Tag: Photograph

Better Know a Lamp: Part 4

Welcome to another entry in my intermittent series of posts on submissives as lamps. The series has only had 4 entries in almost 7 years, but that is 3 more than I was expecting. Past examples are here, here and here.

It’s not a fetish I personally get, but it does make me smile. It’s both kinky and surreal. Clearly not widely popular (given that I don’t see many lampshades featured as equipment in play spaces) but it does seem to persistently pop up in kinky imagery. For those that do like it, standby for  another entry in the series sometime in 2019-2021.

This is from the instagram of latex.Jacqueline The-ripper.

Bubbles of Intimacy

This Business Insider article describes a photographic project capturing couples in intimate moments. The twist in the tale is that they all feature the photographer Marie Hyld,  and a stranger she’s met for the first time just minutes before (as recorded in the corner of the photographs). Most of the shots are fairly conventional sweet/casual/romantic moments, but there’s one fun fetishistic one I’ve featured below.

Mistress Matisse made an insightful comment on the series via a tweet…

So, this photographer is basically tapping into the dynamic that many sex workers create, only she’s doing it in a performative way, instead of it being for the person she’s with.

I have to admit that when I started playing with pro-dommes I was puzzled by the nature of the dynamic. It felt genuine but was also in a sense artificial. Intimacy between relative strangers. Nobody was pretending, but we were also suspending disbelief. Was it real? Or fake?

In the end I decided that these were the wrong questions to ask. It was what it was. A little bubble in time and space. It was genuine of itself, and incomparable to anything else. I didn’t have to try and sort it into my existing categorizations. I could carve out an entirely new space for it.

The series of photographs is called lifeconstructions and can be seen on the photographers web site.

On the hook

Normally when I find or, as in this case, I’m sent an interesting image, I hang onto it until there’s a suitable article or post topic to associate it with. I’ve got a long backlog of images that I like but I’ve yet to find the perfect post to drop them into.

In this case, I’m just going to put the image out there and let it stand alone. I love it. Their expressions are perfect. I just can’t imagine any kind of kinky rant, sexual politics, scene dynamics or mainstream kink story I’ll be able to fit it into. It’s just a thing all of its own.

This is by the artist Miles Aldridge and was shot for the German Stern Magazine. Thanks to Marga and Titia for pointing me at it.

Making an Entrance

This image, featuring the beautiful Mistress Alice, has a great evil doctor or sexy mad scientist vibe going on. Words like splayed, clamps, insertion and orifice all spring to mind. The submissive should ideally be brought in by a pair of helpful assistants using one of those Hannibal Lecter vertical wheeled trolleys. Unable to either escape or avoid seeing what’s about to happen to him.

I’ve often thought that entrances to scenes are an underdeveloped part of kinky play. There might be some leashing, or pulling by a body part or CFNM dynamic, but that’s about it for most scenes. The problem with doing something dramatic – like being delivered in a dog crate or bound on a hospital trolley – is you need a big space and multiple dommes. To really make it work you’d need a packing scene to happen with one domme – turning the submissive from  a person to an experimental object – and then a delivery to another domme in a different location for the pain and torment. Ideally with a period of waiting and watching in between to heighten the tension and emphasis the sense of objectification.

It’s hard to see how to make that kind of opening act work in most playspaces I’ve seen in the US. Maybe if I get chance to ever play somewhere like Studio Avalon, with its extensive facilities and large team of dommes, it’d be an idea to try.

High Heels & Fetish

The vast majority of tumblr sites are simply content re-blogged from elsewhere. For sexually explicit tumblrs I suspect that 99.9% of them fall into that category. It’s therefore nice to find (or be pointed at) a site with original content, particularly one featuring photographs. In the femdom realm, that’s even rarer than sites featuring original drawings and illustrations.

The site in question is 5-inch-and-more aka High Heels & Fetish. Stylistically and thematically it has pretty narrow focus – high heels, boots, legs, stockings and kneeling men, all shot from the waist down. It’ll probably only appeal to a subset of readers, but I suspect those that do like it, will like it a lot. It certainly captures a very specific fetishistic view.

This image is from this tumble post. I’m afraid the site doesn’t give any background details on its creator. The imagery might not be entirely my personal kinks, but I have to applaud whoever it is for the time and effort taken to create and share such quality content.

Wedding Bells

Did you hear about the two dommes getting married? It’s sounds like a setup, but there’s no punchline. It’s just a happy positive story to put a smile on your face. As posted on twitter here, Mistress Evilyne (who I’ve posted about in the past) is getting hitched to Goddess Anastaxia. The arrangement was sealed with the presentation of the pearl ring that belonged to Anastaxia’s grandmother. Many congratulations to the happy couple!

There’s so much stupid bullshit in the world these days, one can forget how many other things have changed for the good. Here I am cheering for two dommes getting married after discovering the fact via my kink  centric twitter feed. Twenty years ago that sentence would have blown my tiny brain.

