Hegre Art review

When it comes to dream jobs, most guys would list “erotic photographer” above even “video game tester” and “pizza topping combination designer”. Petter Hegre, a Norwegian photographer who worked with the famed Richard Avedon in New York, started shooting nude women many, many years ago and launched his flagship website, Hegre Art, back in 2002. As one of the world’s leading erotic photographers, Hegre’s work has been seen by a huge number of men and women who appreciate the feminine form in all its natural splendor. With a highly praised website to his name - a website that features no less than 190 models in photoshoots and video scenes of a highly erotic nature - Petter Hegre’s reputation precedes him and with good reason. The monthly Hegre Art membership price tag sits at $29.95; the same price charged by hundreds of obviously inferior sites, so let’s take a good long look at Hegre Art and find out just how many virtual hi-fives we should be throwing Petter’s way.

Pros:
All Hegre Art content is exclusive and has been originally produced for this very site by Petter Hegre. There’s an impressively large archive already online and updates arrive very frequently - one new gallery every day, one new video each week.

Hegre’s photography is beautifully rendered in amazing high-quality images. Members are given five viewing resolutions - 1200, 2000, 3000, 4000, and 6000px - all of which can be viewed from your browser window or by way of a downloadable zip archive. These images, especially the larger versions, present such incredible detail you’ll feel like you’re examining the glorious models all up close and personal like.

Videos, too, reach fantastic resolutions in a number of formats. WMV, Quicktime MOV, DivX, MP4, and M4V options are provided to supply user of any media platform with a dedicated viewing format. The highest available video resolutions of 1280x720 and 1920x1080 High Definition renderings that look fantastic.

A thoroughly detailed, attractive site design is a hugely important element of any successful online venture and Hegre Art excels in this area. The site looks beautiful and most pages provide the necessary navigational components in a clear and concise manner. Sites this perfectly constructed are rare.

Cons:
Hegre Art’s focus has always been on the photo end of the pornographic spectrum and, as such, photo quality tends to be far more impressive than that of the videos. Unless 720p HD movies (the most common format) are made the base format from which higher resolutions and bitrates can be reached, the videos will continue to fall behind the photos in regard to pictorial quality.

The videos also tend to be a little disappointing. At an average of just seven minutes, they’re far shorter than what is offered on many other sites and the background music can be distracting and irritating. Longer videos with more realistic sound (the women speaking or even room atmosphere and camera shutter sounds) would definitely be welcome.

Scene and photoshoots tend to be fairly repetitive. Models start out wearing skimpy outfits - swimsuits, lingerie, light dresses and the like - and undress while contorting their bodies into a number of elegant positions. Props are often used but don’t lead to any hardcore action. If your pornographic diet consisted solely of Hegre Art content, I would think boredom might set in rather quickly.

The site could use some additional navigational tools and greater consistency between browsing methods. Photos are categorized by date of upload, videos only by their catalog number, making it a touch frustrating to roam through the two main archives looking for your desired item.

Conclusion:
Nobody can fault Petter Hegre’s artistic accomplishments. He has won multiple industry awards, worked with some of the greatest talents in the adult industry as well as in the “real world”, and he has been consistently delivering high quality erotic photography through the Internet for almost ten years. Unfortunately, Hegre’s website is not as impressive as it appears on first glance. There’s a lack of navigational fluidity than a large site such as Hegre Art absolutely requires and some disparities between photo and video content that shows Hegre must still consider himself primarily a photographer, not a videographer or filmmaker. While I would like to see a more even consideration of photo and video content, that’s merely personal preference. The navigational issues, however, are a matter of necessity. Those main gripes aside, Hegre Art succeeds in a way few other erotic photography sites have managed to and we can only expect Petter’s work and business to improve each month he still ranks among the top few pornographers in the world.