Do As I Do, Not As I Say

A work post. Terribly dry and boring, but then I am a terribly dry and boring person. Try to stay awake if you can please…

There’s been a heck of a lot of talk recently about governments and consumers getting into a mighty big mess because they’ve sold their countries’ souls to the Devil and borrowed to fuel a mighty spending binge. Our average entrepreneur Joe Shmoe has mortgaged his house up to the hilt in order to fund the photography business of his dreams, and now that the Great Recession is here, he’s hanging on by the skin of his teeth.

But wait just a dar-gone minute, Mr Shmoe before you throw in the towel, dissolve your company and hand your keys back to the bank. Soon, very soon, you will surely reap the rewards of your follies. That $40K studio refurbishment with fluffy blond assistant, hot-tub and 50 inch plasma screen that you borrowed and guaranteed against your home was actually a mighty fine idea. No matter that your company is on the brink, your fluffy blond assistant has deserted you because you haven’t paid her for two months and the water company has cut off the water supply to your hot tub. Hang in there Joe! You were right to splurge on credit cards so you could fund expansion of your fabulous photo business. Oh yes you were. Now please do take a moment out from hiding from the bailiffs and let me explain why.

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I love these back shots - this one's above my bed

Many moons ago when I was a very green junior accountant, one of the very first things we were taught was that debt is cheaper than equity. It’s amazing what rubbish they teach accountants nowadays isn’t it? Small wonder that the world is in such a mess. Anyhoo the truth is that debt finance is actually safer from a lender’s point of view. Debt is cheaper for two reasons. Firstly, because debtors have a prior claim if the company goes into liquidation, then that debt is actually safer and hence debt investors demand a lower rate of return than equity investors. For your company, this translates into an interest rate that is lower than the expected total shareholder return on equity.

Second, interest paid is tax deductible (unlike equity dividends) and a lower tax bill effectively creates cash for the company. Not only does interest have to be paid before dividends, but also arrangement costs are usually lower on debt finance than equity finance and once again, unlike equity arrangement costs, they are also tax deductible.

Are you lost? O.K. Well, let’s consider an example (Caution! Basic accounting theory may result in boredom-induced-coma – do not attempt without a glass of chardonnay – it all makes more sense after alcohol, I promise):

Consider if you run a small photography company and you need that $40,000 loan to bail you out, keep you fed and pay the rent for your shiny new studio. Now let’s assume in our wildest fantasies that your bank would actually agree to help you, then what are your options? Well, you can either take out a $40,000 bank loan at a 10% interest rate or you can sell a 25% stake in your business to your neighbour for $40,000. Then suppose your business earns $20,000 profits during the next year (pushing it, I know, for a photography company, but bear with me.) If you had taken out the bank loan, your interest expense (cost of debt financing) would be $4,000, leaving you with $16,000 in profit. Conversely, had you used equity financing, you would have zero debt (and thus no interest expense), but would keep only 75% of your profit (the other 25% being owned by your neighbour.) Thus, your personal profit would only be $15,000 (75% x $20,000). So from this example, you can see how it is less expensive for you, as the original shareholder of your company, to issue debt as opposed to equity.

Voila! Debt is cheaper than equity (mostly.)

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But what if you have been very wise, saved steadily all your life and you now have a spare wad of dosh and you don’t think it’s the wisest option to stuff it under the mattress? What do you do with your life savings in order to keep your nest-egg ultra-safe and support you in your old age?

Well, whatever you do, don’t give it to the banks 'cos they’re all going bust (plus they give a terrible ROI nowdays) and if you entrust it to your professional investors then (unless you use Stephen's) most of them will charge you stupid rates of commission and probably use it to buy into a “multi-level debt instrument” which is gobbledegook for them squandering your dosh on any high-risk endeavour they fancy, and BTW there’s no guarantee that you’ll get your money back (I used to audit some of these investment companies – believe me, many of them just wanna have fun gambling with other people’s money –it’s great work if you can get it. ) Of course you could give your money to a nice sensible pension scheme instead but that’s just another way of giving it to exactly the same reckless financial advisers to blow howsoever the mood takes them.

