Tag: Photograph

Cue the Worlds Smallest Violin

I’ve already written about my upcoming UK trip and my ability to pick dates that don’t quite align with people I’d like to see. The flip side to that is also managing to pick dates so I miss kinky visitors to Seattle. Apparently the Pacific Northwest is at its most appealing when I’m not in it.

Two in particular caught my eye. Mistress Iris will be here Aug. 19th to the 21st. Lady Grace will be here from Aug. 14th to 17th. Mistress Iris I’ve played with multiple times in the past (e.g. here and here). Lady Grace is someone I’ve wanted to connect with for a while now. If you’re a submissive in Seattle then I’d urge you to set up time with them. Partly because I think you’ll have a lot of fun. Mostly because I want their Seattle trips to be a success so they come back again when I’m actually in town. So schedule a session and it’ll be a win-win-win situation.

This is from Lady Grace’s twitter feed. When she’s not visiting Seattle, she’s based in SF. Her professional site is here.  Mistress Iris is based out of LA and her professional site is here.

The Warrior Princess

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for Katherine Hepburn ever since seeing her in the African Queen as a young boy. Much as I enjoyed watching Bogart as the cranky captain, it was the spunky and bossy Hepburn character that really caught my eye. Much like the late great Lauren Bacall in her movies opposite Bogart.

This image is Katharine Hepburn as Amazon warrior princess Antiope in a stage production of The Warrior’s Husband (1932). The set might look a little shoddy, and their shin guards fake, but her pose and body language is all kinds of hotness. The lucky man whose hair she’s grabbing is Colin Keith-Johnston.

Ooh! Shiny.

This post-session image comes courtesy of Domina Vivien Claire. I find it strangely arousing. It’s all so bright and clean and shiny. I picture the contrast between warm, soft, yielding flesh and how it’d be pinched and distorted by the hard cold metal. It’s an image that suggests the snap of rubber gloves and a voice murmuring “Try and relax. This next part might hurt…”

Vivien Claire is a pro-domme based in London Ontario. Her main site is here.

Nobody Cares (extended edition)

I had some great comments on my last post about approaching a professional playspace. Thanks to Simon, Hank and Chris for those. The encounter Simon described made me laugh…

I once visited a Mistress in her premises in London and as they were on the 3rd floor I got in the lift. With me in the lift was an older lady probably in her eighties. When I pressed for the 3rd floor she smiled at me and said “here to get your bottom smacked are we?” to which I could only reply with a wry grin.

I’m pretty certain all I’d be able to manage in those circumstances would be a wry grin as well. Little old ladies with a sense of humor and unencumbered by the need to stick to social conventions are scarier than any leather clad domme.

I still maintain my claim from my previous post that 99.9% of passersby neither know nor care about people entering a playspace. However, that does leave 0.1%, who are probably local to the area and might realize what’s going on. However, it’s unlikely you’ll bump into them and even if you do, the most you’ll probably get is a knowing smile.

Although I’ve never had a problem getting into a space, taxi drivers can be annoyingly curious. Particularly when they’re picking up a solo guy from a downtown hotel and taking him to some random suburban or industrial location. My standard cover story is that I’ve a friend whose an artist and I’m visiting her at her new studio space. After all, talented dommes are artists in their own domain, and their spaces are often located in the kind of buildings artists use. Maybe when I’m old and have ceased to care, I’ll just tell them I’m visiting someone to get my bottom smacked.

This is one of the more unique looking industrial style playspaces I’ve seen, as featured in this tweet from Mistress Adreena. Lot’s of exposed brickwork, some ironwork on the right and a big a bondage frame on the left. Not to mention of course the beautiful Mistress Adreena in the center! I believe this is located in Amsterdam.

Nobody Cares

My random thought of the day: Never stress about walking up to a BDSM playspace. As long as you’re dressed like conventionally – which you absolutely should be – then nobody knows or cares what you’re doing. Passersby will just assume you’re a regular person doing regular person things.

I’ve done a lot of sessions at a lot of different spaces in many different cities. I’ve never once had a random stranger shout “Hey everyone – look at that pervert! He’s off to do weird freaky stuff in that building.” From the outside playspaces look anonymous. 99.9% of people will walk past and have no idea they’re there. Over the years I’ve personally had exactly zero awkward moments getting into and out of playspaces.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the domme is highly incentivized to keep the entrance routine under the radar. After all, she is the one regularly in the space and dealing with a constant stream of clients. No domme is going to appear at the doorway in full fetish gear and loudly command her clients to get to their knees in full view of the street. Instead the traditional entrance routine is the sideways slide, slipping through a door held only slight ajar, concealing both the domme and the hallway decorations from any random passersby.

