NSFW-S2-02: Pam Fields Photography

Transcription is provided by AI and CONTAINS ERRORS.  The audio should be considered the canonical record.

Matthew Holliday: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Not Safe for Work photography podcast, where we explore the art and business of erotic photography. Today, we're interviewing Pam Fields. Pam is an accomplished erotic art and boudoir photographer and educator and speaker based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pam has had her work on display at the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas, as well as selected to be in the largest erotic art show in the United States.

She's The dirty show in Detroit as the owner of Pam Fields photography. She creates sensual, sexy, and often erotic portraits of women, men, and couples while creating safe and judgment free environment for our clients to shed their inhibitions and their shame and often shed their clothes. How are you doing today, Pam?

I'm doing great. That is awesome. Pam was recommended to me by the Jimmy Changa. Who saw her speaking at Shutterfest and for the photographer education group, she leads on Facebook, which is part of what we're going to be discussing. If you are listening to this on your podcast app, we are recording video for this.

It was kind of an last minute ad hoc decision, which I am. [00:01:00] Deeply regretting as I stare at my overexposed exposure and here I call myself a photographer and this is the video that I'm providing. I will be ordering a ring light and we'll be turning off the wild overhead lights and we'll improve this.

All right. Pam, at the risk of being cliched, how did you get into photography? 

Pam Fields: Well, my journey as a photographer initially began And well, let me, let me say, I always had a point and shoot camera. So you know, even high school film point and shoot. So I, I throughout my life, you know, just documenting travel, documenting I had after I had children, you know, taking pictures of them.

One of the things that I would do every year with my daughter and then later my son as well is take pictures of them in Mississippi at my mom's house. And then when she was a teenager, we played around one year with taking, taking her pictures in more of a fashion and avant [00:02:00] garde out in the middle of, you know, kind of the juxtaposition of the old dilapidated building with the, with her in, in this fashion y outfit and, and her hair all done out wild.

And so I posted those pictures on, on Facebook and I homeschooled my kids from kindergarten through graduation. They went to real college. So whenever I put those pictures on Facebook though, my one of my homeschool moms said that she was a landscape photographer, but she gave me the name of, of a couple of photographers.

We lived in Indianapolis at the time. And. So my daughter started exploring modeling and getting into the studio space shooting with the first photographer that she shot with and I just fell in love with, with his work and he was a really good fashion photographer in Indianapolis named Steve Brokaw and he, and he was doing fashion portraits on seamless gray, and I just, you know, thunder gray, savage, thunder gray, and I loved it. [00:03:00] And then and he was an icon shooter. And so then I met another photographer in Indianapolis that worked with my daughter named Carrie Jean, and she did these very creative.

Conceptual portraits and so after those 2 photographers, my daughter kind of continued navigating some modeling and I ended up getting my 1st DSLR and went out and got some lights. And so that was my, that was my entry into it all. And I was, it was, in December of 2014, so it has not been too terribly long nine years and I started from people always told me that I had a good eye for composition and that I should get a real camera and then they started explaining because I could control my aperture and I said my apple, what is it?

I would glaze over like they were speaking a foreign language because they were to me. I didn't understand. They're like, Oh, they.

So I started [00:04:00] you know, hopping on the internet and just soaking up the information and then I had to learn, you know, lighting and editing and imposing and why my black Friday special laptop wouldn't open light room. So, so it was a lot of growth very fast. 

Matthew Holliday: You mentioned the you mentioned the Growing up with a point and shoot those, are the, you know uh, send it off like the, like the, the Kodak little ones in the email.

Yeah. I miss, I miss that feel. I missed the feel of discovery. Discovery. And 

Pam Fields: we were broke . We, we were so broke growing up that we would have we would have a, my mom had a basket and it just had all these different film. Canisters in in there, and sometimes we would just randomly pick 1 out and send it in and it could be pictures from, you know, 20, 20 years before with my mom and dad.

So it was. It was, that was always fun getting those mystery, [00:05:00] the mystery package in to see what the pictures were going to be. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah. It's, it definitely informs a lot of my shooting now the kind of that feel, whereas now, you know, people have thousands of photographs for everything, but I remember I have like Five photographs from my whole time in college, because they were expensive, like, I 

Pam Fields: know.

And I used to use some of the online developers way, way back. And I'm sure those pictures are still in there, but I like having them all in my, on my. Hard drives until one dies, but I have everything backed up multiple times. 

Matthew Holliday: I was just doing that today. I was moving some of the stuff that I'd finished editing, both onto my local backup and into my online backup.

Yeah. 

Pam Fields: I don't usually use online backup just because of the sensitivity of my work, but I have a NAS with like, I don't know, 68 terabytes. Something is crazy. Oh my [00:06:00] God. That's wild. It's a lot well, because with erotica and people don't really always know this, but with a lot of boudoir, depending on the, you know, the federal regulations, you have to keep your images for 7 years, all edited and unedited.

Even if you don't release the unedited, that's right. How come? Because thanks Tracy Lourdes, but it was it has to do with the age verification and now I rarely ever work with anybody even under 30, but I mean, I do, it's just that by most of my clients are 45 to. 65. But so there, I'd never have a question as to how old they are, but I follow the regulations, get their, a copy of their ID and just keep the records.

Interesting. 

Matthew Holliday: That is actually something that's probably fairly important. We have a lot of amateur and semi pro folks that listen to this. 

Pam Fields: Yes, [00:07:00] it is. It really is important. And thanks to a lawsuit with the, that the The free speech coalition got involved with there was a ruling handed down from the third, whatever court, something almost Supreme court, I don't really check it or something like that.

Yeah, it was, it, it, it basically. Change the regulations to say that the only way that they would check your records is with a warrant because used to, they just said you had to store your records, say where you're storing your records and have your records available if they wanted to come check at, you know, during business hours.

Yeah, 

Matthew Holliday: that's the part that I'm familiar with. Yeah, 

Pam Fields: but you don't have to do that anymore. I mean, you have stuff to keep your records, but they're not no one. They the, no, 1 is going to come knock on your door and check unless there is a warrant. And so the only reason there would be a warrant is if there was.

And the only probable cause is if [00:08:00] someone's under age for that regulation, 

Matthew Holliday: or someone wants to start stuff, but that's probably not that could happen for most of us. That's, 

Pam Fields: I don't know. There's some weird competitors out there. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah, that's fair. All right. So how did you get your start in boudoir then?

Pam Fields: Well, going from there. So I was, I really wanted to shoot and was shooting just like fashion portraits and and, you know, conceptual creative pieces and, and I've always been super creative. So I love that, you know, making costumes and making headpieces and putting flowers on people's face or, you know, whatever.

But, you know, during the early part of, of shooting, I was always just drawn to the human form. And I had this one model I was working with and he, his physique was just, he had a great physique. And so I, at the time I was married. And so I asked my husband, I'm like, Oh, can I shoot him with his shirt off?

And I said, had him ask his wife, can I, can [00:09:00] he, can he take a shirt off and get pictures? And it was the reason I wanted to do that. There had been a picture that I had just been looking at for a long time. It was a Peter Lindbergh picture. And I just was like, it was the first picture I ever looked at and said, I want to, how did he do this light?

