Hi All,

This morning I read an interesting couple of tweets from @bandreesub:

“I like bondage photography. Very pretty, and all that. But – like fashion photography – it’s a little bit “not for the likes of you””

“I’d love to see some shibari on plain, normal, chubby, scarred or even – gasp! – OLDER people.”

I had some thoughts which “this margin” (i.e. a tweet) was too small to contain, especially since I was worried that the short form of this post would come across as very rude, whereas it is meant to be the absolute opposite- very enthusiastic.

The short version is: if you’re not seeing what you want to see, do something about it. Either make it yourself or pay someone else to make it for you.

And in the internet age it has never been easier to do exactly that.

Here’s the long form:

I absolutely agree that a lot of bondage photography on sees on the internet uses pretty young women as the models. The gay porn equivalent uses a lot of muscle-bound hunks, from what I can gather.

There are probably lots of reasons for this* (see footnote), but the interesting thing is that none of those reasons prevent you from going out doing something different.

If you want something that you are not seeing, it has NEVER been easier to remedy the situation. Like what, I hear you cry?

1) Find someone who does it and encourage them

Have you seen someone who does shoot shibari you like, or with models you like, but not together? Why not drop them a line and say you like their work and make a few (polite) requests for what you might like to see?

That’s how I started- I probably made quite a nuisance of myself to Subgirl Molly Matthews on the subject of barefoot bondage and bastinado, I struck up conversations with Felix Dartmouth of Archives BBS on the subject of barefoot bondage, and probably Lorelei and Ashley Renee and Bondage By Request and whole bunch of other people.

The person I know who is most likely to be interested is probably @PandoraBlake. I’m sure there are lots of people doing good stuff especially on Fetlife who might be up for this project.

If the photographer/rigger/model is really good at what they do, they might be a professional. This means that they may not be able to fold your request into their plans and shoot it for you for free, because they have to make enough money to pay the bills and eat. But many producers are very receptive to commissions.

2) Commission Something

Find someone whose work has some elements of what you like, and commission them to shoot your vision for you.

I’d be absolutely delighted to shoot this if you’d like to see a wider range of models shot in the RE style.

The costs might be lower than you think; we’d look at as a custom photoshoot and price it like any other where we’re not sure whether we’d be able to sell the resulting photos on to a wider audience.

It depends on how much the shoot will cost to stage, but also on what the possible returns on the shoot are for the photographer. If they have a ready market for it, as we do for bondage videos of Ariel, they can probably charge you cost price or even less, and the photographer will cover the cost of their time and work by selling the product more generally afterwards.

If the photographer has no ready market (as we do not for fem-dom or male-sub photos, for example) they will probably have to charge their own day rate on top. It isn’t that the market doesn’t exist by the way: it is whether you already have a presence. Fem-dom is a very big market. But the amount of work required to build a publicity and sales presence in that market is prohibitive for a cottage industry producer to do by themselves given that they already have an existing business to run. Even Clips4Sale only generates meaningful sales figures if you update daily. Connecting with the target audience for a single photoshoot or video may not be cost effective in terms of the producer’s time. So they charge their own day rate instead.

I’m not the only one who shoots commissions: you might find @JohnTisbury‘s style more to your tastes, for example. And if you fancy being the model yourself, Mighty Aphrodite are lovely and do beautiful work (and we’d be happy to go along as the rigger if you wanted more complex bondage than they are up for).

I actually started by commissioning photos- the first photo set I commissioned was when I was 18 and had just gone to University. I ordered a barefoot bondage and whipping set from a photographer who advertised in the back of Practical Photography magazine. I also ordered custom sets from several US photographers once the web took off.

3) Do It Yourself

If no-one is going to consistently make what you want to see, make it yourself.

It has never been easier. Let’s take the example of shibari with an older model. You’ll need:

A model. If you don’t know someone suitable you can persuade and you don’t want to do it yourself, I’d probably start with Fetlife.

Or if you have a look around, the model portfolio sites like PurplePort, Model Mayhem, Purestorm do have a wider variety of models that might immediately be obvious; just run a suitable search.

Or start on Twitter.

I did my first shoot with a couple I met online via their website; these days I get all my models from the portfolio sites or by them contacting me direct.

A location. If your house won’t do, hire a local photo studio if you have one, or travel to a non-local one. They’ll have lighting which the studio owner will probably be very happy to help with. I did my second shoot at a studio near where I worked. Failing that, a decent sized hotel room works fine.

A camera. These days you can get good enough to get going results out of an iPhone, but you can pick up a Canon 20D and kit lens for £150 which is more than enough to get you going.

Lights. If you’re at a studio, they’ll have some. Otherwise, a two head flash starter kit can be yours for around £200 from WEX photographic. Sure these are weedy but it’s all you need to get started shooting in a modest-sized space.

