Category Archives: SilkSoles.com

TV Crews and Location Shoots, Oh My!

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Hi everyone!

Ariel and I have had a busy two weeks. Last week we had a TV documentary crew with us for two days filming us as we shot. We can’t tell you the details yet but it is for a new Channel 4 UK program hopefully coming soon. We will tell you more when we know more.

One of the things we shot while there were here was this rather stylish set in the dungeon, which the
TV presenter really liked- they said some of the shots looked like they were taken underwater. I agree – and we’ll try expanding on that idea for some more sets soon.

This week Ariel and I went away to shoot on location for a few days – the first time we’ve shot outside the house since the first COVID lockdown 18 months ago. When I booked it we still didn’t know how far we’d be able to travel so we thought it best to stay in Wales and I found a lovely place just an hour away.

Off we set with a car full of cameras, lenses, tripods, lights, clothes, ropes, handcuffs, gags and – for those who haven’t met him via Ariel’s OnlyFans or our behind-the-scenes postings on Twitter – a very excited Gareth the Orangutan glove puppet.

Here are a few samples straight off the camera – I’m offloading the cards and backing everything up now we’ve got home, and will process the sets and videos very soon! Can’t wait to get started on them, it’s a real thrill to see what we managed to create together.

We got to try out several new colours of hemp rope – more secure to tie with, and these days available in brighter colours. Still not as vibrant as nylon/polypropylene rope, but a big improvement over the murky and muddy colours that hemp used to come in.

We realised a project I’d been wanting to do for a couple of years but which felt like it needed something other than our house as the setting – a set shot using polaroid film (technically the modern equivalent – Fuji Instax Square film, but it is the same insta-develop photochemical process). I wanted the gritty “reality” feeling of it for a retro sex crime photoset. I’ll scan the pics for RE and we might auction off the physical prints once I’ve done so 🙂

I also had several new lenses I’d invested in over lockdown to try out. First up were the Sirui 1.33x anamorphics. If you’ve followed my tweets and posts you’ll know I have something of a fetish for the anamorphic look – I think it makes everything look grand and cinematic, and I’ve been on a quest to find lenses that really work for it but don’t cost what a genuine Arri or Cooke cine prime anamorphic costs. (Think house, not car). The Sirui’s have limited anamorphic character being only 1.33x, but they’re MUCH sharper than the SLR Magics I’ve been using, they cover a wider frame which means they are good for using on the Sony cameras, they have crisp manual focussing and a nice warm rendition. Very happy with the results – the shots of Ariel in the hot-tub were taken with those.

This was the first outing for my 100mm Sony STF lens, which is a clever bit of optics designed to give you smooth out-of-focus areas whilst retaining a very sharp centre and somewhat increased depth of field for your subject whilst pushing the background out of focus. The effect is quite subtle – the bokeh blur is way more pronounced on the 85mm and 135mm GM lenses, but the quality of the blur and the general look-and-feel are really interesting on the 100mm. Very much looking forward to more location trips to give it some more use, as I think it is in its element with deep background outside rather than in the confines of a room indoors.

I shot some stuff with a Helix Jr gimbal rig too – Gareth is being the camera operator for that in the shot above. It’s good but I need some fine tuning of the settings and I think it’ll work much better for two-model shoots, ideally with a second crew person because changing the camera settings on the fly is close to impossible for a single operator. It does great Sam Raimi “evil cam” footage so looking for more of that next time we get outdoors!

We have some more shoots tentatively booked in over the summer and a multi-model location shoot in September. I’ll be taking custom bookings for those in due course but with the caveat that it all depends on the COVID situation – Ariel and I are waiting for our second vaccination before we get models back to shoot with us in the house, etc..

Fingers crossed our server move goes smoothly in the next few days, since I’m raring to process all of this cool stuff and share it with you!

Cheers, Hywel

SilkSoles.com running “at risk” for next few days

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Hi Everyone,

We are performing a load of updates to the system software on the SilkSoles.com server over the next few days which amongst other things will finally let us move to offering encrypted/https browsing of the whole site.

We’ve tested as best we can but there’s always the possibility for disruption when one goes live with a major update, so the server might be offline or pages might not work as expected for short periods over the next few days.

I’ll post again as soon as we think we have it all up and running, you shouldn’t notice any changes but will be able to browse the whole site securely once we’re done.