This is beautiful. It's just a, a nice shadow and the light was washed over him. It was just so pretty. And so I ended up. Emulating that, that picture and now the editing, I should dig that out of my, my archives and re edited. But but I love, I did love the picture and I got, I got the lighting.

Great. But just that was the, that, that session was really the 1st time for me that I was like. I love this. This is, I want to take, I want to, I want to take pictures of more nude bodies or semi nude bodies. And so it just started from there. And I started dabbling in, in boudoir. And then because I was in [00:10:00] 2016 was the first time I attended Shutterfest as a photographer and.

I mean, I didn't even know I was working with studios lights at that time. And I didn't know I had a speed light that I took with me to shutter fast, but I didn't know how to make it connect to my camera off off camera. And so 1 of the instructors. Showed me how to do it. And then from there I started building my portfolio working with people that were, you know, models that they had at Shutterfest doing boudoir and, and doing some of the boudoir classes there as well.

We'll talk a little bit more about Shutterfest in a bit. So just some more kind of, I'm trying to get into some more. Like I said the main audience for the podcast is, I need to scoot up a little closer to the microphone, main audience for the podcast is mostly photographers. So I have a couple of questions about what you like that occurred to me while I was looking over your, your, your portfolio.

Matthew Holliday: Do you prefer working with flash continuous or natural lighting? [00:11:00] 

Pam Fields: I am very much a flash. I like to control my, my light, but there are times where natural light is, is, you know, needed. And and then I have continuous lights. I. Got to play around with and don't love them, but, but, but it's, they're great to use when I have workshops and things like that.

So we're not passing a trigger around. So that's usually what I've used those before. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah. I've ordered continuous lights twice and I've been disappointed both times I was 

Pam Fields: disappointed, but I think some of it's just, I probably should have practiced longer before I went back to just to my struts. But I love my strobe now, because the modeling light on it is really powerful.

So it's I use the Godox 8400 and that modeling light is great. 

Matthew Holliday: I've been using most of mine have been speed lights and they almost never have, you know, modeling lights. I recently upgraded to the [00:12:00] 8, 200, which I don't think has a modeling light and the 8, 400, which does have a modeling light, but I haven't played with that much.

Pam Fields: 8,400, you have the 8,400. Yeah. Yeah. It, that's the one I use. And the modeling light's fantastic. Mm-Hmm. And I even got the the, a adapter , I, 

Matthew Holliday: I know you said it, but for some reason in my mind I heard that as 8,400, like the number, like eight 400. Oh 

Pam Fields: no ad, ad 400. That's my southern accent coming out. 

Matthew Holliday: No worries.

I 

Pam Fields: do, I do shoot, I do shoot with strobes. Usually I like to, to control the light and, you know, have place it where I want it. And so that's good. But I also, I do like getting outdoors and shooting with natural light too. I had one client that was like, well, are you going to, you know, are we only going to leave about six in the morning?

I was like, no, we're not. I charge way, way extra [00:13:00] for that if I had to get up that early. No, I'll pick you up at 10 and we'll go out to the lake bed. And they're like, oh, well then we'll be out there at noon. I'm like, yes, it'll be great. We'll get that nice hard light.

And those pictures were amazing. All right. Do which one of these, so is it, is it. More that flash works better with the drawer than the others. Or is it, do you prefer having the control or why do you specifically like flash? 

I, because I like the, that I could choose different modifiers and to, and you know, if I need a strip box, I've got a strip box.

If I need, you know, a big Octobox in, or, you know, the, the big I like the, this, the big. Paul buff. I'm a parabolic umbrella that I shoot with a good bit. And yeah, I, I like being able to control the light and move the light and not, I'm lazy, so I don't want to have to think too much if I have a, and it also affords me the, the opportunity to tell my clients.

Cause I, [00:14:00] I'm in Vegas and I. I I'll do a shoot starting at eight o'clock at night. If somebody, if somebody wants me to, so, you know, and if I were a natural light shooter, then I, you know, I'd have to really crank crank up my ISO to get to shoot in a hotel that time of night and which I could do it. 

Matthew Holliday: I need to I've been slacking on that myself.

Whenever I have to travel for a shoot, I look at all the stuff that I want to pack up and take, and I'm like. I'm just going to shoot with natural light. 

Pam Fields: Yeah, I have a Samson, a big Samsonite suitcase and I just throw. All my gear in there. And then I've got a really peak design backpack and I stick my lenses and camera in there and a few other things.

And but that, that suitcase fills has every, I need to measure it because when I was at imaging, I saw a softbox that I want to get because I don't have an Octobox that I take on set and I use a [00:15:00] the the umbrella. So I really want to get an, an Octobox that will fit in that suitcase. So yeah, I have a strip box though, that I use a lot on set, shoot on location and by location, I shoot a lot of hotel rations.

Matthew Holliday: Yeah. What is the, is it glow that makes, yeah, yeah, I, I recently, so I got out of photography and I got back in, like I told you, like 19, 20 ish. And when I left photography, strip boxes and soft boxes were so expensive, 400, 500 bucks. Like only pros had them. But now with glow, like I've got like two strips, I've got a big old Okta box.

I've got all these things that I could never afford before. It's been really, really nice. 

Pam Fields: I really like glow. I like their you know, the ones that are like the umbrella style. And so I don't think I've got the, I'm sorry. Do it. No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, I was going to say what I use a lot, [00:16:00] a lot.

And I, I show this and I almost threw it away when I had a shoot in my, I flew to Miami for a photo shoot and I took it with me and I was like, Oh, I'm going to throw it away. But I didn't, but it's a, it's a Godox. strip box and I have beat it to hell and back. I mean, because it's the kind that have the rides and I hate that, but it was, it was the biggest one that, that would fit in my big suitcase.

And so the other ones I had here, my glow is too long. I have a glow strip box and it's way too long to spin. Fit in my suitcase. And I'm already like a freaking Sherpa walking into these hotels with my big bag, my backpack. And I, I do carry the umbrella, but I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to carry all that other shit.

So 

Matthew Holliday: I'm there. I'm there. I when I went to mega glam, I packed. I was like, how can I get through? How can I get through with just one trip? Just one trip. What is the least amount of stuff I get? It's awful. All right. Ah, we need to move on. Cause [00:17:00] I know we're going to be 

Pam Fields: like, Oh, our gear problems. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah. This is, this is just going to turn into a gear bitching podcast.

Right. All right. You say on your page, you do art, nude, erotic, and boudoir. Where specifically do you draw the line between the three? 

Pam Fields: So this is what I tell people when they, they, they ask the quick answer is boudoir underwear stays on. And that's, that's my easy. That's my easy answer, but really, you know, boudoir is.

Sexy and sensual and erotica is sexual. And so, and then art nudes to me are not sexual in nature, but they're completely naked. So, and that's the art nudes are about the shape of the body and the form. And getting some artistic expression with, you know, weird poses. And I always love working with models that already, you know, or clients that have great ideas about posing and, you know, just getting really [00:18:00] out of the box and doing weird shapes with their body.

