yep,

wierd thing is that I *hate* pantyhose / tights but am very partial to stockings 🙂

Wouldn’t want to see the overuse of stockings they’re a good source of the variety that RE balances so well.

M

@KateTT wrote:

I am sure we all have the imagination and creativity to bend this thread round to the dark side though

I’m not sure I have, 🙁 at least not that I can include a glamorous female bondagette in. Still, if you want a storyline whereby a parasitic spammer ba$tard gets beaten with a rusty shovel – I’m yer man! 😀

Cheers

M

.. obviously these awards take place in Vegas, right.?.

No references to the “queen” Ariel thing.. think we may have finally seen the last of such nonsense 🙂 🙄 🙂

Well done AA

M

W T F ??

👿

yay!

Very nice work Steve!! 😀

I was about to email but this seems an even better place to say so, keep up the good work fella. Hope all other bondage sites out there take a good look at how high the bar is.. 😆

Look forward to seeing more, esp Ariels video “project” shot the same day which I’ve still no clue about but I’m pretty sure will be geat 😉

M

Steve’s right, this is a tough one..

I’ve been debating this to myself for days and still don’t have absolute conviction in this but here goes.

Basic problem here then is that, shockingly, an old 5D with a hundred thousand shots to its name and a £200 lens is performing 99% as well as the Hasslblah.. costing the same as a family car. 😯 Sounds like a no brainer thus far..

For my penneth, it comes down to what you want to do over the next couple of years Hywel, if your photography is going to be presented in jpeg then the Hazlebled makes zero sense. If, on the other hand you’ve a secret desire to publish photography of some kind in print then it makes more sense. Sure there are differences in the shots above but i’ve got 2 monitors and a laptop on my desk and the differences between those screens are huge compared to the differences between the 2 camera outputs above.

Above is a nice comparison between the Hashisbad and the 5D but as Steve says it would now be really nice to see a similar comparison between the 5D(I) and 5D(II) and for a negative control why not include the 40D too?

Funny thing is, although there’s no logical reason for buying the Hooverbag I still want one. I bet Steve does too and having just re-read your review you obviously do to Hywel 🙂 so you could just bugger logic and reason and splurge, its either the Hokeybed or the tax man at the end of the day.

Good luck

M

Ooh it’s easy to think of the Sweden trip as a long way to go and a big expense, but then you see that shot of Ariel on the wooden jetty or the one in the boat and it seems sooo worthwhile! 😯

Oh yeah, my camerawork and Kates rigging on the Sophia set, my/our first proper outdoor set and the one in which I learnt never to put a model in both sun and shade. Every time Sophia put an arm up, head back or foot out it immediately overexposed in the sun 👿 I think it took us about half an our before we figured we could just move Sophia back into the shade about 2ft and then no more problem, doh! 🙄

Cheers

M

Lies. My eyes are actually much more bloodshot than this..

And can the world please note that I have resisted the huge temptation to post a picture of Big Bird.. 😉

Memorable set tho, I wasn’t even with the unit that produced this but that evening before the set was previewed to a surprised Hywel I remember there was a definate air of “are we going to get in the sh#t for doing such a *risky* rig..” floating around 😉 Ahh happy days.. 🙂

M

@steve wrote:

Retrained Elegance’s high quality.

heheh thanks Steve, needed a smile.. 😀

cheers
@steve wrote:

Marlin

😉

Hi all!

Potentially an interesting point of view but horribly put Curious1..

Of course you can say you think there should be more angles and a poor choice of gag but please respect the effort thats gone into this by doing so a little more constructively. For instance, did it occur there might be a good reason for the narrow choice of angles? I didn’t shoot this and I’m certain Svampen doesn’t need me to defend this but here’s the more obvious reasons from someone who knows a little about what it took to shoot this.

– the rocks a big, covered in lichens etc, vertical drops all around and in the middle of nowhere. It would be pretty stupid to risk breaking your equipment or worse, your legs freeclimbing them to get the shot from above.

– the guys doing the tutorial at the weekend will now know some of the complexity of studio lighting. Its waaay more difficult outdoors, in the woods as the sun is at its lowest is the most difficult I can think of. You can’t just turn the sun down a stop or move a couple of trees to free up some shadow. Look behind Pling and you can see the sheer range of light to shadow varying EVERYWHERE as the light fights its way through the trees – there’s simply no consistancy. This means every time your model moves slightly the light/shadow falling on her face changes completely and you’re continually stopping to re-meter the correct exposure. Add to this every time the photographer moves his angle to the light source changes and may need metering again plus you’re fighting lens flare etc etc. PLUS, lets not forget that even if nobody moves then the low sun will itself move quite quickly which means the shadows through the trees swing across minute by minute and you rapidly loose your levels. I’m impressed there’s as many well exposed shots as there is to be honest, a compact camera in these conditions would not do justice to Restrained Elegance.

– Shooting in relatively low light and without ramping up the ISO needs a v expensive lens, alternatively you can get potentially even better shots using a prime lens (a non – zoom) which is the norm at RE. Downside is the photographer has to keep moving instead of zooming, don’t know if Svampen was able to use his zoom or not but having to use a prime would limit the choice of shot and generally slow the shoot down as he tries not to get hurt scrambling about.

– There’s a commercial reality here, often people comment similarly that a particular shot is missing or could have been improved but fail to realise that we’re not after a perfect shot – we need to get 50+ good shots, often to tell a story and battling with the light as detailed above. There’s a very finite time before your model gets frozen or suffers from the restriction of bondage so you don’t have much time at all to cover the angles, especially in the woods scrambling around on rock and trees in constantly varying light. Pretty soon you simply have to wrap the set, like it or not *that* shot you’d like to get from up on the rocks, up a tree, into the sun, from below, capturing the reflection etc etc isn’t feasible.

Gags aren’t to everyones tastes, which is why they shot the first half of the set without one.

Don’t remember if I gave this a 4 or a 5, I can’t help appreciate this set knowing how challenging it would be to this standard. Nice work guys.

M

arrr.. you were very brave 😉

Great 🙂

Will certainly try but Saturday evenings are not ideal..

See you all there. Probably.

M

Hi,

Never thought of it before but I guess some gold cuffs could add a bit of glamour to RE, I bought some gold plated hiatts? years ago but the gold wore off very quickly at which time they just looked nasty. Although perhaps not as nasty as those blingy rhinestone things heheh..

RE has a nice heavy set of combination chains in Ariels size but its just occured to me I’d quite like to see a more “Gorean” set as per “dreamstrike” “sirik” kinda stuff. *Almost* purely symbolic but still fully functional.. 😉

Cheers

M

hmm, apologies in advance if I cheapen this thread..

Err, no. Afraid every attempt at weaving a clever and sexy storyline basically starts and ends with a one liner.. So here goes 😉

.. wow.. just how *did* you know I’m wearing a matching set of undies.?..

.. Sophia wasn’t just comfortable with being tied up – she could actually fall asleap ..

.. does my bum look big in this ? ..

.. The damn clock was so ugly Sophia just couldn’t bear to watch it any longer ..

.. Sophia started to wonder if he really was a plumber ..

Best I can do for now,

Cheers

M

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😀 😉 😀

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