Oh no. Did I really put that Hammerlock set up before? Are you sure it wasn’t as part of the lexicon of bondage positions? A few shots from it will have appeared before in the lexicon, but it certainly wasn’t my intention to put a previously-seen set up as if it were new.

If I did that please accept my apologies, it was a mistake and should not have happened. There’s a video with a similar name, it isn’t that you’re thinking of?

I’ve looked through and it doesn’t SEEM like I’ve put that set up before. Just some shots from it as part of the lexicon.

My filing system isn’t foolproof- could anyone else confirm? If I have posted it before I’ll put up a bonus set ASAP to make up for it… and please accept my apologies!

In theory (assuming I don’t cock it up), all sets not marked as archive are new. Sometimes, I will have posted a few shots from a new set in advance of the full set being published- either as off-the-camera previews on forum, twitter or blog, or very occasionally where a whole bunch of sets form part of a larger feature like the lexicon.

Once a set has had its initial run on the site (they stay up for six months after they are first posted), it goes into the rotation for the archives.

I queue up the old sets for a new run on the site in the archives section.

When they go up on the archives section, they again have a six-month run on the site.

They’ll come up again in the archives at a later date, with the more popular sets appearing again sooner than less popular sets.

The other thing which I know causes confusion is that sets often go up a long time after they were shot- sometimes years after. So the date stamps on the photo meta-data are not a good guide to when the set first appeared on the site.

We do this purely for the sake of variety. If we didn’t do that the sets would be very monotonous- so after we shot the lexicon, there would have been nothing but sets of Ariel on a white backdrop for three months on the site. When we do a location trip, there would be nothing but shots of (say) Sophia Smith and Ariel in a country house for two months. Personally, I prefer greater variety, so I only put up one or two sets from a given shoot each month- so instead you’ll see a set of Hannah Claydon then a set of Katy then a set of Ariel then a set of Natalia Forrest, etc.. But it does mean that sometimes stuff shot eg in Norway with Ariel and Katy still hasn’t been on the site years after the shoot date, and potentially years after a preview pic or two was posted.

It’s a balance. I sometimes have a clear-out to try to make sure I don’t have too many old sets left to process.

I hope that makes sense?

If you are filing your personal collection according to shoot date, file creation date etc. it might look very different from the dates the sets went up on the site?

One thing I wished I’d done when designing the database for the site was keep track of the date the set first appeared. We didn’t think of it, so there’s 14 years worth of updates which don’t have that information. We’ve got a related datum- the date the set was first added to the database, usually a month or two in advance of the date it went “live” on the site.

Unfortunately even that only works for sets added since 2007, when we started using the current database. For older sets I’d have to go through by hand and figure it out- since even the camera metadata is lacking from the older sets, so you can’t even necessarily figure it out from the metadata or the file creation dates.

And nothing would work for the sets shot on slide film other than seeing if I can go all the way back to the earliest update schedules of the site to figure out when sets first went up, or find my 13-year-old diary to find out when I shot something.

With over 4100 sets shot over the years it would be a huge task, so I’ve never attempted it.

Best regards,

Hywel

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by  Hywel.

FWIW, I’ve got three “hammerlock” sets downloaded from RE: One is “misseychinesehammerlock1” (Missey in a chinese dress), one is “videoarielhammerlock1” (Ariel on a bed), and the third is “ariellexiconhammerlock1” (the most recent of the three; Ariel against the white cyc background).

And on further checking, you did put a couple of the lexicon hammerlock photos up in the set “lexicon3”

I’ll note that I like the hammerlock tie: It may be just as strict & stressful as the reverse-prayer, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much. So let me put in my nudge for RE making more use of them.