Do you 

Matthew Holliday: frequently get clients that come in with kind of. Ideas for what 

Pam Fields: they want, you know, a lot of my clients don't really know what they want. But then after they look at my erotica portfolio, they, they come back and say, yeah, we want that. So it's kind of part of it, but some of them have storylines and, and ideas and concepts.

You know, I, I shoot erotica and I also shoot like kink and fetish, but I don't have a lot of, when I started. With erotica, I really thought that I would get like, oh, it's Vegas and I thought that I would have a lot of, you know, connection because I'm not in the community myself, like, in the community, but but I really thought that I would have people wanting, you know, more photo shoots, but most of my clients are.

I would categorize them as kink curious. And so I have some props and things [00:19:00] here that, you know, I can take on, on set with me for them to, to explore with. But I do have some clients that, you know, married couples that bring in their own little suitcase of their props and everything. So that's always fun.

Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. I have one couple that they actually travel with an extra carry on suitcase that has their like their special pillow in it and you know, all their, their toys. So 

Matthew Holliday: that is actually kind of surprising given that you're in Vegas. Do you get a lot of out of town folks that come in?

I 

Pam Fields: do. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of clients from all over the place. 

Matthew Holliday: Interesting. And I assume they come, we mentioned toys and their own kind of, but they come with their outfits and everything too, or do you supply outfits 

Pam Fields: for them? Yeah, well, I, I do, if they need them, I really, I don't advertise that I have a client closet because I don't have a full, you know, kind of like a traditional boudoir [00:20:00] client closet, but but I do have some pieces here that, you know, I can, that clients can use if they want to, but usually they've, they're.

They plan ahead, although I get last minute sessions as well. So I have people that, you know, they're coming to Vegas next week and they want a session. So it depends on how my bookings look. 

Matthew Holliday: I said, well, that explains the the hotel, but you said you're shot in hotels quite a bit. Yeah. Is that basically you coming to them?

Pam Fields: I do. And I, I have a residential studio and I'm trying to say, let's see what I think this last year. I can't remember the exact number, but I think it was somewhere around 30 percent of my clients were here in my studio space. 

Matthew Holliday: Do they, are they looking for the hotels, kind of like a part of the fantasy or is it just, well, they're staying 

Pam Fields: there.

That's it's is that that's where they're staying. And [00:21:00] so they want to just document that. And plus people really like to, you know, get out on the balcony at cosmopolitan, get some naked pictures out there. I shoot, I shoot there. I hope they don't listen to this and then come hunt me down. 

Matthew Holliday: I don't think the people that work at the Cosmo are part of the, part of the listenership here, but who knows?

No. So I think, so I'm actually going to go off on a tangent here, cause I'm curious. I I'm traveling to Vegas myself in a couple months and I was looking at models. Model mayhems in the area. And I was just, and I was looking at all of them and they're all, they're just filled with pictures in the hotel.

And I get it. I get it. I get why you do it. It's convenient. You're there. You're, you're, you're paying the model. So you don't want to pay for a studio. I get it. I get it. I'm not going to, I'm not going to lay judgment on it. So how do you make. How do you try and make that better than the typical hotel shoot?

Like, 

Pam Fields: I take my, the, the best I can do is I take my colored sheets. I take, I don't like sheets, white sheets. So I take my own set of sheets [00:22:00] and and do the shoot there. And then just, I've, I'm really good at going into a scene and, and, you know, surveying and seeing where, you know, where the unique shots are.

And so it won't look, and I also tell people, you know, I've shot, I've shot everything from, you know, a motel six to the presidential suite at at four seasons. So, you know, I can a bed's a bed. I mean the 

Matthew Holliday: Motel 6 works if you're going for kind of sleazy low. That's 

Pam Fields: true. That's true. And, and some of them, some of this, like some of the work on my website is, is literally where I've taken a backdrop and like a canvas backdrop and popped it up in the corner of a hotel room and just, you know, it was right there and that's where we did the shoot.

And you would, you would know that it's not in a big studio. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about how much furniture you'd have to move around to get good sight lines and yeah. 

Pam Fields: And some of that [00:23:00] furniture is heavy. Oh my gosh. And some of it's oddly light, which is weird. 

Matthew Holliday: Interesting. I guess you could also potentially, if you're shooting during the day, shoot against the window and like blow out the window and just use it as just a giant, just white, like kind of like the camera here in my forehead.

Pam Fields: Right, right. One of the, a few of the hotels also have frosted, the frosted glass on the bathroom doors. And that's always fun to do a silhouette shot with, with with where I'm in, you know, in the bathroom and the, the light shooting through it and then shooting shooting my clients. So I've gotten a really good shots 

Matthew Holliday: like that.

Are there any of the hotels in Vegas that have had particularly memorable rooms that if someone was coming to visit you or maybe another photographer or they were, they were, they were a photographer coming in, they wanted to have the most interesting room. 

Pam Fields: I wouldn't say interesting necessarily that I've, I've shot at, shot at, but I do, I do love the, I love Palm's Place.

Just, it [00:24:00] has the nice soaking tub that's out in between like the living room area and the bedroom area for their one bedrooms. They're really nice. And it's, it's got a nice kitchen area there as well, and then Cosmo, I love Cosmo their wallpapers very distinctive. So any, the brownish wallpaper with the gold medallions on it and I'm always disappointed when I get.

Get to Cosmo and somebody's not in, they happen to have some rooms that don't have that wallpaper. And so I'm always bummed when I go in, I'm like, dang, the wallpapers not here. So I do tell my clients, especially with Cosmo that they want to play a fun game. They can go to Pornhub type in Vegas in the search bar, see if they can pick their hotel room out.

And I'll be, I'll be looking out the window and like, what? Okay. There's the link. I see it. So what hotel would that be? It's [00:25:00] trying to figure out if I'm like looking at the carpet. 

Matthew Holliday: I'm probably going to do this again this year. But like I said, I go to conferences in Vegas all the time. It's a little annoying how every conference picks Vegas and we never go anywhere else.

But when I was there two years ago, I met with three people and spoke with them. And yeah, one of them was telling me one of it was a model. I can't remember her name and now I feel bad, but she was telling me like she recognizes all the rooms in Vegas now. Oh, yeah. She's like, yep. They've been there.

I've been there. 

Pam Fields: I'm like, yeah, I've shot there. They are there. I think that well, and I think it's encore that I think that they did this on purpose in their, their suites. Like one whole entire wall is nothing but mirrors. So as, as a photographer with my lights, I'm in there trying to, that sounds awful.

Yeah. It's hot. Fun. 

Matthew Holliday: Oh, interesting. Yeah, the rooms at the palms place look really interesting. They're very simple and classy. And yeah, cause some of the other ones I was [00:26:00] looking at are just like, the carpets are terrible and the decorations are terrible. And it just looks like, 

Pam Fields: I hate all the pattern, super pattern carpets.

Matthew Holliday: uh, You make an interesting comment on your page about creating an environment that's nonjudgmental balanced and open minded for your clients to explore their sexuality. And that is mostly a quote. How do you do 

Pam Fields: that? Well, how I do that is. It's, it's very nuanced. I, I just, I've gone through a lot of, I had to do a lot of work with myself and understanding, you know, where my views came from and understanding that so much of what I believed and saw.