So what options do you have left? Well, you could always be saintly and pay off your debts, but then you would be a numpty because the way our governments are going to get out of this ghastly mess they’re in is to borrow and mortgage our countries to the hilt and then “print money to service the debt and use inflation to run it down.” So why not be like the government and spend, spend, spend? After all, what’s the worse that could happen? You go bankrupt. However in the UK the new bankruptcy rules mean that you get to keep “essential items” like that plasma t.v. and hot tub that you borrowed for so recklessly on your credit card last year, plus your debt will also written off after a year and you can then go carry on with life as normal.

Think I’m kidding? Sorry, but no. This is exactly what a friend of ours did. Boggling but true. He didn’t get to keep his fluffy blond assistant though – she still left him. Mind you I don’t think he cares that much – after all he can watch “Who wants to be a millionaire?” on a very cool 50 inch plasma from the comfort of his hot-tub.

It’s a strange world isn’t it?

Now…where’s the phone number of that hot-tub company again?

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All images are of Roswell Ivory

Down for Maintenance

Just a quickie to let you know the blog won't be updated for a few days. Not only do we have a day-job software release to contend with, but we also need to delete a shed-load of posts and links in order to comply with the new legislation.

Apologies to all our readers, and most importantly to those of our dear friends whose blogs we will no longer be permitted to link to. We'll still be reading you guys of course, just surreptitiously. (No I didn't really say that.)

Back soonish...

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A (rare) colour shot of Roswell Ivory

Masters of Kokoro

Before photography……there was budō.

Rich and I met 23 years ago in a dojo. We were inseparable from the very first minute I stuck my foot in his groin and flipped him over my head by his balls. I guess he liked my forthright personality and my…er…strong feet.

Anyhoo, we continued our studies of all things violent for many years thereafter, primarily judo and later moving onwards and upwards to karate and then aikido (think Steven Seagal in a very bad mood) and I only stopped ten years ago because I was expressly forbidden from contact sports after my head was carved up (my neurologist opinioned that break-falling on concrete wouldn’t be good for a woman with bits of her skull missing.) There’s not a day goes by that I don’t miss it.

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Clayre McKinnen

Martial arts are much more than fighting, hence the word budō which describes the Japanese philosophy and way of life. Aikido in particular encompasses not only physical but also spiritual and moral dimensions with a focus on self-improvement and personal enlightenment. It’s not all about beating the crap out of big scary guys, you know (although that certainly has its fun moments.)

In many ways Japanese martial arts are not so different from fine art nude photography. Many of the Japanese principles and philosophies overlap and permeate our own arty world. For example much of martial arts involves learning different poses. Putting ones body into a particular position or stance is thought to both discipline the mind and be a very good preparation of what is to follow. In many ways this is similar to fine art figure modeling where models often have to hold a pose for an extended length of time and remain absolutely still for as long as necessary. I don’t know about others, but when I pose I automatically fall into a state of calm mental focus, my mind is quiet, I am immersed in the moment and I am aware only of myself and the instructions of the photographer. It’s exactly the same as when I was in the dojo all those years ago.

Our training also explains why Rich is drawn to fine art nude photography, because that is the way he thinks. He has done martial arts all his life which means that his outlook on life is very calm and disciplined, and so his photography reflects the Japanese emphasis on form, on seeing the self from the outside. The studio in many ways is similar to the dojo, simple, unadorned, without distraction, so that the only focus is on the subject. The model poses are a form of kata, moving purposely, slowly, with focus and self-awareness, not unlike a kind of ritual. Pure precision, grace and mental readiness are emphasized. The whole message is not about the passions and emotions of an individual (portrait-style), it is on that single moment of mental quietness which is found within martial arts, not dissimilar to Zen Buddism which concentrates on the enlightened moment achieved when the intellect is emptied.

