To watch, and take pictures of, a couple's lovemaking session.




State your hypothesis in the form of a prediction that can be verified by the results of the experiment.

In the name of science, I've watched couples shag before, but it's always been in a group setting. I've long wondered what it would feel like to be alone with a twosome — to be the third wheel, the peeping Tom who got invited inside to take dirty pictures.


Please list all the materials required for this experiment (including, if applicable, how they were obtained).

Canon S30 digital camera
Bottle of merlot (one)




In this portion of your report, you must describe step-by-step what you did in your lab. It should be specific enough that someone who has not seen the lab can follow the directions and recreate the same lab.

Self-proclaimed "digital pimp" Brian Battjer recently brought a Nerve personal ad to my attention. It was posted by a woman in her early twenties. She was looking for a photographer to take pictures of her having sex, then possibly join in. I composed a reply, playing up my scant photography experience. (In truth, what I know about picture-taking could be written on the back of a postage stamp.) After a few days, I got a reply from a couple named David and Anita. It was on. Saturday, noon, their apartment.

As I waited for the doorman to buzz me into David and Anita's respectable uptown building, I decided that noon was a funny time to watch two yuppies banging away at each other. They must have fit me in between strolling hand-in-hand through Pier 1 and finishing the Times crossword in the comfy chairs at Starbucks. David greeted me at the door. Apparently they had timed my arrival to coincide with the peak of the afternoon sun, which was streaming into their charmingly cluttered apartment. "Great light," I said, in an attempt to convince both of us that I knew what I was doing with a camera.

David was a good-looking fellow, six feet tall with an athletic build and shaved noggin. He shook my hand and introduced me to Anita, who was sitting on the edge of their bed looking slightly anxious. She was lean, pretty and on her second glass of red wine. They told me they had never done anything like this before. To break the ice, we swapped all the necessary demographic information about ourselves and then some. Anita was a recent graduate of a private university. David was older and an entrepreneur. They'd been dating for a few years, and Anita had recently moved into his pad. David even showed me photos of his numerous nephews and nieces, most of whom the couple had earmarked for athletic superstardom. As we chatted, I was immediately struck by how intelligent and affectionate they were. If I hadn't been minutes away from taking hardcore snaps of them doing the nasty, I might have accused them of being a little too cute: they were finishing each other's sentences, holding hands, constantly seeking affirmation from each other ("We go to the gym quite a lot, don't we, David?"). They lamented that a recent bout of the flu — which they suffered together, of course — had prevented them from picking up a dumbbell in more than a week. They confessed that they'd almost canceled on me because of their decrease in muscle tone.

David and Anita's apartment was chock-full of laptops, computer casing, mixing boards and all sorts of futuristic doodads, including a combination Palm Pilot/camera/iPod/video monitor. David started asking me questions about the dpi of the camera I was using. Because I had snagged it from the office and had no clue, I gamely changed the subject. They offered me two other cameras. The sun was now perfectly aligned with the window and lit up the room beautifully. We gave each other the look: It was showtime.