A photographer. Of course, you could just hire a photographer who would probably have their own camera and lighting kit. I work for a day rate, for example, and I’m sure many other photographers would be happy to help out with an interesting project like this. But don’t be put off, you can do it yourself, photography isn’t rocket science. Get a cheap light meter (I’ve had one of these for 15 years) to go with your flash kit and camera, set to manual, set 1/125th of second shutter and whatever the light meter tells you for aperture and you’re ready to start experimenting. Do that before anyone gets tied up, of course.

Rope. Easy to get hold of. B&Q will do to get started, or internet suppliers like Rainbow rope for coloured nylon or Twisted Monk for hemp will get you what you need.

A rigger. You can do this yourself- start simple, keep safe, and get going with something like Bondage for Sex (Chanta’s book) or one of the other bondage for beginners books. Pick someone whose style you like and go from there. Or you can hire a rigger- some photographers can rig too, @ArielAnderssen or I are happy to be booked to rig for the day, or maybe Wyk_Dave for Shibari?

We’re happy to run a bondage rope work and bondage photography tutorials if you want to learn, just drop us a line. Others run workshops, munches, etc. too of course.

A computer to process the shots. You probably have one. If you’ve got a Mac, iPhoto will do just fine. If you’ve got a PC, consider something like Lightroom which you can now pay for on a month-by-month basis which removes any significant up-front cost.

And that’s it.

I ended up at 3) myself when I realised that it was probably cheaper and better and certainly more direct for me to shoot what I wanted to see myself rather than keep commissioning shoots.

Really, whichever way you go I’d have thought £1000 or $1500 or so should be enough. It’ll either get you enough kit to get started and book your first shoot or two, or commission a shoot or two from a photographer whose work you like.

I’ve no idea how much interest there would be in shibari photographs with a wider range of models. It might be wildly commercial, with a pent-up demand from people whose artistic desires are not currently being served. Or it could be a very small niche. There’s only one way to know- make some, and see what people think.

The people who should make some are the people who want to see it. Who else can know what it is they want to see? So either as creator or as patron of the arts, if you want to see something that’s not out there right now, get stuck in!

I’m not going to go and do it myself right now. This is my job and I already have more ideas of my own that I have time and money to shoot. It’s not been an easy time for website producers over the last few years, and I think we’re all a bit cautious about sinking our own money into shoots if we’re uncertain about the returns.

Yes, that’s timid of me. Sorry. It’s my mortgage and food bills on the line. But if you are committed enough to the idea to help pay for it, I’m totally up for it.

In fact I’d be delighted to help out as photographer, rigger, or commissioned producer or just with advice and suggestions and support. If my photographic or bondage style isn’t what you’re after, I’m sure many other photographers would be just as happy to work on this.

Cheers, Hywel Phillips

Footnote: Because of Reasons

I copped out of a digression into WHY most bondage photography features pretty young girls (or hunks in gay porn) in the main post. I think it is basically just a reflection of what mainstream culture finds attractive. If anything I’d say there’s probably a greater diversity of models in fetish and spanking work than there is in the mainstream media- bondage models have much greater career longevity than their mainstream glamour comrades, for example. Lots of sites feature women in their thirties and forties, without having to bill them as “MILFs” or “Cougars” or “Grannies” (yuck- had this discussion before about the horrid terminology).

The majority of bondage photography you see around the internet is commercial bondage photography. That’s because commercial bondage photographers create more bondage than amateurs, because it is their day job. And also they have to publicise more widely, to generate sales to cover costs, generate profits to live on and to sink back into doing more shoots. So they’ve got a vested interest in getting their work in front of potential customers’ eyeballs in any way possible, which amateurs shooting for themselves have not.

So one ingredient in what you see is just what other people want to see. Specifically, what the sort of people who PAY for their bondage photography want to see.

That’s not to say that there aren’t niches not currently served where there are potential paying customers waiting for someone to deliver what they want so they can hand over their money. Maybe they are just waiting for a producer to make more diverse films, as Pandora Blake has neatly proved with Dreams Of Spanking.

The other ingredient, which also reflects the mainstream concept of attractiveness, is what the photographers and artists want to make. I don’t know of a single bondage photographer who didn’t start doing it as a hobby, shooting exactly what they wanted to see. Since most of us started some time in our thirties and are heterosexual males, it’s probably no great surprise that the overwhelming majority of bondage photography models are exactly what you’d expect if you asked a bunch of thirty-something heterosexual men to pick a model’s photo out of a great scrolling list of model head shots.

Or that if you ask a gay photographer what he’d like to shoot, with his own money, you end up with a lot of muscle-bound hunks.

So to widen the demographic of models you probably need to widen the demographic of customers and of photographers. Which again brings us to the point: if you don’t see art you like, do something about it. Either create art you want to see yourself, or commission someone to help bring your vision to life.

Are YOU willing to sink a thousand pounds of your own money into making the bondage photographs you want to see?

If you’re not willing to do that, and other people with the same tastes aren’t willing to do it either, there won’t be any of the sort of art you want. You’ll be stuck with the output of people who ARE willing to sink their own time and money into creating the photographs.