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On an 80-degree Saturday in early January, the photographer Jason Henry showed up at a home near Tampa, Fla., on an assignment for The Times’s Food section and found one of his subjects, Jayson McMullen, sitting on the porch playing guitar and singing his heart out.
Mr. McMullen was also completely naked.
“As soon as I saw that, I knew it was going to be a great shoot,” Mr. Henry, 35, said.
He had joined Priya Krishna, a regular contributor to the Food section, at Lake Como Family Nudist Resort, the oldest operating nudist resort in Florida, where food is integral to the experience.
Before going, the journalists talked and made decisions about their own comfort levels with nudity, ultimately deciding not to disrobe themselves. Mr. Henry, who had previously photographed a nudist resort, tried to put Ms. Krishna at ease.
“A lot of the phone call was him saying: ‘Don’t worry. It seems weird, but you get used to it after five seconds. It’s going to be fine,’” she said.
The residents of Lake Como were also initially apprehensive after feeling mocked by others who had covered them before, so the assignment posed a special challenge for a photographer: how to wholly capture and respectfully represent nudists, avoid making them feel objectified and adhere to The Times’s guidelines on bare bodies in its pages. (Editors try to present them tastefully and generally avoid full-frontal nudity.)
“I challenged him to photograph the subjects from various vantage points and angles, using countertops, tables and other objects to conceal some body parts,” said Amanda Boe, the photo editor who gave Mr. Henry the assignment.
The journalists spent about 10 hours at the resort overall, joining Mr. McMullen and his wife, Karyn, for part of that time as she prepared a meal before the couple attended a dinner party of their friends Jack Clark and Maryanne Rettig.
Mr. Henry asked permission before he photographed anyone, and he helped them be more relaxed by explaining who he was and what he was there to do. He chatted up his subjects and was happy to talk about his neon green hair, developing an easy rapport.
In shooting the party, Mr. Henry said he tried to anticipate moments that might happen and make an image that could convey a story. “I was looking for small moments of universality that we can all relate to, whether it be setting the table for dinner, embracing a loved one or the purity of going for a walk on a nice day,” he said.
He watched as scenes developed in front of him and waited for that decisive moment when a body was obscured just enough for him to take the photo with a small off-camera flash and his Pentax 645Z. The camera has a relatively slow frame rate that required him to take deliberate shots rather than bursts at a time in the hope of getting a usable frame.
“You kind of go numb when you’re photographing in a situation like that,” Mr. Henry said. “You react. You bob and weave. I would describe it as a dance.”
“I was definitely sweating, that’s for sure,” he added with a laugh.
In one instance, the group was in the flow of conversation when the photographer spotted their host, Mr. Clark, quietly setting the table for dinner and quickly bolted up to get the shot.
“I was in the frame so I had to duck out of the way,” Ms. Krishna said. “I just remember hearing the camera click and thinking, ‘That’s going to be a good photo.’”
By the end of the day, Mr. Henry shot 1,457 frames of his subjects.
“They went from being a little tentative but open to very open. A lot of that is a testament to Jason,” Ms. Krishna said. “It was like the camera wasn’t even there.”
“Once they crossed this threshold,” Mr. Henry said, “they’re able to be themselves at all times and not worry about what other people think of them.”
“It really changed their lives,” he added, “this idea of being free and nude.”
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