As right and dealing with my own sexual shame and, and my own, you know, trauma history and all of that which partly shaped my views and, you know, how I, how I, how I felt about myself. So I was able to take all of that and realize that so much of what I [00:27:00] viewed and believed was. From the external, so what society says I should think or what my family or church or whoever, you know, put on me.

So I had to work through all of that first and then, and then realize that, you know, I, that so many people have, have been programmed so much to to. You know, think that, oh, well, this part, this part of sex is, you know, bad or we shouldn't, you know, it's embarrassing. And I'm like, there's sex should not be embarrassing and it should be something that's that people are open and comfortable talking about.

And for some reason, in our society, people just generally people aren't aren't comfortable talking about it, but, but I do, I individualize my approach and I just set the tone from the 1st point of contact with people to let them know that, you know, I'm not going to judge them. And, I mean, I've worked with a lot of a lot of clients.

I had 1 client that came to [00:28:00] back to me, like, a year and a half after their shoot, because. They said I, it was the safest they had ever felt anywhere as an older client. Actually, it's my oldest client to date. And they were 72 and they said, you know, they've they'd gone as, as far as they could with a therapist and they'd never worked with anyone else that they didn't feel judged by.

So they just wanted to come and share rest of it, share their entire story with me. So we did, we sat down for a couple of hours and they just. Talked and shared their story and it was really, you know, and it's just a lot of, of me listening and just, you know, , it comes down to me just not judging.

Everybody has their own story and their own, you know, has, you know, process. So I try to create a balance and just let people know that, you know, I have an open mind and so they can be comfortable and safe. That's the one feedback I get from everybody's. Wow. I can't believe how comfortable I was. In, in front of doing this for me, because most of my [00:29:00] clients, this is a first experience for them.

Yeah. And so as far as, you know, nude, nude and erotica, especially couples. So cause I work a lot with couples. 

Matthew Holliday: Makes sense. Yeah. That is something that comes up pretty much over and over again on this podcast both from models perspectives and from photographers perspectives, kind of working through their own.

Yeah, we, we do as a society, we just seem to do a really terrible job of creating fully integrated people where they're able to combine both sides of their lives into one functional human. 

Pam Fields: Yeah, exactly. 

Matthew Holliday: Well, we'll get started on solving that. 

Pam Fields: Yes. I'm part of, I'm, I'm trying to be part of the solution that, you know, have boundaries and don't, and, and don't have shame over what your choices are, but make sure you understand why you you're choosing what you're choosing and that it's your choice and not a choice put on you by someone else that you are adopting as your, your views.[00:30:00] 

You got to know your, know what your belief system is. 

Matthew Holliday: I've heard a lot of that from models, especially from photographers that appear to be ashamed. Because they won't come out and say what they specifically want. They only kind of reveal it after the shoot's halfway done or towards the end, but they'll try and push the models boundaries.

Cause they'll, they'll bring in like an art nude model and they'll be like, well, why don't you do this? And she's like, no, that's not what we talked 

Pam Fields: about. Well, I have I have, like, I have couples that, you know, when we're 1st talking and it's I handle inquiries different than erotica inquiries. But, you know, 1, once someone.

I require clients to do a zoom meeting with me before I send them a link to my erotica gallery. So once they see my erotica gallery, then they're, and they're ready to book, you know, they had a couple of clients let me know like, Oh yeah, it was a really relief to, you know, to see your erotica gallery.

Cause we didn't want to say anything, but we're going [00:31:00] to bring our butt plugs and I'm like, go for it. So I'm like, you're married. And even if you weren't, Hey, you know. Bring your butt plugs. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah, I'm glad that they told you ahead of time and didn't 

Pam Fields: decide to spend it on you. I do have, I tell them they, and they know this, that, you know, I have a questionnaire that I, that is pretty extensive.

That where they can, it's all, all these different props and positions and body parts, everything's listed out for them to check mark. And I've had clients say, oh, we didn't even think about this. We're going to try this and this and this and that questionnaire also serves as my consent form because if they don't market, then in the heat of the moment during a shoot, if they decide they want to do something that's That's not on my, or that they didn't mark.

And if it's on there and they didn't market, then I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna agree to shoot it. So, cause I don't want somebody coming back later and say, Oh yeah, what, you [00:32:00] know, the next day, you know, Oh, why did I do that? You know, just the feeling of regret, you know, Oh, I shouldn't have done that. We were just caught up in the moment and, you know, so they have to think about it ahead of time.

Matthew Holliday: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's something that's come up more than once as well. Weirdly enough, also when I was in Vegas, people in Vegas are really big on the consent checklist. I've heard from it from a couple of the photographers and models, but not as many because so many people in Vegas kind of have one foot in both worlds, but the adult.

Pam Fields: Well, some of that, you know, for me, I mean, it just comes out of like, learning more and more about the kink community and, you know, having you know, consent there, obviously, and in, in the like swinger lifestyle, you know, having consent there is really important. And and in, in boudoir and, and erotica, consent's also very important.

That seems fair. All right. I think 

Matthew Holliday: we should move on

Pam Fields: to, you know, but on the, yeah. And I was going to say on the [00:33:00] nonjudgmental part too, is, is just letting clients know it's okay to talk openly about sex because that's, you know, part of the, part of the session that we're, we're going to be doing. And so just getting them to know that they can, that they're heard and respected and that, For, for a lot of my clients, they come in because it's also about having a lot of empathy, like the client I mentioned earlier.

You know, and it's hard to hard to describe because I really don't know exactly what I did to set him at ease for him to want to, you know, come back and share his entire story with me. And so and I have had clients, I had a client that during the middle of her shoot. She started sharing her, her story with me of how she, you know, ended up getting to that point in her life at 36.

And then she it was just so moving. It gives me goosebumps now just to think about it, but it was so moving. I just sat down, [00:34:00] stopped shooting for a good like hour that we just sat and talked. I mostly listened. It's hard for me to do, I like to talk to, but but just to, you know, it's, it's an honor to me to be able to sit down and hear people processing through their stories and how they, you know, how they came to want to do an erotica session with me.

All right. Vegas is a huge tourist city and I'm going to ask three selfish questions. I already asked one. So there's only two more and a ton of photographers come in for work or for fun. They're, you know, they're with their family. They're there with. They're for work. They're there for a week with their friends.

Matthew Holliday: So what are some good places around town to shoot for traveling 

Pam Fields: photographers? Well you know, obviously there's out at Red Rock is a great location to shoot now. Permits come into play, but I'm not going to lie. I've never seen a ranger out. On the hiking trail back up behind the rocks where you can't see the [00:35:00] trail and the trail can't see you.

So, so I have multiple times, you know, grab my stuff and hot damn. The last time I was out there. I don't, I don't know how it happened exactly. Either my car wasn't locked or it fell out of the back when I was putting all my gear in my suit, my backpack, but my purse got stolen. That was such a bummer.

But but yeah, you know, I put my stuff in there, hike in. Get up behind the rocks and everything till my client get naked and take some, some pictures out on the rocks. It's pretty awesome. And then the dry lake bed outside of town down by Jean is another good spot to go. And it's just like a, a blank canvas out there, big, open nothingness, and that's always fun.

