I decided to try and find out what the most popular shooting genre was for models by posting the question in the Model Mayhem model forum. The results were interesting to say the least. You can find the whole thread here.
Like I said in a previous post on model photography genres. It isn’t easy to classify.
Given what ended up in second and third place, I think it tells you something about Model Mayhem forums, which have an emphasis on Mayhem.
To quote my final post in the thread…..
Genre is a bitch to categorize apparently. There were 31 genres and I did condense a couple and I refused to count “something over the top” as a genre.
All of these had 1 vote, Vintage lingerie (which I’ll put in pinup), Creatives (huh?), Erotica, Shibari (which I’m moving into bondage after looking it up), latex (which I’ll give to fetish), Lifestyle, Porn smile, Extreme Alt Nude, Maternity, Theatrical, Hot Couples. Oh and high fashion nude.
With 2 votes, Alternative, Themed/Fantasy, Gore/Horror, Steampunk, Fitness (actually 1.5 because one person combined it with swimsuit), Editorial, Stock (what is stock?), underwater.
1st Place
Pinup 7
High Fashion 7
Goth 7
2nd Place
Art 6
Fetish 6
Commercial/Casual/lifestyle 6
Fine Art Nude 6
3rd Place
Bondage 5
Glamour 5
Avante Garde 4
Beauty 4
Swimsuit 3.5
So Pinup and High Fashion tied. But since this was such a fuzzy data set its hard to say. There were some genre’s in Maria’s list that would be pinup, she voted too much. And HF was voted for 3 times by the same person and I only counted it once.
Stock, could probably be C/C/L, but I didn’t count it that way.
Also if you put Themed/Fantasy/Horror/Gore/Steampunk together you’d get 6 votes, which would give it 2nd place.
I was betting on pinup at the start and while it wasn’t as prevalent as I expected, it did finish at the top.
All of this just goes to show there is no good way to classify genre.
Update: Late vote changed totals a little and pushed Goth into first place.
Interesting that pinup would be in the top, I would have guessed lifestyle/commercial based on the amount of MM profiles I’ve read lately. Do you think pinup is classified as retro pinup (Betty Page stuff?) or more alt like Suicide Girls stuff?
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It seems to me that every model around wants to shoot pinup. Sometimes they know what that means, sometimes not.
lifestyle/casual/fashion are what a lot of them say they want to shoot because they think those things are safe and that they will get paid for them. Pinup is what they wan to do because it is fun.
I think the majority want to do retro pinup. Thought the SG contingent was in force in this voting, based on what came in 2nd and 3rd.