Courtesy of Bondage Blog I came across the blog of bondage and spanking model Ariel Anderssen. The original post that caught my attention was Ariel responding to a fairly unpleasant comment that conflated BDSM with abuse and accused her of all sorts of stupid things. We’ve probably all seen these types of accusations and rants before, but I think it’s good to be reminded now and again of some of the views that are floating around outside the kink positive blogs community. She does a great job of pulling the comments apart and I think it’s good that she took the time to do so.
However, that wasn’t the primary trigger for this particular post. The thing that really sparked my interest was this post on the practicalities of booking a fetish model, and in particular her charging structure.
My rates are £50 per hour, £300 per day (based on 7-8 hours) or £1000 per week.
Ariel Anderssen(paltego : That’s $80/$480/$1600 for US-centric readers)
Now maybe my value system is a little warped, but that seems really cheap to me. Ariel is self-evidently beautiful, has worked for some of the top sites and is involved in running Restrained Elegance. Given her experience she obviously must know what the market rate is for her work. So clearly that’s a representative pricing for hiring one of the top tier fetish models working today.
I don’t want to draw a direct equation between fetish modelling and pro-domme work. The former is all about capturing artistic and erotic photographs. The latter is sexy fun time. Or agonizing/humiliating/messy fun time. Whatever floats your boat. But looking at it just from the perspective of an interesting way to spend some creative kinky time, shooting photographs is a way cheaper hobby. If only I just had a smidgen of artistic talent in my body I’d love the idea of shooting some original content for this blog. Unfortunately, nobody is going to want to look at the kind of out of focus shots of headless models that I’d end up producing.
Picking an image for this post was a little tricky. Most of Ariel’s shots are submissive in nature. However, she’s done some work for the School Mistress Fantasy site, so it gives me an excuse to show something from them. I believe these are two different sequences featuring Miss Walsh, with plenty more similar shots available at their pay site.
Hi Paltego:
The problem I have found with taking photos in session is that it takes my head out of the game. Sessions for me are total enjoyment. When I start taking pictures I stop living the experience in the moment.
Hi hmp,
Well like I said in the post, I don’t think you can equate the two directly. I’d guess shooting photographs is a lot of hard work and repeating stuff. To get exactly the shots you want also probably involves being fairly D rather than s. So it wouldn’t work as a session would. It just seems that the kinky photographer can stretch his dollar a lot further than the kinky masochist can. Although I guess hiring a pro-domme normally implies a whole bunch of equipment and play space as well, where hiring a model to shoot will require the photographer to supply the necessary props.
In terms of snapping photographs in an actual session (i.e. something targeted at play rather than creating art/porn), I’ve personally found it to be a mixed bag. I always leave it to the mistress to snap any pictures she thinks might be interesting, as I certainly don’t want to have to think about or direct that. If she knows how to work the camera and is happy to click a bunch of quick shots off at a suitable break moment, then it actually works fine for me. It can be kind of a rush to see her recording her work and being happy about the marks or needles or whatever. But if the pause it too long, and there’s a bunch of messing around with settings/light/angles/etc. then yes, it can take my head out of the moment as you describe.
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Tks!