Tag: Photograph

Inescapable

After the impressive bondage of the last post I thought I’d go in the other direction with this.

James Bond is notorious for escaping from many tight situations, but I don’t think he’ll be too taxed by this one. A good shrug would probably do it. Maybe the villainess has been looking at too much early bondage porn. That often featured a few randomly placed lengths of clothesline as a means of restraint. Of course if Karin Dor had tied me up, I probably wouldn’t be struggling too hard to get away either.

This is of course Sean Connery and Karin Dor in You Only Live Twice.

Inverting the Usual

Spectacular rope suspension bondage typically features young, lithe, female models. Which is undoubtedly hot, but can be a little predictable. This inverted suspension shot flips the script. It’s a super impressive set-up, both for the man in the ropes and those doing the rigging. The former is Tim Sangster and the latter is Mistress Wildfire and Mistress Vivienne L’Amour. From the limited rope suspension I’ve done, I know how tricky this must have been to get right.

Kink and Culture

Ms Jadis Ives has published a really thoughtful article entitled kink, subculture, aesthetic, authenticity and the algorithm. As you can probably guess from that title, it covers a lot of complex topics, making it hard to summarize. However, I guess the nub of it would be the difference between authentic in person play and everything else that now makes up the wide kinky world.

In the past there were relatively well defined niches of lifestyle play, BDSM professionals offering sessions and (limited, rare) kink themed pornography. The boundaries were distinct. Now, thanks to a variety of technological, cultural and financial reasons, it’s a far murkier and more complex map. Mainstream overlaps with the kink subculture. The worlds of content creation, marketing and and in person play are harder to tease apart. Big tech and legal rules warp the discourse even further. What does it mean to participate in BDSM today?

There’s obviously the danger of nostalgia and gatekeeping here, but I don’t think Ms Jadis is heading in that direction. She’s calling out the dangers of losing sight of a key aspect of BDSM – that visceral, authentic in person connection. That’s not all it is, but it is a significant and important part. We shouldn’t let the performative aspects of the current culture overwhelm it.

Ms Jadis Ives is a Sydney based pro-domme. This image was sourced from her website. You can also find her on Bluesky. If you’re in the Sydney area and interested in experiencing a session in person then you can find details here.

Awful but slightly less so

I was being rude about Google a few posts back. They still suck and I hate how they’ve ruined so many great products, but their image search is just a tiny, tiny bit less terrible than I thought. Maybe 0.27% less bad.

Previously I was complaining that they had blocked reverse image search for explicit images and their definition of explicit was ridiculously broad. Having played with it some more I think they’ve tweaked it so it will still find explicit images, but only if they’re exact matches. Normally, if it can’t find an exact match, it’ll give you related or similar shots. If it thinks the image is explicit then it’ll either just give links to the exact matches or nothing at all. That’s still annoyingly puritanical of them, but at least it can sometimes help with image attribution.

For example, I found this image on a tumblr. Google’s reverse image search took me to The Deadly Doll Experience. That’s the site for Kissmedeadlydoll, a domme and talented kinky smut creator based in NYC. The combination of tight rope and latex encasement is beautiful, with the hand to the throat adding extra hotness.

You can see more from Kissmedeadlydoll at her OnlyFans, Film Site, Clips4Sale and ManyVids. Or schedule a session with her in NYC.

A Healthy Breakfast

It’s always important to start the day off with some healthy essentials. Orange juice, toast, yogurt, a big black cock. Starting the day as you mean to go on. Eating parts of it off the floor is obviously optional.

I’m not sure of the original source for this. I’d guess it’s a pro-domme with a room kitted out as a dedicated cell. It’s a hot concept, particularly with the dedicated anchor points in the walls. If you can help me attribute it correctly the please let me know via a comment.

Updated: Thanks to my helpful readers I can now attribute the image. This is Madame Key at the Warsaw Prison. Looks like a fabulous facility if you’re into imprisonment scenarios.

Three More Years

I renewed my domain name registration for this site this week. A couple of hundred bucks for another 3 years of internet existence. It feels like money well spent. With social media, big tech and credit card companies continuing to make a mess of the internet, it’s nice to have a bit of it under your own control. It might not be changing the world but it’s my little soapbox to stand on.

