Muscles et al

So, I have been reading about FAN's, and the consensus that I gathered is that male nudes are "all about the muscles". In fact, it seems that any discussion on males at all center around the muscles.

I don't like muscles. I don't like how they look, and I especially don't like them lit hard throwing all kinds of shadows. Now, that statement is weird, because I like hard shadows.

So I propose a discussion on muscles. I prefer smooth bodied, and most examples that I have seen do not.

Thoughts?

A little further explanation of what you mean by smooth- do you mean smooth as in devoid of body hair, or smooth as in totally devoid of muscle tone?

In general, I think aesthetics of these things are entirely subjective. Personally, I like models who have some musculature, because that's a distinctive characteristic of the male physique. I don't like bodybuilder type bodies, but I don't want my models to look soft and feminine either. You don't need hard, contrasty lighting to shoot male models - a lot of my more recent work has an at most 2:1 contrast ratio on the subject. It's all a matter of taste, and of personal vision - if you can come up with the concept of how you want it to look, and can execute it so other people can see what you intended, you've created a successful image.

I'm not a muscle person myself either. Recently have had a few offers of TFP from older male models who would be interesting to photograph but I'm not properly set up for it at this time unfortunately. I don't think that smooth bodied males are exactly effeminate looking and you can have a very lithe sort of muscle look rather than a bulky muscle look too.
Frankly, having looked through a few model sites, I think the smooth and sleek-bodied just stay out of it because they think everyone is looking for the hard 6-pack and pecs look. There's not a huge amount of choice for that kind of look from what I've hunted around for.
(Sorry for the late reply; wow, this group woke up suddenly!)