Goddess Anastaxia and Mistress Evilyne are both based in London. The actually offer double dommes sessions together. I’d imagine being topped by a married couple would be a fairly unusual experience.

FOSTA-SESTA

The post title isn’t a result of me falling asleep on top of my keyboard. It’s actually the name of terrible bill that’s going before the US Senate in a few days. I first wrote about Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) back in November of last year.  Since then the bill has jammed together with another bad bill (FOSTA) and was passed by the House. Now if it clears the hurdle of the Senate, it’ll certainly go into law.

As I wrote last time, it’s a troubling bill for anyone supporting free speech online, and a dangerous bill for sex workers. It conflates sex work with sex trafficking and then makes websites liable if they’re seen to facilitate it. This will push media platforms and sites to banish sex workers (or anyone vaguely connected to them), in turn making it harder for them to find and screen clients, or share information about dangerous ones. Given the imprecision of the law and the skittishness of tech companies on the subject of sex, it’s liable to have a huge chilling effect on discussing sex and kink online.

If you want to know more there are some good articles here and here. The bill’s so bad it has brought together such disparate groups as the Wall Street Journal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pretty much every sex worker online and even the Department of Justice. If you follow any sex workers on twitter, you’ll have doubtless observed their concern. For example, Conner Habib put up a good thread on it.

If you’re an American citizen, the absolutely best thing you can do is call your Senators and register your disapproval of the bill. If you’re unsure what to say then there’s a handy guide here and contact information here. You can do it from the comfort of your own armchair. While calling is the best way, if you absolutely can’t do that, then there’s an online form you can fill in here.

If you’re in any doubt about speaking out, then Mistress Blunt below, would like to make it clear that it’s an order. She doesn’t look like someone you really want to disobey.

Clamps in Cosmos

After the HuffPost’s 7 sex tips from dommes, Cosmo now brings us the 9 nipple clamps you should look into. Of course sex tips from Cosmos is nothing new – I’ve done my fair share of mocking them in the past. However, I think it’s indicative of how far BDSM has penetrated the mainstream that their nipple clamp article is a pretty straightforward and sane list of recommendations. A few years ago it would have been written in a giggly “Oh isn’t this so silly!’ style and given instructions for making your own with some sticky tape and an elastic band. I’m not holding my breath for a Cosmos article on urethral sounds or play piercing, but it’s still progress.

The article’s main fault is hiding something at the end that would be better called out right at the top.

Queen explains that when you remove the clamps and the blood starts rushing back to the nerves, it can be an even stronger sensation than when you first put them on. Damn!

Damn is about right. Taking them off can hurt a hell of a lot more than their initial application. In fact I find it’s often an inverse relationship. Spiky ones hurt a lot when applied, but they don’t cut the blood supply, so I don’t get that rush of pain at the end. The flatter, wider clamps numb nipples up quickly and lull me into a false sense of security. Then, when they come off, the rush of blood back to the nerves can be excruciating.

For his sake, let’s hope this gentleman doesn’t get distracted by his clamps and let the book drop. I suspect that would lead to more problems than sore nipples.

The watermark on the image has been cut off by someone, but I’m fairly certain this is from the CBT and Ballbusting site.

Araki

If you’re in the New York region and interested in photograph and bondage, then you might want to check out a new exhibit on Nobuyoshi Araki. The NY Times gave it a solid review here.

As I wrote in a post a few years ago, Nobuyoshi Araki was my introduction to bondage as art. Or even just the idea of bondage taken seriously. I stumbled across a documentary on British television on him and couldn’t get over how much effort he put into capturing these beautiful shots of bound women. Something that had always been portrayed as silly and slightly sleazy suddenly looked like fine art. Of course the fact he’s a tremendously talented photographer as well as being kinky as fuck helped with that.

I haven’t featured images of any of his work here because, as far as I know, all the bondage images of a bound women. Instead I’ll share something from Lady Chiaki and Lady Hinako from their LA trip.


I believe, based on the twitter post, the lucky submissive piggy is Stephen Elliot.

It was different in my brain

The image below  – courtesy of Mistress Evilyne’s twitter feed – made me laugh. I’ve seen many variations of the image on the left scattered across tumblr, but never stopped to think exactly how effective it might be. There is a reason why fingers and opposable thumbs conquered the world.

Of course fantasy and reality often don’t line up. I never fantasized about having plastic wrap draped over my face while someone squeezed my balls and shoved a metal rod down my urethra, but when it happened it was awesome. On the flipside, I did often fantasize about being trampled by two beautiful women in leather boots, and when it happened it was…fine…I guess. I mean, I’d do it again, but the reality didn’t match the fantasy. The floor was uncomfortable and hitting the sweet spot between good pain and the ‘I think you cracked my rib’ pain was tricky.

The life lesson is probably that you should explore your fantasies, but don’t get too attached to them. There’s a lot of stuff that’s way more awesome in reality than you’d ever guess. And a lot of stuff that’s best left in the mental spank bank.