The discrepancy between the outside of playspaces and the inside is always something that brings a smile to my face. I love that the outside can be a regular townhouse on a regular street, and inside a scene like this one can be unfolding….

This is Domina Yuki and Lucy Sweetkill playing earlier this year in a lovely San Francisco space I know well.

The Forgotten Man

There really should be a genre name for the type of porn when it looks the domme has forgotten there’s a submissive in the room. It’s a small and somewhat odd niche in Femdom. I’ve never seen it in maledom material. It’d probably classify as a sub-genre of objectification and forniphilia, but at least in those the domme is typically aware of and making use of the submissive. In shots like this you get the impression she’d be surprised to look down and discover what she’s been resting her foot on. You can see another similar shot from the same scene here.

Based on the watermark I believe the original site for this has ceased to exist.

Bound by Hinako

Here’s the final entry into my trio of bondage themed posts. This beautiful rope work is from Mistress Hinako. There’s some lovely details in here, like the rope across the palms that is taken up into a tie across the foot. It doesn’t look like much when you first glance at the photograph, but I’m sure the person experiencing it first hand is very aware of it.

If you’d like to see more from Mistress Hinako, she has a lot of high quality content available here.

Bound by Troy

After my last post featuring bondage by a virtuoso of the art, I thought I’d keep the theme going with another equally accomplished rigger. This is a scene featuring Troy Orleans, sourced from her twitter feed. It was actually Troy who connected Elise and myself, so it seems particularly appropriate as a follow-up post.

I love the contrast in this image between the heavily bound naked man and Troy carefully contemplating what to introduce into the scene next. Oddly enough the man is @for_heavy, who was also the man in yesterday’s photograph with Elise. That’s a total coincidence – I picked the image out before I realized that – but it does speak to his excellent taste in the tops he plays with. Photograph was shot by @marcuslikesit.

Troy Orleans is a pro-domme based out of NYC. If you’d like to see more of her beautiful bondage material, then she has an OnlyFans site here. If you’re like to see her in person, then her professional site is here. You can also see more bondage material from @for_heavy at his site here.

Bound by Elise

Elise Graves was shooting for House of Gord in Seattle this week, and I was lucky enough to have the chance to session with her before she returned to the Bay area. Rope bondage, electricity, clamps and tickling were all the agenda, and much fun was had by all.

One of the great things about playing with different dommes is getting to observe many different styles of play. For the majority of dommes I play with, bondage is a complement to the main activity rather than a focus in itself. They want to make sure I’m not going to wriggle away, but once that’s achieved the emphasis shifts to hitting, poking and prodding. Elise tends to switch that up, where the bondage is the main focus, and the additional activities used to emphasize and highlight the restraint. Often in sessions I can almost forget I’m  bound, but there’s zero danger of that happening when Elise in charge. I’m always very aware of my own body and its interaction with the space around it.

Personally I find these kind of sessions very challenging but also very rewarding. It’s easy to lie back in a comfortable position and simply soak up intense sensations. In contrast, when bondage is used to stress and control the body, it forces me to think a lot more and to be very aware of how my body is reacting to it. I recently wrote about in session communication (post one and two), and I think bondage focused sessions really lean on that skill set for the submissive, even for the relatively easy positions I was put into. Awareness of your physical limits and tolerances becomes particularly important.

This is from Elise’s twitter feed and taken from a shoot for her excellent Bondage Liberation site. Elise is typically very gleeful and happy when topping and I think this image really captures that. The male model is @for_heavy. If you’d like to play with Elise in person, then her professional site is here.

Love of the Visual

There’s an old stereotype that men respond far more strongly to sexual imagery than women do. It’s an idea I’ve always been skeptical of. Partly because as a man I’ve always enjoyed the written word just as much as the visual image. Partly because it has a suspiciously neat fit with an old fashioned view of sexuality, where men are decadent pleasure seekers and women the gatekeepers of pleasure, rather than active participants. Mostly because women’s magazines are packed with sexual imagery via their advertisements. I’m pretty certain those ads don’t exist just for men in waiting rooms browsing old copies of Cosmo and Vogue.

According to this article in the Guardian I’m right to be suspicious. A study of studies has shown that men and women’s brains respond in the same way to pornography. Basically the same bits of circuitry light up, whatever your gender. The studies authors go on to say that it’s more likely social pressures and stigma are the reason for the stereotype, rather than fundamental biological differences.

Hopefully all my readers, whatever their gender, can enjoy this image. It’s by Mistress Iris, creator of a great deal of sexy imagery.