Not sure what’s the right image to commemorate a DNS registration, so I’ll simply go with some visual loveliness. This is Marie Sauvage from an article on her Shibari practice in Purple Magazine.

Dungeon Tour

If you’re interested in discovering what kinds of toys and equipment can be found in a really well equipped dungeon then I’d point you at this post/video. It feature Domina M showing Rachel Rampage around her Paris space Studio Xème. As you’d expect Domina M has a ton of really cool equipment that looks like it’d be a lot of fun to play with. The metal bondage pieces are a particular highlight.

Here’s a shot of Domina M with some of her bondage furniture, sourced via her site.

Context Matters

The Guardian has a new article on a subject dear to both masochists and sadists hearts – pain. Its basic premise is that the perception of pain is highly contextual and complex. Someone might have a serious injury but power through the situation. The same person on another day might stub their toe and spend 10 minutes hopping up and down and swearing about it. Pain is perceived in the brain and so our mental state is a big factor in how intense we think it is.

It’s an interesting article but I don’t think its conclusions will be surprising to kinky folk who play with pain. I know my tolerance varies significantly, depending on things like stress, arousal, uncertainty and past history with my play partner.

One thing I hadn’t thought about was the how the perception of risk can affect tolerance…

“If we think ‘this is terrible, this is awful, it’s going to do me serious damage’ – those types of people will have lower tolerance.” This includes people who tend to be anxious or who catastrophise pain.

The perception of the damage being done can have a substantial role. A violinist is more likely to report higher levels of pain when a pain stimulus is applied to their dominant playing hand than when their other hand is subjected to the same stimulus, Moseley says – because an injury to their dominant hand could end their career.

That makes sense to me and is a useful thing to keep in mind when planning sessions. If you want to play harder then being able to relax and not worry about the end result is important. If you’re stressing about marks or injuries it’ll hurt all the more.

I hope this gentleman is feeling relaxed and worry free, otherwise that’ll really sting. I’m not entirely sure of the source here, but it looks like something from the Cruel Punishments site.

Needles

I mentioned a few posts back a recent sessions I did with the fabulous Savannah Sly. I was lucky enough to sneak in a second playtime before she left town. Needles were on the agenda.

The fun thing about doing piercing play is how varied the dynamic can be. It can be meditative and contemplative. Moving progressively across the body, decorating as you go. It can be quite sadistic and intense. A needle in a delicate part of the body gets your attention fast. It can also be sensual and stimulating. Piercings in erogenous zones heighten sensation and make gentle touches light up your pleasure center.

This session was a bit of all of the above. A lovely mix of the mean and the mischievous. Savannah wasn’t using particularly large needles, but they were plenty big enough to get my endorphins surging.  You can see a photograph of my chest taken mid-scene here. It always surprises me the variety of sensation different piercings can trigger. One needle might slide in with barely a pinch, the same size an inch over might have me yelping in pain. You just never know till the pointy end meets the skin.

All this needle talk does give me an excuse to re-post one of my favorite piercing images. Indeed one of my favorite kink shots ever. While my position was similar, this isn’t me and Savannah – it’s Domina Yuki and her submissive (originally posted in 2011 here).

More Google Bullshit

Everyday, in everyway, the internet gets a little bit shittier.

I stumbled across the image below via tumblr and was trying to figure out an attribution. My starting point for that is always Google’s reverse image search. However, that came back with no results and a message I’d never seen before: “This search can’t be processed due to content guidelines. Please try a different image or keywords.” What fresh hell is this? I have safe search off and the image isn’t particularly explicit. Just a cute scene of a fully clothed woman and her pup.

Digging around it seems like I’m not the only one hitting this issue. Google – not for the first time – appears to be getting more puritanical and less useful (if that were possible). Trying  a few different images from my post queue had about a 50/50 block/pass rate. So much for organizing the world’s information and not doing evil. Over the last decade or so the leadership of Google has taken a company that was the pride of the tech world, a brilliant search engine that every developer wanted to work on, and turned it into a pile of AI and Ad infested crap.

Sadly, as the above post should make clear, I don’t have an attribution for this. Bing and Yandex did allow me to do a reverse image search, but couldn’t find the source. If you can help me out with that, then please leave a comment with the info.

Updated: Thanks to a helpful comment, I think I can now attribute this to Mistress Lamina, based out of Rio De Janeiro.