Now perhaps you see why Rich photographs the way he does? This is who he is and how he thinks. His creative vision will always strongly mirror his lifetime of being trained in the psychology of Kokoro-gamae. In Japanese "Kokoro" has a diffuse but beautiful meaning which can be translated as "heart," "spirit," "soul" or “mind.” In martial arts, Kokoro-gamae is therefore the posture of the heart and mind. It is “the intention and resolve produced by the heart, processed by the mind, and revealed in one's appearance, behavior, speech, and action.” It defines who we are.

IMO, kokoro is one of the most important principles in photography. The Masters of Photography might not have known what it was called, but they knew instinctively how to use it and how important it was.

To most of you reading this, photography is not about snapping pictures. It is our way of life. A truly successful photograph speaks not just from capturing a moment in time, but also from capturing the heart. Only if the photographer reflects what is within him, how he thinks, understands and feels, can the photograph be truly successful. As with kokoro, the heart and mind must be as one. When photography is truly at its best, it touches the soul, because it comes from the soul.

May we all be Masters of Kokoro one day.

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Roswell Ivory

A Penetrating Photographic Experience

Sorry I’ve been off blog. I’ve been busy with medical stuff and spent an afternoon at the hospital on Tuesday waiting for one of my head checkups. This involved an excruciatingly boring two and a half hour wait with a small four-year-old child in tow, during which I had nothing to read other than waiting-room garbage because I’d left Susan Sontag at home. So I was reduced to reading wedding brochures (harrowing) and catholic society newsletter catalogues (unbelievably harrowing) and teddy-bear stories (not as bad as catholic newsletters and twice as profound) and I was soooooo bored that I accidentally-on-purpose overdosed on at least 3 cappuccino’s and achieved that sort of giggly, strung-out, drunken high that results from milky-caffeine overdose. So I was feeling distinctly queasy and floaty by the time I was summoned to meet the neurosurgeon.

Well it turned out that I had a new neurosurgeon who perchance bore a startling resemblance to the luscious Matthew Mcconaughey. Now I was mightily pleased by this new and exciting medical development, as my previous surgeon (otherwise known as God) was distinctly old and droopy, although he was mind-bogglingly clever, but you can’t fancy a God for his brain alone, and heaven knows I deserved a bit of hot 'n' hunky medical eye-candy after everything I’d been through. So now I had the all-new-upgraded-younger-sooper-dooper-brain-surgeon. Good looks, charm and incredible intelligence. Yee-har! My ship had definitely come in.

“Good afternoon, Mrs B. How are you feeling?” he enquired in a deep, upper-class, plummy British accent.

I visibly melted. I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, and my knees turned to jelly. Actually that might have been due to excess caffeine, but I didn’t really care by that point because I was feeling exceedingly strange.

“Mmmm…I feel…really really good…”I purred, gazing into those beautiful, penetrating blue eyes. In fact I felt bloody awful, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

“Well that’s excellent news. I hear you had a rather rough time of it in London. I’m ever so sorry about that, but you look very well considering. I’m afraid I need to examine you, so please would you mind removing your top layer of clothing so I can check the back of your neck?”

“That’s no problem Doctor, although I usually charge £30 per hour for this you know.”

“What ?”

“Oh nothing, sorry, I’m a bit strung out this afternoon. It's been a long wait…”

He looked a bit boggled but proceeded to gently probe the back of my neck, looking for lumps no doubt. Now the back of my neck is one of my all-time-overly-sensitive erogenous zones, and having Dr Matt stroke the back of your neck is a treat that can only be imagined in the wildest dreams of middle-aged-old-ladies like myself who really don’t get out very much. I felt even more warm and twice as fuzzy. Parts of me really began to…er…glow…

“Hmm…I can definitely feel something,” he said.

“Me too. Me too…”

“What?”

“Oh nothing. Gosh, did I think out loud? Sorry…er…I do have a brain tumour, you know…”

“Hmm…Well…I…er…do apologise but I need to probe you a little deeper. It will involve a more penetrating examination, I’m afraid.”

“Woo hoo! It must be Christmas!” I thought.

“Pardon? Are you quite sure you’re feeling O.K. Mrs B? Now, hold still a moment whilst I stick this camera up your nose…hold steady...steady now…this will only hurt a bit.”

