if you don’t know, means bedrooms—in the studio. So, today we are going to The Silken Flute on Grey Street in St. Kilda. You should take either a 35 or a medium format camera and your field camera. We will have exactly one hour in each room with that model. That includes setup and teardown. We’ll bring two fill lights with umbrellas, but plan on shooting mostly with available light. Pack your equipment and let’s get to the bus. Nate’s model goes on the clock in thirty minutes,” Josh said.

I could tell by the way Ari looked at me that he knew where we were going, even if he’d never been there himself. When Dale took me into the brothel on Tuesday night, it was the first time I’d ever been in one. It happened that she knew the manager and several of the working girls had modeled for her in her studio. She said they appreciated a little extra income that wasn’t dependent on them spreading their legs and were comfortable being naked.

The brothel was usually closed from nine until three because no one came around on a weekday between those hours that any of the girls would service.

“Midday punters are all bargain hunters. They figure they can get a girl for half price just because there are no other customers standing in line. Unless the date is arranged in advance, we just don’t even open up in the middle of the day,” Lauren, the redheaded manager, said.

“Can you get four girls who are willing to model for an hour? Sequential hours, not all at the same time.”

“You know most of the girls would do anything for you, Dale. We all miss you terribly. And this young man you brought with you. Does he need something special? He must be a relative if you can’t do him yourself.”

“He’s a photographer,” Dale explained. “Believe me, he doesn’t need to come to The Silken Flute to get laid.”

Lauren looked hard at me and then smiled.

“I trust you know how lucky you are,” she said. “Four rooms, an hour in each. Fifteen minutes between start times. A different girl for each room. And you say the institute will pay for it? I look forward to seeing you Thursday.”

“Nate,” Jane whispered to me. “Are we in an actual brothel?”

“Yes, my lady. Today it is merely four different bedrooms with four different models. We are not dealing with prostitutes, so please don’t treat them that way. They are models.”