William Shatner

William Shatner sets his lens on "stunning" with Playmate Deanna Brooks.


Talk about boldly going where no man has gone before.

On Playboy.com's previous Celebrity Guest Photographer shoots, most sessions went down the same way: An anxious celeb walked into the studio, tentatively gripped the professional camera he was handed and then haltingly took nudes of a Playmate.

No such trepidation existed when the world's most beloved Starship Captain, William Shatner, swaggered into Playboy's hallowed Santa Monica studio. As soon as he walked in the door, Shatner knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it. Too bad we didn't. The well-equipped Playboy studio didn't have the exotic fisheye lens he needed, so a call was made to find one.

"I have been fascinated with photography most of my life," Shatner explained while waiting for his lens to arrive. "I came here with the intention of not just shooting a beautiful girl, but photographing those parts of her that say something to me—the texture of her skin, the curve of her body and the femininity that we men like to look at."

Once fully equipped, Shatner explained to his model, Miss May 1998 Deanna Brooks, what he was looking for, and that no wardrobe would be needed. He then proceeded to pose a nude Deanna on a mod white leather couch, draping her this way and that and then coming in to take extreme close-ups. Quiet, calm, determined and focused, Shatner kneeled before Deanna and orchestrated the studio crew to shift the dozen or so lights around the room to get the exact "bodyscape" he wanted.

"Keep this position," Shatner told Deanna, "and then I'll move in and around your body, as if you were a series of hills."

"It's like photographing the landscape of me," Deanna quipped with a wry smile.

Shatner snapped away for about 90 minutes before he felt as if he had captured his artistic vision. "I had never done nudes before, and it was a little intimidating," he said as the set was being torn down. "The first five minutes it's a naked girl, and after that it becomes an object to find those qualities that I was looking for—the golden hairs on her body, the curve of her breast or thigh....

"I am a Playboy fan, and coming here had a kind of forbidden feel to it, which I enjoyed. But I knew, having had some experience in nude scenes of my own in motion pictures, that it's workaday [for this staff]. At the same time, it was great fun to poke this lens along Deanna's beautiful body."

Video: Ken Coulman


Members, go there now »