By Peter Berton

LOS ANGELES – Naked bodies have become commonplace — so much so that the mere sight of a nude woman offers no guarantee of arousal.

The artists at TorridArt.com have confronted that fact with a mix of uncommon camerawork and high screen resolution with the goal of re-infusing nudes with eroticism. The result is a classy solo-girl pay site that doesn’t suffer from lack of heat.

Photographer Ryder Aedan Perry co-owns Torrid Art. YNOT.com asked him to reveal his shooting secrets and discuss why he got into erotic photography in the first place.

YNOT: You made your bones as a photographer in mainstream commercial work. Why turn your lens on nude women?

Ryder Aedan Perry: About 10 years ago, I was doing freelance commercial photography jobs in Los Angeles. Just by chance, I found a gig taking still photos on a porn movie set. I had never considered doing anything like that before. Seeing [porn] live and talking with the performers and crew, I felt a real sense of rebellion against a prudish, judgmental society. It was a liberating experience.

When the DVD for the movie came out with my photos on the cover, I knew I wanted to do something with nudes. A few months later I had a business partner and we were discussing creating TorridArt.com.

What is the overall concept behind the site?

A big part of the idea is to show the models as real women, with all their natural beauty. I wanted to get away from superficiality — not just that of the adult industry, but in general. I wanted to get away from heavy makeup, airbrushing, fake boobs, tattoos and cheap, insincere emotions. It may be an unrealistic ideal, but I try.

Consequently, the website is not strictly a business venture. Though we have a business plan that we adhere to, I got to make a website I wanted to make.

What defines your work?

The style is sometimes referred to as “girl next door.” I think of it as glamour without the glamour.

We don’t do heavy makeup or “play” clothes like sexy nurse. We stay with everyday styles of hair, makeup, wardrobe and setting. Though the makeup tends to be on the light side, sometimes models prefer it heavier, and that’s okay.

I understand that these models are institutions and might want a consistent look. We want them to be comfortable in front of the camera, so they have the final say, which helps to add variety to the site.

Sometimes the “girl next door” wears jeans, T-shirt and sneakers, and sometimes she wears a little black dress and heavier makeup for a night at the club. At other times she might be getting back from yoga class or the gym. Overall, we try to keep it somewhat realistic while introducing variety.

Tell us about your presentation style.

An important aspect of the style is that the [site’s] galleries normally begin with the model fully-clothed. During undressing, we include lots of “pretty girl” pictures — pleasant poses of beautiful women with various levels of clothing. It’s not just some photos taken during undressing, though we get those. There are very erotic poses with some clothes, and those are what we’re after. Once the clothes have been completely removed, there are ample numbers of nude photos, including the mandatory spread legs and various favorite “positions.”

Another important aspect of our style is that we do very little retouching. By that I mean we do not apply wholesale smoothing to the skin — “blurring” in retouching terminology; also known as airbrushing. Even a little smoothing removes most of the skin texture, and skin texture is very erotic. We do spot-retouching only, to remove pimples, bruises and such, but we don’t smooth over the skin texture.

How do you choose sets and lighting to support the “girl next door” look?

The settings are mostly real homes in which people live. This fits with our idea of realism. I like to include some backgrounds that show large spaces in these homes. Space like that can be very sexy. Big backgrounds take longer to set up lights, so for efficiency we also get galleries with small backgrounds, like a couch against a wall. Also, mixing big and small backgrounds helps add variety.

The lighting on the site tends to look somewhat realistic and soft. For background lighting, I like the spaces in the home to look realistic and I try to keep the distractions down. For example, I don’t use colored lights in the background, and I tend to keep the contrast down so it’s not too distracting. When the pictorial aspect of the background gets to a certain level, or if the light looks too weird or unusual, it takes away from the subject.

For the light on the model, I want to show the three dimensions and skin texture. The overall lighting scheme for the model and background is in line with our “girl next door” theme.

You offer a range of resolutions, up to extremely high at 4,000 dpi. The resolution on the highest setting is breathtaking, both in scale and detail. What does it take to provide this, and why do you go to those lengths?

I’m glad you noticed. This is something we set out to achieve from the very beginning.

