Muse.org

The thing that strikes me about a site like Muse.org is the decidedly non-corporate and non-cookie-cutter feel. Everything from the welcome message to the blog to the care with which they hand-pick the photos and models tells me that this is someone’s labor of love and not just another site to push out on the assembly line.

Before I delve into this review, please undersand that this site is a softcore nude site that happens to treat the female body more as a piece of soft-focus art than an object to be viewed in the harshest, most revealing light possible. There is a time and a place for both, but what is the difference between the photos inside this site and so-called "porn"? In the words of photographer, Richard Murrian:

"Ask me for the difference between erotica and pornography and I’ll tell you that’s it: erotica is a tantalizing, uncertain proposition; porn just gives the game away."

This site is a labor of love that explores the inspiring connection between a photographer and a model…sans lewdness but with a certain thing, an "IT", a je ne sais quoi. As a photographer, Murrian says that a model's "IT" is indefinable, but I choose to call it the absence of lewdness and the possibility of lust.

This site has been open since August of 2006 and in the preview pages, they promise to update 15 times per month. However, it seems that the latest updates have gone lacking as the most recent is dated December 21, 2007. Nevertheless, there are 159 archived photo sets dating back from 2006.

Each photo set comes in three sizes — small (676x1010 pixels), medium (1014x1515 pixels), and large (1691x2526 pixels). You can move back and forth within the gallery via navigation tools at the bottom of each pic and switch between sizes easily.

In addition to the photos, the member’s area includes some videos. The videos come in three formats — MPEG, DivX, and MPEG-4 for your ipod. There are currently 33 videos in the member’s area that can be streamed or downloaded to your hard drive. Each video runs approximately 3 minutes and give you a behind-the-scenes peek at the girl’s photo shoot.

If you fall in love with a favorite model, there is a model directory where you can find out more about her and sometimes even watch a video introduction. Most of the girls are from Eastern Europe, but their looks vary from very brunette to blonde and in between. For whatever reason, European girls are drawn to these nude art sites, or perhaps the photographers are drawn to them. Either way, I love it because every one is more gorgeous than the next.

On the preview pages, Muse.org claims to have coined the phrase “quality over quantity”. I think we all know that this is a bit of an overreaching statement because ‘quality over quantity’ is something that I’ve noted about most erotic art sites that I’ve reviewed. Instead of giving you 100 mediocre photos, the editors do a great job of choosing the best photos from the shoot, whether the number is 15 pics or 35 pics. Each set can be saved and downloaded to your hard drive as a .zip file. There is also a HQ 300 dpi print-ready photo (3543x5315 pixels) that comes with every update. You could actually take any one of these to a printer and decorate your home with Richard Murrian’s amazing nude art.

Two things separate one erotic art site from another — the girls and the photography. For those of us who don’t automatically recognize the name Richard Murrian, something about his work has to jump out at us. Some nude art photographers put out photos that are clear and very realistic while others use a lot of soft focus. What’s Murrian’s signature style? Shadows.

There is a good bit of photo manipulation on these pics to create the most artistic photos possible. Where some overly-eager Photoshoppers end up making the girls look like glow-skinned aliens, these photo editors use a light touch that in my opinion only makes the photos better. The editors often alter the background and contrast so that the girls still look natural and real, but there tends to be a lot of artistic shadowing applied to each photo so that it is not a starkly-lit, clinical examination of the body that we get, but a softer, more abstract view.

For you photo buffs out there, there is also a section of photo tutorials that gives you tips and tricks that the pros use to create some of the images inside this site and ways to make your photos even better. Right now there are eight tutorials that can be downloaded and saved to your hard drive as PDF files.