And then in town, the arts district has lots of, lots of great murals and downtown has a lot of great murals around Las Vegas Boulevard and. I think it's Stuart and Ogden those streets down there [00:36:00] where they do life is beautiful down there. It's a lot of really cool wall art murals and graffiti and stuff.

Yeah. I've got some, all right. So I'm flagging those on my list. Like I said, this is a selfish question. Yeah. I've got a couple of places in the arts district flags, but I've never been there before. So that's, that's North of the strip, a couple of blocks off Las Vegas 

Boulevard, right? Yeah, it is main, main commerce, that area.

And if you're ever here on the first Friday of the month, they have a big art, you know, first Friday. So that's a really great, that's a fun time to go down there. All the, a lot of the shops are open and they have booths and everything out in the street and music and. Food trucks and food everywhere. It's good.

It's a lot of fun. A lot of, a lot of locals go there. 

Matthew Holliday: And you mentioned having a exhibit in the erotic heritage museum. So yeah, that's definitely something that I would encourage photographers to go to. I've been there twice so far and they have rotating exhibits. So you shouldn't. 

Pam Fields: [00:37:00] They do. Mine was up for six months and it just came down in January and I was kind of sad about it, but, but yeah, but then one of my images that wasn't in that show.

Was selected to be in the dirty show. So I was really excited about that as well. 

Matthew Holliday: What is the dirty show? I've never 

Pam Fields: heard of that before. The dirty show is in Detroit is it is the biggest erotic art show in the nation. It's been going on for 24 years. And it's just two weekends in February. And apparently they get submissions from all over the world and then they have, yeah.

And then I know I'm going to Detroit in February. Sounds fine. Doesn't it? It's so cold. But but yeah, it's so they have the art, the art gallery part of it on display, and then they have, you know, performances and everything that go on. So I'm excited about it. I've never been, so that'll 

Matthew Holliday: be fun. I didn't know this even existed.

Now I'm like. I mean, you know what? No, never before have I ever said, I want to go to Detroit, but I know.[00:38:00] 

Pam Fields: Well, and I, I, one of the things on my list of many things to do is I I'm, I'm going, I have a lot of this bookmarked, but I need to, I want to compile it all into a like a resource guide for photographers to know where, cause there's a lot of erotic art festivals and shows.

And then there's. There's some that are just like fat and kink there's fat con and there's, there's a lot of conferences and everything there. But, you know, like, for me, I have just kind of taken to saying I'm an erotic artist because a lot of my clients, that's what we're shooting. It's not a kink.

There's not a kink and fetish element to, to any of it. So it's yeah. More erotic art.

And my clients were super happy that, cause they were bummed that their picture didn't get to, to go in the gallery, but they were very thrilled that their, their pictures in the show in Detroit. So interesting. And those are clients, [00:39:00] not like not models they've signed releases. So whenever I was going to submit to the gallery, I, my release does say I can use their images for art, but.

I emailed everyone and said, you know, you can risk you can withdraw that part of the release or you can withdraw your release and zero. None of them said they wanted to withdraw. They were all super excited about the possibility. 1 of 1 of them. I'm not going to say where he's from, but 1 of 1 of them that did go in.

The art show was a, he's a 8th grade history teacher. So, yeah. 

Matthew Holliday: I was a, I was a high school teacher for a while and having, it does weird things to you having to separate. Cause I mean, so I've worked, I've worked in several places. I worked as a high school teacher for a couple of years. You have to keep your personal life very separate from your.

Oh, yeah. Professional life. I've also worked in restaurants, restaurants. People are very forward. It's almost the complete opposite. Like [00:40:00] they, they, they put their, they almost put their sexual self first in a restaurant. And then now I work in, you know, office buildings, commercial, commercial office buildings.

And those were more like the high school, like everybody's very de sexualized. Everyone, you know, HR watches over everybody. And they 

Pam Fields: do. And it's such a, I don't know how I feel about it all, but, but so I don't know. It's just very interesting. Yeah. Well, and I think too, like, with mentioning HR and desexualizing everything you know, I work with a lot of men in their fifties and and this is a topic we, we discuss and talk about, like, at their, their jobs and everything, you know, and men are, a lot of the men I work with in their fifties are, they're afraid to express their sexual side.

And, and, you know, because where are you, you know, eight hours out of the day, you're at work and flirty banter and all of that stuff. It's just, the workplace has changed so much. And some of it's for the good, but some of it, you know, I think people have gone a little too, a little too [00:41:00] far 

Matthew Holliday: on that's what we do, right?

We, we go too far. One way, we realized that we went too far and then we go too far back the other way. We're just constantly like, 

Pam Fields: well, and I was talking with some boudoir photographers today who had their, who had their prep guides taken off of Canva. So canvas starting to, they're probably using bots and whatever to do it, but they're scanning stuff and taking, 

Matthew Holliday: you know, cause I mentioned a naughty word or something.

Pam Fields: Oh, I know trying to get you know, images on Instagram or Facebook ads. And I had a. One of the images I took out at red rock, which was an art nude. You couldn't see anything. It was a guy laying on the rock. The shadow was beautiful across his body and I put it on my Google, my business listing and it got declined.

And I was like, damn, that is art. It's not sexual at all. It, I mean, it had no sexy vibe. It was, it was just an art nude, but I [00:42:00] was bummed. Yeah. 

Matthew Holliday: The picture that I put up for the Sean Stone interview, which just came out it, it was him, it was his butt. So there was nudity in it, but both Instagram and Twitter flagged it as sensitive.

And I put up more, I put up worse stuff than that with nude females and neither one of them flagged that one. It's so weird. Yeah. Weird. Weird, weird, weird. All right. Let's move on to photographer education. We've been talking for a bit. Yeah. Probably since that's supposedly the whole reason that we're here, 

Pam Fields: right?

It's a podcast. It's 

Matthew Holliday: a podcast about education. 

Pam Fields: Oh yeah. It's a podcast about education. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah. Photography education. I'm an educator. So the main reason Jimmy Facebook group you run, Erotica and Boudoir Photographers Education, I can see on Facebook, there's over 2000 members. What types of discussions go 

Pam Fields: on in there?

I am, we're at 2, 900 in our 2, 299. So almost 2020, whatever it is, what did I say? Almost 2, [00:43:00] 300 people. I need one more person to join. So but yeah, no, I heard it here with any one more. I know. Well, and it's in the groups less than a year old. I think I started it in maybe may of last year. Or March March or may it may have been, I think it was in March.

I was a keynote speaker at the boudoir summit and that's when I started it. And so it just started, it really just started taking off in the last. 5 or 6 months, but the we have all kinds of conversations in there. I post every day just to with to get engagement and to get people to talk and a lot of people sign up.

I think thinking that it's, you know, a plate like a model. T. F. P. You know, a place to, to find somebody to do shoots with and everything. So I, I, I'm pretty strict that we're, we're not a portfolio sharing group. So don't come in here and just say, here's my pictures. And so [00:44:00] but we, but I do let people post pictures in asking for critique.