“Well Doctor I must admit no-one’s ever taken a photo of the inside of my nose before…you really are the most thorough....gahh! Argle! Zat-hurtssalot!”

He’d stuck a tiny camera and a light up my nose. My eyes were watering like mad and bulging out of their sockets. I opened my mouth and light came out. Now I knew what it felt like to be possessed. My passion drooped significantly. It’s difficult to have a warm fuzzy feeling in your nether regions with a long thick rubber tube shoved up your nose. Not the type of photographic experience that makes me juicy, if you know what I mean.

“Hmm…it’s a bit tight in here…can’t…quite…see…down your throat ...say ‘hey!’”

“Hay.”

“No, no, I want to go deeper. Much, much, deeper inside…Say it like you really mean it…'heeyyyy’…”

“Hayyyyyyouch!”

“All finished! You look fine to me. Well done! Off you go Mrs B. See you at Christmas!”

Eyes streaming, snot dripping from my nose and my ardent passion completely extinguished, I fled, vowing under my breath never to let a camera inside me again.

“Mama, why did that bad man put that big thing up your nose?” said my daughter, who had been watching intently and silently throughout. “I don’t like that man. I want my Dada. He doesn’t put big things in my Mama's nose. I love my Dada. He makes me feel better.”

“Me too, sweetie, me too.”

The Quest for Knowledge

Hello. My name is Lin, and I’m addicted to studying.

My behaviour is derived from the Master Workaholic, my father, who had two businesses and worked 24/7. He never learned to play. Work absorbed his every waking moment, and as I grew up, I learned the same thing from him. In my case “work” came in the form of study. I studied because I knew nothing else. I was a dedicated student from the age of about nine onwards, and by the age of thirteen I was doing four hours homework a night. I worked and obsessed through many qualifications, two degrees and beyond, and nowadays it's just become a habit, a hobby, a compulsion, who I am. It’s not money that’s the lure, it’s knowledge. I crave it to the exclusion of all else. And I mean ALL.

In our house, it’s well known that Mum doesn’t play computer or other games. Mum works during the day, and she studies for fun. And yes, learning is fun for me as well as an addiction. I’ve realised that I really do love what I do the vast majority of the time. I can't really explain how much of a rush it can all be, and yet how much it can drain and exhaust you as well.

And yet…there’s a nagging doubt that something isn’t quite right with this life-study-work ethic. My kids tell me to “get a life,” they think that learning is a form of work not play, that it’s weird that their mother gets “obsessions” with studying particular subjects, and that the quest to know everything about them absorbs every waking moment. My friends sigh and half-heartedly tell me to teach myself to play, and I’ll kill myself eventually if I keep up this pace forever. And I’d like to be able to take holidays too, and enjoy them (I endure vacations, I do try to enjoy them I promise, but I get so bloody bored lying by the pool, I usually want to shoot myself by the end of day two.)

Culturally, we Britons study all our childhoods, and work very long hours in our adult lives. It is both expected and encouraged to do so. Unfortunately, like alcoholism, workaholism is bad for you. Subjecting your body to that level of stress for many years will definitely have consequences for your body (yup!) It makes people neglect families, relationships and their health, and workaholics are usually in a state of denial about the impact of their behaviour (guilty on every count.)

So what do I do? I don’t want to end up like my father, who retired at 55, but was dead by 57 because his life was suddenly empty without work. I can see my brother (who at 60 is still working 80 hour weeks) going the same way. Even though I know it is bad for me and those around me, changing my behaviour (yes I’ve tried) makes me wholly miserable. I have become my father. I’ve spent a lifetime addicted to the drug “workahol” and I must change before the burning quest for acquiring knowledge eventually wrecks me.

The grand irony is of course, that the answer to life’s ultimate questions, “Is that all that I am? Is there nothing more?” almost certainly can’t be found through study, or books or rusty academia, but by learning to play and actually living life rather than observing it.

So if I know this already, then why the hell can’t I quit?



Roswell Ivory, from last year.

