Chapter 11: Pictures of Love

Dale Watson carefully lined up the shot. Leaping from behind her camera, she ran across to the couple and made a slight adjustment to the bride's bouquet, then adjusted a light, and finally raced back to her camera. Perfect ... click!

Like Dale, the wedding party was nude: The bride wore a veil and carried a colourful bouquet of flowers. The groom wore a bow tie, as did the best man and the two ushers. The matron of honour and both bridesmaids wore lace gloves. That was it for the attire — not even footwear. The pictures were being taken on the grass in a rose garden by a babbling brook near the city's downtown — an oasis of nature in the heart of a modern business district. The rules of this park were simple: no shoes on the grass, bare feet only. The park workers found that people tended to walk more delicately on the lawn when their feet were unshod.

In the past two months she'd done at least half a dozen of these weddings: entire wedding party nude, often including the minister and both the bride's and the groom's parents. Reverend Cicily Kruickshank was the one minister in the entire city guaranteed to go for a nude wedding, although Dale had recently heard that one of the priests had just received special dispensation. She figured she'd be doing a Catholic ceremony before too much longer.

Returning to her photo studio after wishing the happy couple a wonderful honeymoon in a famous naturist Caribbean resort, Dale drove back to her office. The wedding party drove off to their reception. Dale wondered how the stuffy old hotel was handling it: the Grand Hotel was a throwback to the 1890's, a time of high tea and stiffly starched collars and bustles, of women covering every part of their bodies except their heads on even the hottest of days, of piano legs carefully covered lest they overexcite the menfolk. Even now, if you dropped by their restaurant or bar, you'd better be dressed. Their dress code had relaxed over the past six months (gentlemen could now remove their ties, as long as they still wore a dress shirt, preferably white), but not by that much. Of course if you rented the ballroom as the happy couple had, you were allowed certain exceptions to the rule.

Getting back into her studio, she pushed the undeveloped rolls of film at her assistant, Gwen.

"Your last appointment of the day is here," Gwen advised her. "They're waiting in the studio room."

"Thanks, Gwen." Going over to the darkroom refrigerator she popped another roll of high-speed film in her camera and headed for the studio room in the middle third of her shop.

"How are you two today? Ready for your session?" she greeted her last clients, two white-haired ladies in their 70's. Twin sisters, they were getting their first "birthday suit shots". Not naturists themselves but definitely curious about the lifestyle, they decided to start with a nice tame photo shoot. With a little fixing of hair and make-up, Dale posed them in a few different ways, emphasizing their similarity while at the same time trying to draw out their individual identities.

The session was soon over and they were invited to come back the next afternoon to review the proofs. They got dressed and left, chattering and giggling like a couple of naughty schoolgirls all the while.

As they left, two very naked children walked in: Dale's daughter Emma and niece Melanie. For Melanie's twelfth birthday, Dale had promised to do a nice portfolio of shots of her, and wanted to include at least one of both daughter and niece.

"Hi, girls," welcomed Gwen. "Still undressed, I see."

"Hi Gwen," responded Emma. "Still dressed, I see." Gwen had been shocked the first day that her employer had come to the studio in the nude almost two months ago; working in a studio where naked people flocked to get shots every day later inured her to the sight of so much flesh, but she herself still felt uncomfortable being seen the buff.

"I'm 45, I'm too old to be showing off my wrinkles and stretch marks," Gwen retorted.

"And what about the Olafson twins, the ones that just left?" Dale asked as she stepped from the darkroom. "They're 75."

"And more power to them. Maybe when everyone's streaking through the city, I'll join them, but until then I'll stick to jeans and a T-shirt."

"Well, girls, let's lock up the shop and get those glamour shots taken. Time's a wasting!" Dale hustled the girls and Gwen back to the studio room.

The two best shots of the session, Dale decided later as she reviewed the proofs, were one of Melanie resting her cheek calmly on her hand, eyes gazing into the camera, and a chest-and-head shot where Emma stood right behind Melanie, both at a 45% angle to the camera and looking up at a spot on the wall over the photographer's left shoulder. That last shot was one of Dale's most popular poses, with many people choosing that for sibling group shots.

Being the only one dressed in the room made Gwen uncomfortable enough, she knew from past experience, to be willing to strip — it was all ladies, after all, and they were invisible from the street, not that anybody would have cared. She spent the session wearing the same outfit as everyone else.