A Brief History of cherrypepper (one word, all lowercase)

cherrypepper is just one of the many projects by the carbon based mistake www.thecarbonbasedmistake.com.
a group consisting of only one person, me. marc calvary.

I started cherrypepper in 1998 out of frustration with playboy,
I had been subscribing to it since I was 18, but the only good thing in it for years had been the articles.

The woman looked fake and airbrushed, and rarely looked anything like the kind of girls I was drawn to. So I decide to start a magazine of my own. A smaller venture than playboy, obviously, but at least I was doing something about it.

The first issue was done with 35mm cameras and developed by myself in my closet turned darkroom, and it was such a headache to do that I decided never to do another issue. Models dropping out at the last moment, angry boyfriends threatening to sue, 10 hours per model spent in the darkroom trying to get the perfect contrast with the prints, only to have them lose all signs of the time I spent on them because when I printed the issue I had no idea what I was doing.

So then 2 years go by and all of the sudden there's a renewed intrest in cherrypepper.
Girls start calling on a weekly basis and I realized one day that I had enough potential models to do cherrypepper 2. So I bought a digital camera and tried again. I wanted to kill myself a little less this time. No angry boyfriends, only a few dropouts. But cherrypepper didn't get to be something I really enjoyed creating until the third issue, when everything seemed to come together. I understood what I wanted it to look like, how I wanted it to be designed, and the cherrypepper girls were really excited about it. I had more women buying the magazine than ever before and feminists were not only praising the magazine, but posing for it, which was an unexpected surprise. I wanted it to be about about the sexy innocence of the classic pin-up magazines and a heartfelt tribute to real women. a little erotic reality.

Each issue features 5 beautiful young women from Eugene Oregon.
All cherrypepper girls are age 18 or older and usually have never posed for the camera before.

A few past "cherrypepper girls" have done modeling before, and that's perfectly fine. But I am not necessarily looking for professional models. I feel cherrypepper needs to be about something different. I find that the real beauty is more often found in the real everyday girls. The waitresses, students, artists and friends that you see on the street, the ones that make you sigh. In short, the kind of girl who doesn't normally pose for a "girlie magazine".

A Few F.A.Q.

Q: Do you pay your models?
A: Yes, finally! I can't afford to, but I am doing it because I am tired of wanting to but not being able.
Payment is $50 and two copies of the magazine, plus I will put a small book together for each model consisting of every photograph in their photo session, mistakes and all. One of the reasons I do this is because I can't give the models digital copies of the photographs, since with digital photos, it's like giving the negitives away.

Q: Will I be on the Internet?
A: I put a few pictures on the website as samples, but never any nudes if you don't want me to.

Q: How does the process work?
A: We meet, we talk, if you and I get along we go through your closets and find something you'd like to wear and discuss locations you'd like to pose at. You can feel free to bring along a friend to the photoshoot and be as wild or as timid as you'd like. I want the end result to be something we are both proud of, so we will both decide on which pictures will be printed and which ones end up on the cutting room floor.

Q: Will my photos be sold to others?
A: Your photographs will only ever be sold when they are part of one of my projects.
I promise never to sell any photographs to be used by anyone else for two reasons:
.....1) I don't think it's fair to you.
.....2) I am very protective of my art and wouldn't want it being part of something that I didn't do.