Statistically speaking, yesterday did not happen

Have you ever wondered how sometimes people have a run of 'bad luck' where statistically unlikely things happen in a weird chain of events?

Let's look at yesterday. We had to go to London to see Lin's specialist about her treatment. As there is no parking in central London we chose to take the train. We arrived at the local station, parked the car, paid the ticket and got on the train. We travelled down, saw a very unpleasant specialist in an awful hospital whose staff were not able to pronounce our names correctly. We travelled all the way back, and that's when statistically the day stopped happening.

What are the chances that the ticket machine would take our money and spit out an invalid ticket to only us? Even though we displayed the printed ticket we were given, we found a parking fine waiting glued to the window. OK, so that's pretty unlikely, but shit happens right?

So we travelled home.

We found that the day-job software ordering system had screwed up and sent out an invalid licence code to a customer causing an almighty mess. Well, in ten years that's never happened before, so we can rate that as being really unlikely.

Then I decided to clear some outstanding day-job support issues and logged into our main support site and my anti-virus immediately went nuts as a Trojan downloader tried to install itself on the server. The forum software we use had an unlisted flaw and some B******* had hacked the site and installed a Trojan downloader. So it took several hours to clean up the mess.

What a day! But it wasn't over. Later last night I found out that something else had happened, a family tragedy, that I can’t blog about but which was very shocking and very unlikely to happen.

So what are the chances of those things happening all on one day? Pretty slim I would say.

Now it makes you wonder about the way of the universe when things like this occur. Until recently I had quite a strong faith, but due to the amount of statistically unlikely events occurring with such awesome regularity, this caused me to question my faith. The philosophy I had been taught just didn't seem to fit the circumstances.
Often when bad things happen, religious people say things like "It’s a test of faith" or "It’s so that you can learn and grow" or "Only God knows he greater picture and it will all be clear in the end."

Empty platitudes.

Testing ones faith has a place when there is actually some form of point to it. It’s like holding a biscuit up for a dog. The dog will do all sorts of tricks in the belief that at the end of it, he will get the treat. The more the dog believes he will get the treat, the more he will play. But eventually, he will tire and stop. You have tested his faith to the point where he no longer sees any point to it and gives up.

If the purpose of the life-test is so that you can learn and grow, then why keep pounding away? There is no sense in trying to break someone just for the heck of it. Pile on the crap, see how much someone can take. Watch them fall, see who lasts the longest. It’s like a Japanese game show where they torture the contestants until only one is left.

“Only God knows the greater picture” relies on there actually being one. If there are enough random events that serve no real purpose other than to make your life harder, it becomes difficult to believe in any higher purpose. For example, what higher purpose is served by a parking fine after having followed the rules? It's a random unlikely event that has no consequences to the rest of the universe, other than depleting my wallet. Most of the trying events in our lives, that are not self inflicted, fall into the “random crap with no outside effect” scenario.

So after looking at my faith, I gave it up. I decided that it was just random crap and that there was no point in trying to fathom it out, it was random and just life. Better to get on with it and not try to ask why.

But then yesterday happened, highly unlikely events occurring, some which border on the miraculous (but not in a good way.) This caused me to question my lack of faith.


And then I had an epiphany. There must be a God after all.

So how come there is a God?

Well some of these things were just too statistically unlikely to occur all at once without some other influence. That influence could therefore be described as God. But he's not the God that we get taught about at Sunday school. You know "The God and the Devil, God is good, the Devil is bad".

What if there is no devil, there is only God? Maybe the devil is just an invention for control purposes, and God gets to blame him like a kid blames his invisible friend for the puddle on the floor? What if God meddles in our lives for no other purpose other than personal gratification? It's like a kid playing with ants, some live, some die, it’s nothing personal. Some go under the magnifying glass to be fried by the sun, some get away, but it’s not as if the kid hates the specific ant, it’s just an ant.

Now being a rational, scientific type of person I realise that there absolutely no evidence for God. But I can also see that statistically, yesterday could not have happened, and that just lately there have been way too many days that statistically should not have happened!

Go figure!



Roswell Ivory, facing a demon!

