A few months ago, Radar Magazine published Eric Spitznagel’s piece about the Barenaked Ladies rock cruise, which includes a voluntary group nude photo. The story starts like this: “Getting naked with hundreds of people you’ve never met might sound like a good idea. But it turns out to be kind of awkward and uncomfortable. Especially when it’s 10 a.m. and you’re stone-cold sober on the deck of a cruise ship somewhere in the Atlantic.”
As the band’s tour photographer, I’ve had the honor of shooting the infamous photos. I’ve previously posted them on my blog here and here (warning: not safe for work).
I had no idea that Radar had a writer on the ship last February, but was pleasantly surprised when the magazine contacted me to license photos for the story. They wanted to run the naked photo as the opener across two pages.
After talking with the band, we decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate to run it bigger than the size offered to the fans on the ship – about 7X9 inches (an 8X10 photo with a white border).
Radar ran the “before” photo as the opening spread and used the smaller naked photo inside.
Spitznagel recently republished his story, in a slightly different form, on his blog and you can read it here.
Unfortunately, Radar went out of business last week, citing current economic conditions. I’m sorry to see them go as it was a fun read. Maybe they would have lasted another issue or two if we had let them publish the naked photo much bigger.
By the way, the next BNL cruise leaves on February 1st out of Miami. I’m not sure if there are any cabins left, but you can go to the Ships and Dip site to find out. Maybe I’ll photograph you naked!