And one, for instance, here's the big discussion that, that was had last, I think it was last week. Someone posted a picture as a boudoir picture of a woman laying on a bed and asked how to talk with her about her belly. And so that gave a quite a bit of discussion and led to a few additional posts for me, um, talking about our, our, our, our own biases and how we project that onto our, our, how it's possible to project it onto your clients without realizing that you're doing it.

And like one of the photographers commented that it was there is your place as a photographer to fix something that's. You know, that needs to be fixed in an image. And I'm like, well, who, who are you to judge that her belly needs to be fixed? Why are you, [00:45:00] and people were saying, you know, put a pillow over it or pull the sheet up.

And I'm like, wait a minute, let's just say, as you know, as someone who has a belly, I, you know, I don't, I, I don't think that that's the right message to be sending, but you know, I can't, I can't, that's my brand and that's how, you know, I, I. Work with my clients. Now I'll edit, I'll edit all these wrinkles out, but when it comes to somebody's belly, I'm not going to turn someone who's a size 20 into a size, you know, eight.

So 

Matthew Holliday: frankly, there's people who can be attractive at all kinds of sizes. I absolutely find it ridiculous. 

Pam Fields: Yeah. People can love their bodies at all sizes and ages. The age is another thing. I see people posting in different. Groups all the time. Like, oh, I have a client coming in, she's 55. How do I pose her?

And I'm like, what do you mean ? [00:46:00] How do you pose her? You pose her, how you pose her? She's 55. She's not dead. She's . Yeah, she's 55-year-old. So can still be sexy. I've got a year left. . So.

Matthew Holliday: All right. You've mentioned a couple of conferences, Shutterstock, boudoir, sun Shutter Fest. Yeah. Shutter Fest. Sorry. I've never been to any a photography conference. I've been to professional conferences, but what are photography conferences like? 

Pam Fields: Oh, well just to say now I'm, I'm, I'm biased because Shutterfest was the first conference I went to in 2016 and.

The tagline is shoot learn party. So, so, so I keep going back. So, for the party, you know, and in the shooting and the learning you know, shutter fest really is unique different from a lot of the other from the other conferences. They, they bring in models and so during the conference, you can rent a human and so you can get [00:47:00] your, you can get your model and you can go.

I mean, you don't there's no fee. Everything's included in the, in the price. And so. You go to the booth and you get, you get a model and you can go shoot all over Union Station and and then after hours, you can connect with the models, you know, after hours and set up shoots and everything. And so, and the classes range, usually a lot of the classes, because they're the hand, they have hands on classes.

Where you get an opportunity to actually shoot, they have demo classes and sometimes in a demo class, you can still get an opportunity to shoot and then there's lecture classes. And they, they range. I mean, it's. All kinds of, you know, photography from pet photography, real estate, weddings, senior portraits.

So it's every all, all the different genres and they, you know, people do classes on videography and, and then there's business classes as well there. So it's just a good a good variety. [00:48:00] Of classes to attend the big thing for me, though, was was just the networking, just making the connections. I have photographer friends all throughout the country, because the shutter fast, and it's like a big family reunion now, because we've been going so long and going back year after year and staying connected.

I'm in a group chat with 8 of them that would have been has been going on now for 3 years. And we talk about all kinds of stuff in there. Just chatting, keeping up with everybody. So it is the connections, the networking that that makes it really, really good. And then like I said, the portfolio building, but really for newer photographers for someone who's, who's just starting out and learning it can be really intimidating and overwhelming because I was there.

I was so scared to go because again, I didn't even know how to use my flash camera. I was still learning. Can't have it. Do camera settings. But you know, all the instructors, they are [00:49:00] so nice and and you know, want to, want to connect with you and want to, want to network with you. So it's, it's a, it's a good, it's a good environment.

Matthew Holliday: Yeah. I'm looking at St. Louis. So, Hey, that's in a place that's a little bit different. Yeah, it is. It's always in St. Louis and it's always at union station inside of union station. Absolutely beautiful. Ironically, I don't ever shoot out in Union Station, which they do in the past. They've allowed boudoir photography, like in, in different areas, but but I never did because it's not something I could replicate.

Pam Fields: But now this year, I may do it because I am getting more and more clients open to. Flying me to them or meeting me in a destination. So if someone sees the image in my portfolio, then what one of them I did was on a virgin cruise. And so I actually had a client asked me how my cruise was and to let them know when I get ready to book my next 1, because it would be time for it might be [00:50:00] time for their 2nd shoot.

So I'm like, yes, let's go on a cruise together. And I'll. Be your photographer. Yeah. That makes 

Matthew Holliday: sense. Yeah. You also offer mentoring. What does that 

Pam Fields: entail? Well, mentoring involves, you know, I, I work with photographers based on whatever their needs are. I'm, I'm really big and whether it's working with a photographer or clients on individualizing everything.

And so with mentoring, you know, I, I work with clients. I have kind of a whole list of things that I. And really good at, so I, I, you know, talk them through what it is they're wanting. Is it, is it, you know, to improve their photography and lighting and posing and technical skills, or is it, you know, how their client relations and how they're connecting with their clients and building rapport, or is it, you know, just.

All the other business staff and SEO and everything, because I, I've been solopreneur this, this whole time and don't outsource and I [00:51:00] am getting ready to hire my first assistant. So, not, not photo shooting assistant, but office assistant, photo shooting assistant. Every time I'm on a dating app, somebody finds out what I do there.

That's one of the first things they let me know is that if I ever need an assistant. I'm like, yeah, you and everybody else. Yeah. That's interesting. You mentioned the SEO and the business side. I've heard it frequently said, like I said, I'm, I'm an amateur myself. I'm not even, I'm not really trying to make money off my photography, but I've heard that the hard part is really the business side.

Matthew Holliday: It is not the photography part. Absolutely. And I do. If I, you know, I think if I had to do it all over again, when I got to this, the skill level with my photography, where, I mean, my editing has changed, I've improved here and there and different technology, you know, helped with this and that. And there's always something to learn on the photography side in my heart wants to just do nothing, but, [00:52:00] you know, study photography and learn and improve my photography, but.

Pam Fields: Because I'm supporting myself with my business. That part has to wait because my clients love the work. And so, so I, you know, I'm like, okay, good enough. I can sell this and, and make a living. And so my heart still wants to study it, but I, I, my focus is all on business right now, growing, growing the business and marketing, and I do my own SEO, which is.

Can get crazy. It's always changing. Yeah. That's something that I, I struggle with in terms of growing the podcast, cause I hate doing social media. Oh, me too. In fact, that's what my assistant's going to do is be posting on my Instagram. That's the, I just, the, you know, in chat, CPT, you can get captions.

You're like, write me a month's worth of captions and boom, in two seconds, they're there, they are. So, so that will be really easy for. For getting Instagram stuff going. [00:53:00] And then I can get my Instagram account shut down because of a booty picture or whatever, forgot to edit a nipple or something. Yeah.

Matthew Holliday: It's kind of ridiculous how much they can control. I mean, cause I it's gotten to the point now where that's where I meet most people for the podcast is all on Instagram and they could just decide to just shut me down and Twitter doesn't nearly the reach or the popularity. No, it doesn't. And you never know what the next.