Here's to our amazing family, warts and all

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

Richard Bach - Illusions

Roswell Ivory, plus groovy fetish boots.
BTW, this is our 200th post :-)

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Naughty Noo-noo

O.K. I’ve really had it with talking about art and art photography.
No more angst. No more of the meaning of life and photography stuff.
In fact, I’m taking a break from photography-speak for a while.

Expect shallow, meaningless writing for the foreseeable future. (Doesn’t mean the photography will be shallow or meaningless though.)

If you want profound photographic writing, please go to Pretty Girl Shooter or Hotel Room Nudes, both of which knock my socks off (writing as well as photography) on a daily basis. Those guys are currently on major “creative burns”, and their writing is getting better and better. Honest, funny, sexy and introspective, I’d marry them both in a heartbeat, if I wasn’t happily married already, or in fact, if either of them liked the idea of marriage in the first place (which I’m fairly sure they don’t!) I’ve always felt men’s brains were incredibly sexy…intelligence is such an aphrodisiac.

As for me, I have decided to live a little instead. Enjoy myself, take a break, do some FUN stuff (for that read “drink too much chardonnay and shoot some dodgy porn” which I probably won’t show, but it’s great fun shooting it nevertheless!)

As for my writing, “Less bullshit, more meaningless drivel”, that’s my motto.

I’ll let Rich’s photography do the talking, which is what this blog is supposed to be all about anyway.




This is from last week’s shoot with the writer and model Roswell Ivory. This was (shock, horror) not a nude shoot. It was, however, immense fun, although the photographs are taking a long time to finish due to day-job and family constraints.

The official title for this photograph is “Incubus”, or just for Roswell, “Naughty Noo-noo”

Blurry is not artistic

(Caution! Offensive post alert!!! The following post is based on ignorant subjective opinion, and is not a criticism of anyone in particular. Overly sensitive American photographers should take this with a very large pinch of salt)


In the vast arena of nude photography, there are a heck of a lot of blurry photographs around nowadays.

From a purely personal point of view, I am a very big fan of sharpness. Rich is very used to me nagging him, “No that photograph is NOT finished – can’t you make it sharper?”

Some photographers like sharpness and some don’t. Chip Willis does some stunning images which are super sharp. I am guessing they go through a pretty heavy sharpening process before they are finished?

So why don’t I like the…um…softer edged images? Well, frankly I think they are sloppy, and unsuccessful art. (Tactful, Lin, real tactful!) However, I’m not a photographer. I’m an amateur observer. What do I know about what makes a good photograph and what doesn’t?

Well, hanging out with photographers does rub off on me a bit, so I’d like to think I’ve picked up a certain degree of understanding on the way. So please indulge me here, where I (rather uncertainly) try to understand how Grandma sucks eggs. And please do feel free to correct me when I get it wrong, and if (and when) you have a different opinion. This is most definitely a discussion, not just my subjective and ill-educated opinion!

As I understand it, there is a big difference between controlled depth of field and blurred. A very nice man told me once that (paraphrasing here) “A controlled depth of field involves using a wide aperture to selectively focus on a certain feature. In portraiture, this would typically be the eyes, where extreme depth of field will result in sharp eyes and a soft focus on all other features.”

IMO, Chip does this really well. Consider his shot of Brittany V which is a perfect example. The eyes are incredibly sharp, mesmerising even. The rest of the body is in soft focus. Rich tells me that this was taken using extremely narrow depth of field caused by having a very wide aperture of F1.4. The end result is just beautiful.

However, some photographers tend to stick Gaussian blur on a photograph to attempt to achieve controlled depth of field. The result usually looks yukky and fake, at least in the images I have been studying anyway.

Alternatively the braver photographer might have a stab at a very long exposure shot, intending to show motion blur in the image. Rich says this is a different thing entirely. But to me this often doesn’t work too well either, unless the photographer is extremely experienced. Iksodas has shot an image which shows the technique rather well. However long exposure shots are VERY hard to do, and even if you get the technique right, you still have the challenge of getting emotion across in the image. With long exposure shots, I actually think photographers understand them better than us plebs. To an experienced photographer’s eye, the image might be really clever, because they admire the technique. But to some of us ordinary mortals, the resulting image sometimes just looks like a fuzzy blob.