I’ve decided to make one change as part of this so far and removed the “rate this set” option from inside gallery pages. No-one ever uses it – even the oldest sets only have like six ratings- so rather than working to revise old scripts for the new system software I’ve just decided to remove the feature. Now that we sell sets individually on the eStore and post samples on twitter I get much better feedback as to who likes what that way anyway.

UPDATE 04/10/2020: Script changes are all done our side. Now we wait for tech support to move us to latest versions of the environment and see if anything breaks. It shouldn’t do – we tested everything under that version already- but you never know, there’s always the possibility of missing something on the live side. So site still running at risk for next few days.

Cheers, Hywel

Celebration in a sombre time

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Hi Everyone

Today marks the 19th birthday of RestrainedElegance.com.

Given the global pandemic it feels a bit weird to be sending out a cheery message about what a wild ride it has been, celebrating our harmless little funny kinky fantasy photosets. I wasn’t even sure whether to post, let alone what to say.

I decided that I should because what is keeping me going is in large part light-escapist-fantasy books, films and TV shows. So we hope that our light-escapist-bondage and barefoot fetish fantasies will help keep you going, too. Art is important because it can keep us sane and raise our spirits, perhaps especially when it is looking a bit bleak outside.

I was going to do this anyway but it seems even more important while so many of us are on lockdown- we’re running a SAVE 50% OFFER on all purchases on our Classic Restrained Elegance and eStore shopping carts. I was going to run it for 24 hours, but instead I’ll leave it running for a full week.

Now is a great chance to catch up on sets of favourite models and themes you may have missed from the 1150 videos and 4500 photosets we have produced over the last 19 years. Go stock up and enjoy with 50% off and our immense gratitude. We hope things we make cheer you up and help you get through.

If you want to see all our latest updates on release day, memberships at RestrainedElegance.com and SilkSoles.com remain the most economical way to support us and see everything we produce. The three-month membership for RestrainedElegance.com in particular is fantastic value.

Thank you for being with us for the last 19 years, and we look forward to sharing our kinky escapist fantasies for a long time to come!

Lockdown

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The UK is heading towards lockdown, and not the sexy sort.

Ariel has just cancelled her next modelling tour. RE shoots with anyone except Ariel (and at home) are on hold until further notice.

We’ve just finished a long run of shoots and have over 18 months of video and two years of stills on disk. We were planning on a working holiday in Ireland for a month which we’ve cancelled. We’re going to have the same thing, but at home. We’re going to catch up on editing. So updates on RestrainedElegance.com and SilkSoles.com will proceed as normal. I upload the updates a month or two in advance anyway so if one or both of us gets ill the site will update as normal, so long as we don’t get it really badly.

We hope to avoid getting coronavirus, or if we do get it that we’ll have a mild case and recover. Obviously we hope the same for all of our lovely friends, colleagues and customers too! Please stay safe, follow health/government advice especially to protect vulnerable people even if you yourself are not particularly at risk.

We will be filming customs starring Ariel (and me as on-camera dom/rigger if you need me) – contact her at askarielstudio.com if you have an idea you’d like us to shoot for you.

I hope we can avoid panic-cancelling of luxury things like website memberships. Obviously we’ll completely understand if you are ill or have lost your job! But for the rest of us, the closer we can keep things to normal during the pandemic, the less the economy will collapse and the quicker society and the economy can recover afterwards. I’m going to chip in a bit more to my favourite artists and creatives for as long as I can to support them and I urge you to do likewise.

Models are likely to be switching to platforms like OnlyFans and Clips4Sale and web-camming for the duration, since they won’t be able to go to many or any photoshoots. Please consider chipping in to help your favourites if you can afford to do so. Be kind as people find new ways to work. And be patient with these big platforms if a sudden influx of newbies makes their systems a bit unreliable for a while – remember that they will be operating with reduced staff on lockdown too, and data centres and internet service providers don’t run themselves. If stuff is a bit patchy and unreliable for a bit, be kind, you don’t know what sort of stress the operators might be working under.

And I guess that’s my message to everyone: be safe, be kind to each other, support the people you can support, obey the medical and government advice, and I hope everyone stays well. We’ll do our best to cheer you up with some glamour and sexiness in the meantime.