Pam Fields: Thing to come along is, but Facebook and Instagram, I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon. Nope. And photographers will say, Oh, we'll go get on this platform, but it's nothing but photographers. And so I'm like, hmm, for you, that's, that's a problem. Yeah. Yeah, like, no, I don't, I don't need to be plus I, I stopped following a bunch of photographers just because when I scroll through my Instagram and it's a bunch of photographers, then I start getting, it starts impacting how I feel about my work.

Cause I'm like super, you know, [00:54:00] I'm one of those artists. I've. A lot of imposter syndrome and I look at somebody else's stuff and I'm like, Oh, I'm my stuff's chat. What am I going to do? I'm terrible. So if I don't look at other people, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. So I try not to compare my work.

So now I'm. I've opened Instagram and it's a bunch of kinky memes and, and some business stuff that I need to throw that in there. So, yeah, 

Matthew Holliday: no, it's, it's funny thinking about it. Cause you think about what, you know, Ansel Adams and like the original photographers had to do, they only had like 20 sheets and they had to make sure each one counted.

Like that's their whole day. They're going to take 20 pictures. And then when we were kids, you'd have a role, you'd have, you know, 12 or 24 shots on the roll. Yeah. And you'd have to pay, you know, 20 bucks to buy it and ship it off and get it. And you had to try and get those as good as possible. But now you can just dash off thousands and thousands.

I was talking with somebody like, I mean, if you shoot 600 pictures of a model and the lighting is even halfway, okay. You're like guaranteed to get like one or two really good ones. [00:55:00] Yeah. Like just, just because you'll just catch them randomly. 

Pam Fields: Yes. And since I've started shooting erotica, I stopped shooting.

I started shooting in continuous. So I'll shoot, you know, five frames, five to 10 frames, you know, 

Matthew Holliday: someone might blink like their body's perfect, but they blinked. 

Pam Fields: I don't, I don't do, I try not to do too many static poses cause I don't, I just, that doesn't resonate with, with me. And it, but if that's what my clients want, then we do, but but a lot of times I want it to have a much more of an organic feel.

And so I get them in movements. And so I walk them from, you know, here's point a, we're going to point B and whatever you want to do in between, just do it. And so that, and they're like, really? So you know, I work with them in that. And so sometimes the nuance is just in just a slight tilt of the head or, you know a hand here versus running down their neck.

So it [00:56:00] could be this piece is like perfect, but then it keeps going, you know just those little bitty differences from one frame to the next. Those drive me 

Matthew Holliday: nuts, like going back and forth and and, and Outlook or I'm not in late room. 

Pam Fields: Is it, is it? Well, the culling process takes me a while, but I, I do use aftershoot for culling and I love, I love the fact that it is AI culling.

And I let the AI call for me, but I go back and still look at every individual picture and I make adjustments. And I mean, it gets it right most of the time, but but I end up, you know, going in and as this is the freaky and cool thing about AI, it learns what I like. And so each time I call it's.

It's based on the, you know. Cumulatively everything, everything that I've, I've called it seeing [00:57:00] what the images that I'm telling it later. No, I didn't like this 1, but I like that 1 instead. But the cool thing about it, too, is that it groups your pictures together. So, if I have, if I did similar shots later in the shoot, when I'm looking at them in in after shoot, then they're all grouped together.

So I can, I could see all the similar shots. Right there, so it's pretty cool and they're getting ready to come out with with an updated version. That's going to have some amazing features to.

But I'm not just saying that they're awesome. I just want to give that disclaimer. They are one of my sponsors, but I'm not just saying they're awesome because they are, but, but they also have where you can upload your own images and it creates a editing profile for you. And 

Matthew Holliday: so I would love that. I would love that.

Cause I have, I have definitely a couple of styles that I really like, and I've got. Presets for those styles, but I still have to go in and like [00:58:00] tweak them and do, it'd be nice if I could have something that would automatically. 

Pam Fields: Yeah. And that's the cool thing about after shoot, because, you know, a preset just puts the exact same across the thing.

And so, so, you know, after shoot. Is going to base it on your style. So every image is going to have, you know, the exposure, everything's going to be tweaked to that particular image based on your style. 

Matthew Holliday: Anything, anything that means I have to edit less. 

Pam Fields: Yeah, I know. Right. And so, and they just got they're making it where you, because you used to, you wouldn't be able to have a survey view.

So you couldn't see the. You know, you couldn't pick between 2 images, but they, they just updated that and then they're having it where you can open the image from directly from after shoot into whatever other program, Lightroom or Photoshop and that you want to. So, I like that feature. I haven't used it yet.

I mean, they don't [00:59:00] have it. It's not pushed out yet, but it will be probably by the time this record this comes out. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah, it looks like it's priced for people to do it as a business 

Pam Fields: though, unfortunately. The cool thing about it is a lot of the other like AI editors out there too, they're priced at a per image price.

So, you know, you're like, Oh, do I want to run this through or not? Cause you know so I, I like that they have just a flat. A flat pricing, but yeah, it probably is gear. It is geared more towards professionals, but here's what I tell my tell hobbyist photographers that, you know, if, if they, if they are charging, because I don't have a problem with so much being a free photographer, but it's the, it's the 50 photographers that I'm like, or the 500 photographers.

I'm like, even if you're. You've got a job that you're making money from. You should still, you know, run your hobby as if you were a [01:00:00] business. So what would, you know, if you didn't have this other money, what would you be charging for a couple of different reasons. One, because they might see that, oh, I can do this for a living and work for myself and, you know.

Build my build a business out of it. And then to just kind of, you know, for the sake of the industry you know, having people not thinking that, you know, or thinking that, you know, oh, I should be able to have this great photo shoot for 50 bucks.

Yeah. All right. We are. I was there. Cause I was, I was a hobbyist for a number of years and did, you know, people sometimes will say stuff, the phrase, you know, Oh, you get what you pay for. Well, that's not really true. I know some incredibly talented photographers that are, you know, that don't charge anything for their work and their, their quality is, you know, high end, great photography.

Matthew Holliday: Yeah I can understand that. I can, I've definitely heard of, you [01:01:00] know, don't make the thing you love doing your work because you will grow to hate it. 

Pam Fields: I've heard that. I just made a big post about it. I disagree with it, but but I mean, I think it takes, I think it's just a case by case basis. Some people, it builds their passion and grow and then I had, and then I'm also like, and you'll find another passion that, you know, you enjoy like supporting yourself and making money and being able to it's everybody's passion.

Right. Be able to grow your dream instead of, you know, grow in your boss's dream or your company's dream. All 

Matthew Holliday: right. I think at this point we've been talking for over an hour. It's time to say this thing up. I think we started at about seven 15, I think we're like an hour and a half. 

Pam Fields: Yeah. Where are, where are you located?

I'm 

Matthew Holliday: on the East coast. Oh, East coast. Okay. It's not, it's not bad, but it's yeah. So my last, my last so selfish question, where's the best place to get tacos in Vegas? 

Pam Fields: I knew you were going to ask that. So I am a big fan of tacos El [01:02:00] Gordo and that's the one that's down the strip, like near the wind.

And there's. At night, there's always a huge ass line and but now they have one on the other end of the south end of the strip at Sunset and Las Vegas Boulevard and so it's, it's really big and good, but they have great street tacos. 