There is a big difference between soft focus and no focus. Unless they are done properly, blurry images have no focal point. They don’t draw the attention or suck you into the photograph. They have no inner message to communicate, other than the photographer wasn’t terribly good. Yes everyone has to experiment, to learn. How else can their abilities grow? But what annoys me is when photographers make these mistakes, and then tout them as finished art.

To my inexperienced eye, blurry is not artistic. It’s just plain bad photography.

But what do I know? I’m just a piece of meat, right?



Rich doesn’t do blurry very much (which is kind of a shame because my body would look a heck of a lot better under the camera in a blurry shot than a sharp one). As I understand it, you can’t do controlled depth of field under studio lighting conditions, only in natural light. Although please do feel free to correct me on this. Truth be told, I’m rather reluctantly getting interested in photographic technique, dammit. The bug of “how do they do that?” is beginning to bite…

For the record, Rich definitely does NOT endorse this post, and finds it rather offensive. Discussions on this subject are most definitely “ongoing” in our household.

Oh dear…

(BTW, these are the mesmerising eyes of Miss Roswell Ivory, with whom Rich will be shooting again next week.)

Bloggie Birthday

It's our birthday! This blog has been going a whole year today!

It’s certainly been a rollercoaster ride. Many times I thought I’d delete the blog (Rich threatened me with divorce if I did!), many times it has been immensely painful and frustrating to write. Other times it’s been immense fun! We have shared our personal journey through the first year of photography with many thousands of complete strangers, and in the process, made many friends and found out many new things about each other along the way. Plus, IMO, Rich has created some groovy art and discovered his true vocation (shooting nekkid chicks!)

We always planned to keep the blog going a year, and then decide whether or not to continue it.

From a personal point of view, even if no-one read my ramblings, I’d still have to blog, no matter what. Ideas for potential posts regularly drag me out of bed at 4 a.m. to kick my scrawny ass onto the laptop. I get no peace until the blog entry is written. Richard, on the other hand, often finds blogging stressful. I always tell him to blog more, simply because I think he’s a great writer. But he always says he’s not a writer, he’s first and foremost a photographer, and he’s happier concentrating on his Art.

So I guess the bulk of the writing will be continued by me (I am after all, the Queen of Waffle, and I do love talking about anything and everything), with sporadic posts now and again by Rich. He says he’s only going to post when he has something he wants to write about – other than that, his work says all he wants to say (Now who does that sound like, Mr Moten?!)

A year ago today, this blog started as a way of exploring what Rich and I were creating together (photographically speaking), and to reassure potential models that we weren’t a couple of pervs. Now blogging has become a way of life for me, almost an addiction. It’s made me realise that writing is my passion. Plus it’s given us both a whole new online bloggie social circle, some brilliant friends and it’s been a great show-case for Rich’s artistic endeavours.

Thank you for staying with us for a whole year.

I can’t promise that this blog will still be going in a year’s time, although that is certainly our intention, but I can promise you that we will be blogging and photographing, somewhere, somehow.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to celebrate a year’s blogging with a bottle of Chardonnay, a shiny black cat-suit, and a pair of giant rubber lips (don’t ask!)

These are the top three most popular images from the last year, in order. The Kate montage, Cheeky Lee’s “Submissiveness”, and the beautiful Roswell Ivory.

The Bondage Shoot Disaster

We photographed a model a few weeks back. She was a lovely girl. Most of the shoot was art-nude, but it had been pre-arranged to shoot a bit of bondage at the end of the shoot, with me in that part of the shoot as well. She was happy to do this. She had shot bondage before, and had no problem with shooting this style again.
So far, so good.

