UNDERWEAR GUY REVIEW: FIRST EXPOSURE

The style of the photography is generally casual moments with the models addressing the camera directly with either serious or smiling expressions. The quality of the photographs are very good to excellent as should be expected from this type of publication.

Lighting and composition are well thought-out and the images offer a variety of layouts, poses and aspect ratios.

For the underwear fan you'll find a good variety of styles featured on the models ranging from boxerbriefs to small sport briefs (the latter being more predominant). There are a few recongizeable desinger labels on the waistbands including Calvin Klein, Jockey and Abercrombie & Fitch. There is also a sprinkling of athletic gear and swimsuits although in some cases it's hard to tell if they are swimsuits or just underwear being worn in the water.

The printing quality of the book is very high with excellent color reproduction on the heavy-weight paperstock which has a semi-gloss finish. On close examination you won't see any noticeable printing artifacts or halftone pattern, the ink is high-density and very clean with crisp edges on all the high contrast areas of the photos.

As far as I could tell few of the models in this book are well-known so you get the benefit of more original faces featured in this book than you might expect in other compilations.

Like most photo books, the underwear and swimwear being featured on the models is not called out or annotated with any text so if you like an item that a model is wearing you’re out of luck. This means you'll have to identify the underwear by sight alone which can be very difficult if you might be interested in learning more about the garment or buying one for yourself.

Not *too* surprisng, there’s very little ethnic diversity in the roster of models as it’s still mostly shades of Caucasian to be found in the images here (tan Caucasian male…or pale white Caucasian male). A little more diversity in the subjects would have been appreciated to better reflect the full range of humanity in the world. This is a common weakness in these photo books and unfortunately permeates the genre so I wouldn't necessarily knock Sam Carson down for just playing along with the way most of the industry goes regardless of where I personally believe it should be.

There are more than a few different editions of this book floating around out there including 2 sizes of hardcover and a paperback edition as well. You might even be able to find a rare calendar version featuring the same images within the book. This review is for the larger hardcover book but even this original edition still feels small…it’s not such an issue that the book feels dramatically undersized but a slightly greater page dimension would have given the photography a little more room to breathe on the pages.

There’s no text to read in this book so it has to stand on the quality of the photography and the printing contained therein. I appreciated the inclusion of more models in underwear than is typical in a photography book (there’s still plenty of nudes to be found as well) and the photos were certainly of quality to merit the reasonable purchase price.

I would say if you’re looking for a book in this genre that also includes more guys in underwear than out, First Exposure is worth your time to check out this book. If you can track down a copy of the larger edition I highly recommend you go with that version since the extra print size will really help feature the photos over the smaller version.