FINDING AND PHOTOGRAPHING THE MALE NUDE, Part 4
A FIELD GUIDE
TEN WAYS TO FIND A MODEL, Continued
10 MODEL SAFARI (and the importance of striking while the iron is hot!)
I doubt I’m the inventor of the Model Safari— but I haven’t heard of anyone else doing it.
I was in the Dominican Republic in 2012 and along with a new friend and fellow adventurer, Julio, we’d gone to a little town in the north, Las Terrenas, to look for hot men to model for me. Julio was excited to help me hunt for models—like me, he had a thing for Latin men, and he loved the idea of looking for beautiful guys to pose nude. And he was fearless, able to talk to anyone, so I knew he’d be helpful. But I didn’t want to just hope that we would run into some hot guys interested in modeling—we needed a plan.
I had an idea.
The Dominican Republic version of a motorcycle taxi is called a motoconcho. The first morning after our arrival, Julio and I went out to the street across from our hotel and found a couple of motoconcho guys, and I told them my plan: cruise around Las Terrenas looking for hot guys, and we’d holler for them to stop when we saw something we liked.
They were fine with that—as long as they were getting paid, they didn’t much care what we wanted. So I jumped on the back of one motoconcho, Julio on the other, and soon we were bouncing along the bumpy streets of Las Terrenas, stalking the wild model!
Like being on safari. Only we didn’t need weapons or nets. After an hour or so of cruising around the town talking to likely-looking lads, we had 4 or 5 of them lined up to come to the hotel room at noon for an interview.
This system worked really well. In fact, in the small town where we were doing it, it worked a little too well. By the time we finished a quick lunch, guys started showing up. Not just the guys we’d talked to but other guys, too. Evidently word had spread that some “rich gringo” was in town looking for models.
I interviewed a bunch of them on the veranda of our hotel room, and the weeding-out process was made much easier when they found out how not rich I was and how little I could actually pay. That was perfect, because most of the guys who said no were the ones with too much attitude anyway.
STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT
After some more interviewing and a few more guys showing up, I ended up with four guys—that’s a lot!—who were all interested, liked the payment terms, and were available for a shoot that afternoon. It was now about 2:30pm. I said, great! Let’s get a van and head for the beach! Julio said, “Are you sure you want to try to do it now? Wouldn’t tomorrow be better?”
That’s when I explained to him a valuable thing I’ve learned from years of experience, which is this: just because he’s standing in front of you right now and is ready and eager to model doesn’t mean that he will be ready or eager tomorrow, or that once he leaves you will ever see him again, no matter what he says. A ready and willing model is a rare and ephemeral thing!
We had four models there, ready to go, with several remaining hours of daylight. There was no way I was going to let that opportunity slip away!
So that’s exactly what I did, and by nightfall we had completed a very successful shoot with all 4 guys at a secluded beach. (By the way, you can read all about the Model Safari and the resulting photo shoot in my 3-part article entitled “Model Hunt in the DR,” right here on this Substack.)
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