Most beginning photography books will tell you that it’s not the equipment but the photographer that makes a great photo. That’s true, but if you want those full-size photos to have as much detail as possible, the equipment becomes crucially important, as well as photographic technique, lighting and processing. Any compromise will reduce details in the finished product: the online jpeg.

For example, if any highlights get clipped on the model’s skin, even a little, the lost information causes colors and detail to wash out. This can happen in the camera or during processing.

There’s one item on that list that may surprise some people: lighting. Lighting of the model can be for large or small images. When an image is downsized, it loses detail, of course, and that includes contrast, especially micro-contrast.

If you look at the thumbnails on TorridArt.com, they don’t look as good as the full-size image in terms of overall contrast and aesthetics. If I was lighting for small images, I would light the model differently and the large images would suffer.

If the model’s skin is smoothed during post-production, none of this matters because so much detail is lost in smoothing. Smoothed images are very forgiving of equipment, technique, lighting and processing. Smoothing can be done with a plugin, so all the images of a gallery can be smoothed automatically. It’s a very forgiving, cost-effective way to do retouching, and that is why it’s so popular.

Another reason smoothing is widespread is that it makes small images — images that have little detail to begin with — look better on sites that sell memberships based on small images. But in my opinion, smoothing ruins a large image.

We preserve detail because skin is erotic. Eyes are erotic. Lips are erotic. Hair is erotic. Everything about these young, beautiful women is erotic. As I mentioned before, we do spot retouching for zits and pimples and such, but we leave the skin texture alone.

You call you site erotic but not pornographic. Why?

Before we started the site, we had a bunch of decisions to make. Would we be restricted to nudes, simple nudes or erotica? Would we have dildos, girl-girl or boy-girl hardcore?

We decided the niche we felt most comfortable with was high-quality photography of solo-model erotica. Within that niche, we devised our “girl next door” theme and our quality standards. The decisions we made were based on personal as well as business considerations, such as the competition at the time.

Where do you find your models and photographers?

I’m the only photographer. I’ve taken all the photos on the site. We are based in Los Angeles and get most of the models from modeling agencies that cater to the hardcore market. Early on we tried some other sources of models, but the quality was much too variable.

In general, the experience level of models in “glamour” posing has gone way down over the past few years. When we started in 2006, there was much more non-boy-girl work for the models, so a model could do solo glamour, with or without girl-girl and without doing any boy-girl. Those models got lots of work and could develop very good skills at glamour modeling. They have always been my first choice for quality and attitude. There were even agencies that catered to the non-boy-girl adult market like us.

Now there is much less solo-model work to go around, resulting in lower experience levels among the models and almost no models who do not do boy-girl. Tighter restrictions on models traveling from Eastern Europe has hurt us, too. There are still some wonderful models, of course, but overall there has been a decline in experience level.

Most of the models I hire today love the solo glamour work. They call it “a nice change of pace” and wish they could find more of it.

In a triple-X world, does an artistic nude site pay?

I think the answer is no, not currently, but that could change. A few years ago, when we started Torrid Art, there was more traffic for glamour and erotica sites, but over the past few years, the surfing behavior of potential customers has changed in response to changes in the industry.

We are not a porn site, but we are part of the greater adult industry. Our traffic is greatly affected by shifts in the wider industry, including the increase in the amount of free content. It used to be that a glamour or erotic site could get started with a relatively small investment. It could start small and grow using its own revenue. That is not possible in today’s business climate. Now large, long-established sites are closing.

What are your future plans?

We plan to continue to satisfy our market and keep photographing these incredible young women in our signature style. However, for various reasons — primarily financial — we’ve been discussing ways to deviate from our business model.

While we’re deviating, I decided now is a good time to include a few galleries that look a little different for us. I call them “experimental.” Not different in quality, but in things like wardrobe, lighting, background and posing. These galleries have been great fun for me and the models. I think they will add some new energy and variety to Torrid Art.

I really enjoy photographing these amazing women, so I hope our members keep supporting us for a long time. Maybe we’ll stick around long enough to see another shift in the industry, and with some luck it will be in our favor. I am also writing a book and starting some new art projects. Beyond that, I always have other projects and business ideas I’m working on.