Matthew Holliday: All right. I already have that one flagged. I'm staying I'm staying across the street from it when I'm a little up the street, the, the, the Hilton grand vacations.

Oh yeah. Okay. So although I was looking at resorts world, I see, I see it's got terrible reviews or less good reviews. It has less good reviews. 

Pam Fields: I mean, I like going to, I like going to resorts world. They have a really cool store in there. I'm not affiliated with them, but I'll give them a little shout out called pepper.

They're a sexual wellness store. And I really appreciate that in such a, you know, high end resort that they, and they, it's a huge storefront and you go in and they have like a concierge level kind of where they show you sex toys in a [01:03:00] case and bring them out and talk to you about them and everything.

And it's really cool because it. I think it's just getting, you know, sex and sexual wellness more in the mainstream and more approachable as opposed to, because some of my clients, you know, they wouldn't be comfortable going into the lion's den or whatever other, you know, adult adult superstore and the, you know, they feel like, oh, you know, they haven't, they haven't worked through all that yet.

So, and then they don't want to get on Amazon and order something. Thanks. 

Matthew Holliday: So I've heard bad stories about Amazon, not a lot of the stuff that comes from Amazon. It's not body 

Pam Fields: safe. Yeah, no. Yeah. You should be careful with, with buying stuff off of Amazon. Even if you think it's like the, the name brand stuff, it might not be.

All 

Matthew Holliday: right. Ah, so we are, we are right here. And some of the feedback I got last year, I had somebody ask, suggest that I ask guests on the podcast to recommend either photographers or models that people should follow and or work [01:04:00] with. Who have you worked with that you would recommend and 

Pam Fields: why? As far as photographers go, I have a friend over on, I think she's on the East Coast named Jen Fox, and she's a photographer.

Her work's beautiful. She and I exchange messages and phone calls and have zooms from time to time. We like sharing stories. And ironically, we have some of the same inquiries. So some of the kind of comes with the, it comes with the territory is we get people inquiring about photo shoots that aren't really wanting a photo shoot.

So it's always nice to have a resource to call up and say, Hey, did you get inquiry about this and this and this, so kind of interesting. Did you, did 

Matthew Holliday: you dive into that a little more? It's not really a photo shoot. 

Pam Fields: Yeah. Yeah. Some people just, you know, get their jollies by calling off. Will you shoot this?

Will you shoot this? And wanting to tell the description of what they're wanting to shoot. And turns out they never really want to do a shoot. So I've, I've kind of changed my process as a good bit now. [01:05:00] Once I know they want an erotica shoot, I say, Hey, I'll shoot anything that doesn't land us in jail or the hospital.

That should answer a lot of your questions, . So if you wanna see my, my gallery, we should do a Zoom and, and then I send them an email because I'm, that it is just not I don't do a lot of nurturing with my, with my erotica inquiries until they actually book a session. And so then I still spend a great deal of time preparing and talking with them.

To let them know what, what excitement there is in store for them. 

Matthew Holliday: Gotcha. Any models you've worked with or maybe not because you tend to work with. 

Pam Fields: Well, actually, yeah, because of shutter fast, I do work with some models. One is a guy model and you can see his work on model society, which is a really great place to check out a lot of art, art nodes.

And so. But his name is Jacob Dillon and he's, he's a very talented model. He's not a full time model, but he, he's very talented. And and then Krista Harris is out of [01:06:00] Memphis and she's on model society too. And probably modeling him as well, but she she does an Instagram, but she does She does art nudes and I've been, I've been working with her every year since 2016.

We shoot together at least once a year. And so I, I love working with her. All right. Awesome. 

Matthew Holliday: Do you have any projects you'd like folks to be aware of? 

Pam Fields: Just the I would say that my education group is definitely a project. So I, I invest a lot of, a lot of time in there trying to. To help other photographers along you know, I've got some workshops I'm going to be doing workshops in the fall so people can connect with me on Facebook and and then I have the teaching I'm teaching the three classes at Shutterfest and then I'm, and that's the first week of April in St.

Louis, and then I'm teaching at the After Dark Artist Retreat. Which is put on I'm an ambassador for them, but there'll be 8 educators [01:07:00] there and 8 models and it's from the April 18th until the 21st. It's a great opportunity to to get content and build build a portfolio for photographers who don't have erotica portfolio after dark artists is specifically erotica kink and fetish.

A retreat and so, and then at those conferences and then in May in my group, I'll be making a big announcement for for something I'm cooking up that's going to launch. In, in late May. 

Matthew Holliday: All right. Are all your workshops in 

Pam Fields: Vegas? Right now they are. So in 2025, I'm going to plan a destination workshop.

So I haven't, I haven't. Worked through all of that yet, so, but yeah, I will be doing a destination one. All right. Well, probably in Miami 

Matthew Holliday: is what I'm actually going to Miami next week for work, but I don't have any time to go do anything. And my camera's broken. I have been trying to get Olympus to fix my camera for like, oh wow.

I guess it's OM systems now. [01:08:00] Mm-Hmm. I need to, actually, that reminds me, I need to check and see if it dropped it off in my spam. Yeah, the screen's freezing. That's very frustrating. Oh, that's not fun. Nope. Nope. And I'm sure it's going to cost a fortune to fix.

Pam Fields: Because the very first photographer that worked with my daughter was a Nikon shooter. That's because of, because of him, that's, I ended up going with Nikon and and have had, I'm on my fourth. Nikon body now, and this one will, this is good Nikon Z nine. So it's a keeper for sure. 

Matthew Holliday: Yeah, I'm trying, yeah, I'm debating.

I've been thinking about upgrading to full frame, but I'm like, eh, cause I shoot micro four thirds. Cause I prefer the smaller lens size. Yeah, this is, this is frustrating to me and I don't want to just replace it with another own systems camera after them ignoring me, but yeah. All right. So Pam, where can everyone find you 

Pam Fields: online?

Well, they can find me through my website. Pamfieldsphotography. com [01:09:00] and I will be doing another website before too much longer, probably by in, in this, by the summer. But pam fields photography.com is where I'm at now. I'm on Facebook. It's Pam K Fields, and then my Instagram and other platforms just at Pam Fields's photo.

Is the other handle that I can be found out. I have my one Tik Tok video up. So I despise social media. I'm like, Oh my God, I don't know how people keep up with it. Because it's a lot to do with all the different, all the content creation, but it's a lot. 

Matthew Holliday: Gotta make Zuck some money. That's 

Pam Fields: right and that's right

And then use the, the, all the repurposing, repurposing software to break things up and have reels for this and that, and put it out there everywhere. All right, 

Matthew Holliday: [01:10:00] well, and with that, we are done. You can find us at the and sfw photography podcast.com. On Twitter is at NSFW Photography, Instagram at the NSFW Photography Podcast, and we have a Mastodon instance.

At NSFW Photography Social that is dedicated to nude and adult photography with a very light hand on the moderation. Oh. And I guess this is gonna be on YouTube too, so guess I should say something about that. We'll see. And finally, subscribe on your favorite podcast app. I, I have to add something like, like, and subscribe.

Smash that like button. 

Pam Fields: Yeah, smash the like button. Right.