When I heard we were preparing to do a project with Courtney Trouble and NoFauxxx I jumped at the chance to participate. NoFauxxx has always held a special place in my heart as the ultimate in queer porn photography. Sure, you can find the NoFauxxx models in plenty of other films and photosets but only on Courtney Trouble's website do you find them in the most creative, expressive, and real scenes you will ever see them in. There is a great deal to see on NoFauxxx but I will focus on the videography and photography as they are things I am qualified to comment on.

The Videos:

I was very impressed by the style and quality of the videos on NoFauxxx when I first saw them some years ago. The camera operator or operators at NoFauxxx tend towards a realistic, Cinéma vérité style of filmmaking. Cinéma vérité is typically associated with documentary filmmaking and tends to use handheld cameras and creative editing techniques to provoke a scene into becoming more interesting than if the camera were a static object some distance away. NoFauxxx uses these techniques to great effect by making their videos engaging. By bringing the camera into the thick of the scene, NoFauxxx is able to challenge the comfort level of both the viewer and the actors. Because of the handheld nature of the videos, the sound is not the best. Any time you shoot video outside of a dedicated studio you run the risk of background noise, echoing, and a dozen other issues that negatively impact the sound. Luckily, that sort of noise tends to be background noise and is nicely covered by the excellent music tracks chosen for each video.

The Photography:

The photos are what really sell NoFauxxx. Each photo set features an individual or group in a scene, working around a theme, or just being themselves. This is something I love about NoFauxxx; with other sites you find photos sets broken up into things like "Blonde girl fucking guy in bed" or "Girl in police costume fucking guy in car". It's all very cut and dry, very vanilla. Not so with NoFauxxx. Themes in Courtney Trouble's photosets cover masturbation, group sex, bondage, voyeurism, and many other fetishes while featuring trans men and women, dykes, queers, androgynes, and plain ol' straights. While there are a relatively small number of photo sets to choose from, the incredible variety of subjects, topics, and stars make the choices more varied than what you would get from another site offering ten times as many photos. NoFauxxx is the perfect example of quality over quantity.

Let me illustrate the skill of Courtney Trouble as a photographer in the photoset Jiz Lee: Sunbathing. Overall, the set is stark and exposed. Jiz Lee stands in an iron bathtub in a department store window as the sunlight from outside streams into the room. Jiz Lee is completely exposed and visible to the unassuming public on the other side of the glass. The photos are all grainy black and white and feature heavily overexposed highlights that draw the viewer's attention away from the scene outside. In several of the first photos (IMG 8694) Jiz is backlit against the window hiding their details but clearly showing their attractive silhouette. These photos are well balanced and the lines formed by the lamp posts and framework of the window at the edges of the photo focus our attention on Jiz. In some photos, an off center, asymmetrical composition has a dynamic energy about it (IMG 8700). We see an energy and vibrancy in Jiz that would be absent if the photo were centered and symmetrical. The highlights are blown out in the window and blur the details of the onlooker who has just caught sight of Jiz. The set wraps up with Jiz turning to face the outside as the ambient light illuminates the long stripe tattoo running down their spine. I feel the set was simple and grungy, absent of nearly everything but Jiz and sunlight and it all came together beautifully.

Courtney Trouble is a skilled photographer and she clearly has some excellent equipment, but a good camera does not make a good picture. A good photographer makes a good picture. I know Courtney Trouble is a good photographer because years ago in 2003 I was wandering the net trying to find something, anything worth looking at when I stumbled across a banner featuring two half naked young dykes fucking in the woods with a strapon. I still remember the shock of interest and desire I felt when I saw that image for the first time. The banner was for the newly formed queer site NoFauxxx and after some poking around, I found the photoset that banner image was from. The set was called Tom and Huck Adventure. When examining the photos you can tell they were shot on a low quality digital camera from the amount of artifacting and poor detail levels in the midtones and highlights, but damn if I didn't fall in love with those photos. They tell the short story of an aggressive surprise tryst in the woods between two punkish dykes. While the physical quality of the photos is nothing special, the creative quality is excellent and is what turned me on to the site all those years ago. The facial expressions are honest and raw, the photographer gets in close enough to show the feelings and action without disrupting the scene and making it appear fake. Even back then with that little digicam Courtney Trouble was able to create expressive, beautiful photos that are no less powerful than her current work.

In Conclusion:

I feel that NoFauxxx is perhaps the finest resource for queer porn on the net. While the website itself may not be the most technically advanced, it delivers high quality, creatively made porn to the viewer at a reasonable price while supporting the sex positive lifestyle and has done so for ten years. I hope NoFauxxx has a long and successful life.