Above:
Image by Jack Saul
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~Check out today's BIRTHDAYS HERE:~
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Sgt. Sullivan
Check out some of my favorite shots of Sergeant Sullivan on the NEXT PAGE HERE:
Max by Thomas Knights
Down on the Farm
'Ain't no closin' time, ain't no cover charge
Just country boys gettin' down on the farm'
I'm sure many of you recognize the tracker riding farm stud from his social media pages and previous appearance on the site. Check out more sexy seed sower and planter down on the farm, on the NEXT PAGE HERE:
Jack Saul: First Crack At It
'I've always taken images, and always been drawn to artistic visuals. For a couple of years when I was in University, I made a little extra cash doing family photos, pet pictures and about a dozen weddings. I don't really remember there being much art involved, what I remember, most was the timing.'
Usually, when I begin an artist or model profile, I begin with a quote. Something about the shoot that I hope will immedeately draw in the reader. The quote above however, isn't from photographer Jack Saul, nor from any of the models featured. The quote is my own, from my early days shooting. I wrote the story, mostly of my short time shooting pets and weddings, in a piece featuring the work of Bob Burkhart. (HERE:)
I really didn't have much experience shooting the human form except for brides and grooms, and as you can imagine, they were all dressed. My only experience shooting the nude male form was taking nude polaroid selfies with my then boyfriend in the mid nineties. This was just a few years before I got my first cell phone. Sadly, those shots are long gone, (I hope) as my ex packed them up and took them when we broke up. With polaroid shots, there were no negatives, nor did I have a scanner, (or even the knowledge) to digitalize them.
Those early days shooting friends, pets and weddings however, did begin love of visual arts, and inspire many of the questions I ask photographers and models. No matter what shoot I'm spotlighting, when featuring a new photographer, I usually always ask about their first shoots, especially shooting the male form. Back in about 2017 or 2018, I did a series of themed posts titled 'First Crack At It', featuring images from the first shoots many of my favorite photographers had with male models.
This series of shots, include images of various models shot at the beginning of photographer Jack Saul's shooting career. If you're a regular FH reader, you know Jack's work, as I often bug him about featuring images from one of his recent shoots. These images, go back to 2003 and 2004, when Jack was first looking for models to shood on his old SLR camera..
What I love so much theses images is how you can see how they were how these clothed shots, were a gateway to Jack's later work with fully nude male models. I can also clearly see, how they lay the foundations for so many elements Jack continues to weave into his work. They're a bit like a mission statement for Jack's vision, framing and chronicling of the male form.
Like so many photographers starting out, Jack began shooting his friends. Although he initially intended to shoot both men and women, given most of his friends were guys, it was mostly guys who agreed to pose. Most of these guys were friends Jack connected with while at University, the time his work really began to get more organised, and Jack began to see photography as a goal and career.
From Jack's experience, while at University, many of the guys he knew tended to have more exhibitionist personalities than the girls he was friends with. Like so many of us in school, we were also already constantly taking candid photos of ourselves and our friends, at parties, in the dorm, or pretty much anywhere groups of people were hanging out. It seemed pretty natural in this environment, to move to a more 'formal' type of shoot. Many of the guys wanted pictures to give their mom's at Christmas, fully dressed of course, or a shirtless shot to use in an on-line dating profile, or to gift a girl or boyfriend.
Jack remembers clearly that with these shoots, and the models featured, he didn't even think of asking any of the models to pose nude. Even if he'd wanted to, he dismissed the idea quickly, knowing that would take his 'sessions with friends' to a totally different place. Jack's first nude shoots didn't occur until almost 10 yeas later in 2012. Although I would have loved to have seen seen nudes of many of these models, but the time Jack was shooting nudes, most of these guys were in their thirties, and most he'd long lost touch with after they all graduated.
If you've checked out much of Jack's current work, you can see although he's grown artistically with time and experience, many of his early visual aesthetics have remained passionately in place. Jack often has a focus on extremities, arms, hands and feet, as well as Jack's natural inclination to shoot images that are age apropos. I don't mean age appropriate, but I mean images that meet the moment the model is in. So many photographers try to make younger models look older, and older models look younger.. Jack rarely uses make-up or digital editing to change the way the model looked when they walked in the door.
For Jack, meeting the moment also means shooting the man in front of him, not a vision of what the stereotypical male model is supposed to look like. Jack has always shot a diverse and eclectic group of men, and stives to capture the raw and bare essence of who they are. Jack tries not to give too much direction, instead, encouraging the model he's shooting to just be themselves and utilize the space as they would naturally. This process, often leads a connection between subject and artist, or subject and camera, creating an almost visual diary of who they are at that specific moment in time.
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