The art-nude part of the shoot went really well, although Rich has yet to finish the pictures. The bondage part of the shoot also went well, or so it seemed initially. We didn’t do anything outrageous, just tying her ankles to a chair (very loosely – easily a couple of fingers width between ankle and chair), and her arms tied loosely above her head, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling. She mostly held the rope, so she could govern how high she lifted her arms. That was the extent of it. No other gags, or blindfolds or anything like that. All the time Rich was saying “Are you O.K. with this, are you sure? Please stop if you aren’t comfortable with this in any way”, to which she replied, “No, no I’m fine”. But I noticed her face was tense. She looked unhappy. Again I checked, “Are you sure you are O.K.? We can stop this if you’re not happy” Again, “No problem”.

So we persevered. I was present at the shoot, to make sure everything was O.K, and position and hold the rope occasionally. Rich had the idea that I dressed in costume – a zentai suit, part of the anonymous zentai series that Richard is shooting. She was O.K. with this (we checked). But then at the end of the shoot, when I took off my mask so I could see (I was blind as a bat before then), and I helped untie her, that she practically tore at the ropes to get them off. We worked quickly, and removed them within a few seconds. And then the crunch came. I noticed that she looked pretty grim – her mouth was set and looked unhappy, and then I saw that she discreetly wiped tears from her eyes, when she was getting dressed.
I asked if she was O.K. “Fine” she said. And she stayed for a while afterwards, and had some lunch and a good ol’ chat as we always do with models and photographers who visit. And we parted on good terms. She loved the photos.

No harm done. Right ?

Wrong.

Since the shoot, I have been extremely upset, unable to sleep or eat properly. An emotional mess.

I feel terrible. I can’t bear the idea of the fear I saw in her eyes when I took off the mask. I have rejected bondage completely (previously I thought it was a bit of fun). I’m a gentle soul really – I can’t bear the idea of causing harm to another living thing, let alone a person. I feel horribly guilty at making someone cry, putting someone outside their personal comfort zone. I don’t mind play acting, or creating Art, but when it gets too “real” and the submissiveness and upset is genuine, then I can’t handle it. I looked into her eyes and saw myself, 20 years ago, scared and abused by my then-boyfriend. It brought back the pain, the anguish, the guilt. Horrible, really horrible. I thought I had forgotten it, but that moment dredged the whole lot back up again.

Poor Rich has been patient, comforting, despairing and finally annoyed with me. He says “She’s O.K. She consented to do that. We checked before, during and after the shoot that she was O.K. with it” Obviously he was upset that she wasn’t happy, but he says that we did all that we could, and we weren’t to know that she had issues. Plus he says that she could have stopped at any point she was upset – we made that very clear. He says I’m projecting her upset onto me.

He’s right of course. He usually is.

Some folks are going to think that I should get therapy for the events of 20 years ago. The thing is, I made my peace with my past a long time ago. I am healed, or at least as much as anyone can be after something like that. Regarding the shoot of a few weeks ago, I know it’s not my fault that the model wasn’t completely honest with herself or us about how she felt, and I know she may have private issues of her own. She’s a lovely girl, and very professional, but that still doesn’t stop me acting irrationally and feeling bad about what happened.

Currently I’m in a bit of an emotional pickle. The experience (my first joint bondage shoot) was ultimately a total disaster, and it’s put me off bondage for a while. I don’t want to limit Rich’s Art, but simultaneously I don’t want him to shoot any bondage in the near future either. At the moment, I can’t even look at the images from the shoot.

Rich is exasperated, completely understandably. He’s got lots of cool ideas for shoots, and I’m rejecting the whole bondage thing. We are going in separate directions.

I think I’ll be fine, but I need to shoot some more romantic “fluffy” bondage, with an experienced bondage model, whom I know and trust– something a bit lighter and happier, so I can regain my confidence in the whole thing, rather than dredging up the past. I need to have some fun with it, otherwise I’m not going to get past this experience.

This post is not to gain sympathy in any way from you guys, it’s simply by way of explaining what’s been going on in the last few weeks, and why I’ve been a bit quiet.

Of course, I’m a novice model at this sort of thing. Two novices at bondage, plus operating outside personal comfort zones = emotional disaster.

Sigh.

We’re still learning.




Roswell Ivory, a nice happy, glossy latex piccie, which always cheers me up :-)