This is an interview with Jan Vels who does the web site www.nude-in-public.com It's the only porn related web site that I've ever enjoyed. It's a hell of a lot better than staged airbrushed photography. You don't get that sad aura of the strip club either. The site has a combination of great models, new ideas, and the best quality of photography in the genre.

1) What was the inspiration to start naked-in-public.com? Was it an internet project from the beginning? Did you have other pay to view web sites before this one?

Nude-In-Public (NIP) has been a coproject of two persons: the "Webmaster"
Tom Ray, and me, the "Photographer" Jan Vels.
Tom before already had an amateur website based on contributions. I had a
small model agency (also internet based) and made many erotic shootings.
Four years ago I started making shootings in NIP style. Originally they were
sold to other websites. I found out that these pictures had become very
popular.
Then Tom contacted me, he had found some of my images and suggested to start
a "website as it doesn't exist yet". Searching the web, we found many
websites featuring exhibitionism and public nudity, but usually by stealing
their pictures from others or taking them out of the newsgroups.
Furthermore, these were mostly "flashing" pictures, where the girls opened
quickly their coat or similar. We found no other website having pictures in
the extreme NIP style like mine, where the girls are completely nude in
public and usually for a long time.

Following Tom's suggestion, www.nude-in-public.com was born and went online
in October 1998. It immediately started as a paysite.

How long have you been doing it and is it a full time job?

Me, as photographer: I started photography a long time ago, but in NIP style
only four years now. Yes, it is a full time job for both of us. But you
should consider we have not only NIP, but also some other websites and new
projects.
BTW, inbetween we have a couple of other people working with or for us: Two
secondary webmasters, two more photographers, a videographer, an
organisation assistant and an image processing assistant.

2) Where are you located and how far do you travel to do photoshoots?

We are based in Cologne(Germany) and Vienna(Austria), but very frequently
travel to Prague(Czech Rep.) and Budapest(Hungary).
Most of the shoots do take place in or near these cities, but sometimes we
travel abroad, like e.g. the Netherlands, different places in Czech Rep. or
Hungary, holiday trips to non-european countries ...

Do you come to photograph girls in their hometowns or take them to pre-planned locations?

Both. Originally, most of the shoots were spontaneously, often near the
places where the girls live. Due to some more complicated wishes of our
subscribers, later on we did more pre-planned shoots. However, "pre-planned"
still means in most cases simply looking for the location in advance (and
best time to shoot there), or in case of indoor locations asking the owners
if they agree.
Only in rare cases we do a real "big planning" with television or media
support or similar.

Currently, still about 30% of our shoots are spontaneous, 70% pre-planned.

3) You rarely seem to have trouble with law enforcement duringyour public
shoots. I know that in the U.S.A. this would be a big problem.Has anybody
ever reported your activities to the police or do you ever get negative comments?

Sometimes we also have negative comments, though by far most are positive.
We've been reported to the police about three or four times.

4) How do you recruit girls for your web site? Are most of them alreadyemployed as models and strippers or do you find girls with a variety of different backgrounds?

We have a wide variety of backgrounds. Complete novices as well as
professional models or strippers. As you can see on our main site
(www.aphroditas.com), our girls can be booked also by other photographers
through us. For this reason, we have quite good contacts.
Typical methods how we find our girls:
- through advertising on newspapers
- asking them when we see them (bars, discos, shops, on the street)
- they came to us through friends or other models

This topic has lead already to some discussions on our message board. Wenoticed sometimes comments where the people suspected that we would only useprofessionals or strippers, so we countered these on theboards saying that most are not. But then it seemed like many had misunderstood our answers and
now thought we are only an "amateur site". Which is also not true ... We have opened up a new website, www.euronudes.com (a "normal" one). This site is organised by the girl's experience when she first met us. So, by looking there you will get a good overview about the percentage of novices, amateurs and professionals of our girls.

I noticed their bios are rarely filled out. Why is this?

Oops, our fault:

In former times, we didn't take the bios too seriously. And after making a
nude in public shooting the last thing you think about is asking the girl a
few biographical questions.

However, we changed last December our policy here. Now we have prepared a
form sheet containing these questions, and we let it be filled out together
with the model release etc.
As it now belongs to the core paperwork, the newer girls and shoots will
mostly have filled out their bios. Though, still, a few girls refuse to
write their personal things down.

5) I have a friend who has a naked video business called Neighbor Girls. He recruits girls by placing classifieds in the college newspaper. He only pays girls $100 to $200 a session. I thought that seemed like a pretty low amount, but his position is that most girls who pose naked do so for reasons other than money. Obviously they want compensation, but money is not as big a factor as whether or not they feel comfortable doing it. On the flip side, a girl who won¹t pose naked for $100 probably wouldn't do it for $1,000 either so the pay scale stays low. Do you agree with this or do certain girls demand more money?

I only can second your friend's position. Compensation is necessary, but the
vast majority of the girls posing nude do have a certain exhibitionist
attitude. Otherwise they probably would never have thought of doing so.
Especially the statement "a girl who won't pose naked for $100 probably
wouldn't do it for $1,000 either" is in most cases fully true.

However, pay scale is quite varying. For example, if a model will do erotic
shoots with publishing purpose, she will (and should) demand correct
compensation according to market standards.

6) It appears that in most of your photo shoots it is fairly obvious that the girl is naked for the purpose of being photographed. Do you think reactions in public would be different if a photographer was not present?

Interesting question. I can imagine at least one major difference: Often
people are somewhat scary if cameras are present. The presence of
photographers and videographers often leads to people hiding away :)
But another typical public reaction is: ignorance. They look away and try to
behave like this is normal or they have seen nothing. I think this reaction
would NOT change if a photographer is present.

Jan Vels
Aphroditas Productions Inc.
http://www.aphroditas.com
http://www.euronudes.com
http://www.nude-in-public.com
http://www.flash-in-public.com
jan.vels@aphroditas.com