Friday, January 25, 2008

Girls of Ryanair



Gadling | Ryanair Flight Attendants like you've never seen them before
Here's something to add to your Christmas wish list: The flight attendants of infamous low-cost European airline Ryanair have shed their usual blue uniforms in favour of something skimpier in a new promotional item for the airline -- they're posing in teeny tiny bikinis for a new calendar, which will be sold on Ryanair flights for £5.

...The proceeds from the sales of The Girls of Ryanair Calendar 2008 will be going to a good cause -- Angel Quest is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping special needs kids.
The official site says it's a sellout. A later Gadling entry reports that the Women's Institution of Spain calls the calendar "sexist". See also the Daily Mail and MSNBC.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Froncysyllte Welsh Male Voice Choir


Help the Aged | Hollywood-bound choir reveals all for Charity
The Froncysyllte Welsh Male Voice Choir has produced a calendar featuring artistic shots of themselves unclothed, to be sold in aid of Help the Aged.

The choir hit the headlines last year when their debut album, Voices of the Valley, became both the best-selling classical album of 2006 and the fastest-selling classical album ever.

The Fron Male Voice Choir Calendar is priced at £6.95 (RRP) and all proceeds will go to Help the Aged. We regret that copies of the calendar have now sold out.
More information, and a few more pictures, can be found in news reports from BBC, The Daily Mail and Monsters and Critics (Her Majesty reportedly tried to order one!), and too many more to count.

But I don't believe I've seen anyone contrive to protect their modesty behind a golf ball before. That, I must say, is new.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Cheeky Chappies Charity Calendar

Crawley Observer | Men strip naked for calender - picture
A SAUCY calendar has raised nearly £1,000 in just over a week for the hospital that's treated a terminally ill Furnace Green lad since birth.
Family and friends of Harry Shrubb put together the Cheeky Chappy's Charity Calendar to help other children with the same heart condition as the two-and-a-half year old.

And the calendar, which shows some of Crawley's finest male talent in their birthday suits, has already sold more than 400 copies since its launch on November 10.
See also the Evening Leader and the official site.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Ancaster Athletic Football Club

NORA Hardwick, a 102-year-old pensioner, poses topless and becomes one of the oldest women ever to appear in a nude calendar.

The former-councillor, from Lincolnshire, became Miss November to raise cash for her local football team, Ancaster Athletic.

Pub regular Nora - who covered her chest with a strategically-placed scarf - downed a small glass of whiskey before getting her kit off for the photograph.

She told us: "I'd never done anything like it before - and I doubt I will again.

"I just thought 'go for it' and I'm so glad I did!"

Story from the Sun Online, as found in the Courier Mail, Grantham Journal and The Footie (World Soccer News). And countless other places since she appeared with Jay Leno...

Monday, January 21, 2008

Scanning old charity calendars


Naked calendar
Originally uploaded by tobymerrittphotography
I get mail...



Over at the adult forum One Click Chicks (http:// www. oneclickchicks .com) there is a fair amount of interest in naked charity calendar pics....

Recently the question came up as to whether or not it is legal to scan old, out of date calendars, and whether anyone on the net is doing so. My reply was there was probably a limited number of these calendars sold in the first place, and also a limited market for such scans on the net. As for the legality - I don't know.

Can you shed any light on this? So many of these pics are unavailable, or only available in low resolution. Do you happen to know if old calendars can be scanned and if anyone is doing so?

Thanks again - I have linked to your website.



Hi. Great to hear from you.

I don't know of anyone scanning old charity calendars: I wish I did. I'd be delighted to see such a resource myself, for the same reason I started the site and blog. The images I use, I get from the same place I get most of my information: online newspaper stories.

If one simply has the desire to look at naked models, there is certainly no shortage of sources on the internet. These pictures are clearly different, special. What the models in these charity calendars have in common is an attitude that comes through in almost every photograph: Self-awareness, courage, commitment to their cause, self-depreciating humor, and a bit of a tweak to the nose to people too stuffy to appreciate the gesture.

It's what I find appealing about these images, regardless of where the models rate on any scale of conventional beauty. Whether hourglass or pear, young or old, man or woman, they're all unfailingly, irresistably charming.

Different groups produce calendars for different reasons, so I'd be reluctant to make any generalized guesses about what the response to a request for permission to scan would be.

Some, I'm sure--most, I tend to think--would be delighted for the attention, especially if the scans were distributed along with the appropriate information for donating to the cause the calendars were intended to benefit.

Some would flatly refuse. Some of the "models" were only reluctantly talked into participating, with assurances like "we're only printing a few hundred of them" and "only a few local people will see them" and "most of them will sit in a drawer unused". The idea of having these images available on the Web would scare the stuffing out of them.

And some continue to make calendars, and might insist on protecting their copyrights. Long Tom Grange, Vail Undraped, and Breast of Canada are among a dozen or so organizations who've marketed calendars in multiple years.

And just because the calendars are expired doesn't mean the group isn't still selling them. Salt Springs, near Seattle, continued to sell their calendar for several years until they finally sold out.

The copyright issues alone strike me as utterly nightmarish. Who owns the photo, the model, the photographer, or the publisher? Or some combination of the three? And just because it's last year's calendar doesn't mean it's public domain.

The internet being the kind of place it is, of course, if someone were to begin such an image collection, there is precious little anyone could do about it. Very few of these groups have the wherewithal to mount any kind of legal protest, even if they knew where to direct it. And if the collection isn't itself making money, I can't see that it would be doing anyone any harm.

But, as you say, the small numbers in which most of these calendars were printed would make finding and acquiring them very difficult. The main reason I started my site is that I couldn't afford to buy the calendars.

All of this is, of course, just my untrained non-legal opinion. I hope you find it useful.