Author Archives: Hywel

About Hywel

Particle physicist turned fetish photographer, producer and director. I run http://www.restrainedelegance.com and http://www.elegancestudios.com together with my wife, who is variously known as Ariel Anderssen or Amelia Jane Rutherford, depending on whether she's getting tied up or spanked at the time.

Sexy silk soles ideas!

Is it OK to like Erotica and Bondage?

5 Replies

Added 10th October 2017

Well, damn. In the three years since I wrote this, the situation seems to have gone from bad to worse. A “social conservative” backlash seems to be pushing back at equality in the west and more generally in the world. This has horrified me and, I must admit, made me a bit less comfortable shooting BDSM. It’s getting harder for me to be comfortable with the idea that female submissive BDSM is OK for play because we don’t act like that in the real world when demonstrably a fair number of shit-bags DO act quite like that in the real world.

Which makes it even more important for those of us with some sort of platform to make it clear how unacceptable we find discriminatory behaviour towards any group of human beings. Not on grounds of colour, gender, or anything else.

The thing that gives me hope is that I think this is a last hurrah, a desperate rear-guard action from the bigots before they are properly overwhelmed by the tides of history. Let’s all do our bit to keep the pressure up.

Original post

Hi All,

There’s been a lot of thought provoking stuff recently about every-day sexism, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A . Human being are clearly prone to discrimination, and one of the most deep-seated forms of discrimination is gender or sexual identity based.

I didn’t used to have very much time for the “all porn is bad” point of view. The more I see of the world, the more I realise where some of these protests are coming from. I believe they are misguided, but I have sympathy for the point of view.

Sexism is deeply ingrained in our media reporting. A male MP can attend cabinet without the newspapers feeling the need to comment on his hotness or lack thereof. Whilst I disagree with Esther McVey on almost every policy and opinion she holds, it is deeply wrong that her appointment to cabinet was hailed like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2692722/Watch-Theresa-theres-fashionista-Downing-Street-Esther-McVey-makes-big-impression-arrives-Prime-Minister.html
not just by the Mail, but by almost every news report.

Is it OK that RestrainedElegance.com and SilkSoles.com present pretty young women, made up to look attractive?

I can see why it may not seem so from the outside. We know that we are ethical producers of erotic art. But we don’t tend to bang on about it, and maybe we should.

The models are paid (significantly higher paid per hour that they work for the site than anyone else involved in production). They are self-employed freelance professional women in successful careers.

The stories we enact are done in fun, in the spirit of roleplays between consenting adults. Shoot days are fun. We often lose shoot time from the giggles. Models are not forced or bribed or cajoled to do anything; they show up, have a hopefully fun creative shoot, get paid and go on to their next professional assignment.

There are arguments which trouble me.

It troubles me that we might be perpetuating the idea that a female person’s worth is primarily to be judged by her physical attractiveness, as rated by a 40-something white heterosexual man.

It troubles me that some idiots on twitter appear to be a bit hazy about the dividing line between respectful fan comments and sexual harassment.

It troubles me that my own sexuality is sufficiently unadventurous that I seem to be unable to do a really good job of creating art which lies considerably outside it (although I’ve greatly enjoyed the opportunities to shoot it with other producers when I’ve been able to).

The main thing that troubles me though is the realisation that I grew up in an anomalous bubble of time and place and society in which sexual equality was taken as a given.

My mother, although she would never recognise herself in the description, is a true Renaissance liberated woman of the 1960’s wave of female equality. When she wasn’t given interesting enough work to do in her first job at an aircraft designer, she stormed in to see her boss and made them give her something more challenging. She did a Pure Maths degree as a mature student, and worked part-time all through to retirement as a computer analyst and troubleshooter working with University researchers on cutting edge projects like early finite element analysis software for civil engineering.

She and my father had calmly and rationally decided how to divide up the responsibilities of raising a family and working full-time, and clearly have nothing but the greatest of love and respect for each other.

As a University kid in a University town in the 1970s, this was the norm. Friends’ families were like that too. And being Welsh, there was less social stratification and class bias than in England, I now realise.

Put together the kids of these University families in a single school, mostly in one or two classes, and the idea of gender equality was definitely the norm. I vividly recall the short shrift given to a (female) Royal Navy recruiter by (female) students who tried to defend why the Navy wouldn’t allow her to serve on a battleship. We had very progressive schooling, including classes on morals and social responsibility where many of these issues were discussed, led by teachers who also entirely embraced sexual equality.

I now realise that the rest of the world wasn’t like that then, isn’t like that now. It may not even be like that back home these days, I don’t know. The glass ceiling hasn’t fallen, women are still under-represented in many walks of life, and most shamefully underpayment for doing the same work as a male colleague is still a routine reality of life.

For me, it seemed entirely reasonable to enjoy bondage and fetish games where one real-life equal partner chooses to play a submissive role and one chooses to play a dominant role. It doesn’t impact on their equality, because I just assumed that in real life they are equal. Different, but of equal worth.

I still do think it is reasonable. But you have to really mean the equality thing, deep down, right down to your heart. If you don’t, I question whether it is really OK to play out the roles in bondage games.

If I had been brought up in a setting where sexual discrimination was the norm, I doubt I’d feel as sanguine about BDSM and erotica.

Similarly, I try very hard not to judge a person by their sex or by their appearance. I’m far from perfect at it; millions of years of evolution have gone into making me notice pretty girls. I can’t really help that.

What I can help is what I do about it. Not staring, for a start, and definitely not cat calling or slut shaming or judging a politician by their perceived hotness instead of their professed policies.

I’m aware that by running Restrained Elegance and Silk Soles I might be perpetuating the problem.

That’s why I try to explain what I am doing, why our stories are more than “I saw this slut on the street and I just had to tie her up and fuck her”. (It was Kate who came up with that – she said if our stories were like that, she’s not be happy to work with us).

RE and SS shoots are fun, collegiate, collaborative, friendly and cheerful. It’s just that some of the stories we like to tell are a bit cops-and-robbers, damsel-in-distress. It’s OK, because we all buy in to the shared fantasy in its correct, mutually agreed context. And by describing the models as valued artistic collaborators. If you ever see a word like “slut” or “bitch” on our sites it will be in the context of a character, and most often just one character accusing another of acting like a bitch, rather than “this fucking bitch deserved it”.

I’m delighted that there are some female-gaze erotica sites, BDSM sites with a wider variety of gender roles, wider variety of body types, and all sorts of things. If times were less tight, I’d probably run several mini-sites exploring some of those aspects myself, even though I don’t think I’d be very good at it. I’m very keen to collaborate with others and reach understanding of other niches and fetishes and orientation- which is at least part of the rationale behind running the British Fetish Film Festival, too.

So my current thought is that yes, looking at erotica, BDSM or fetish material of whatever flavour and orientation you happen to like is absolutely fine and healthy… so long as you genuinely do realise it is a game for fun, and there’s no malice in your heart, no sneaking disdain for the performers in the porn you like, no thinking that your fetish and your orientation is the “right” one, the “natural” one, the one true way.

Be a bit vigilant about your thinking and you can enjoy your artwork, erotica, roleplaying, videos, photos and whatever you like with a clear conscience. (Oh, just so long as you support its production and don’t pirate it.)

Regards,

Hywel

Killed it stone dead for me…

8 Replies

Hi Everyone,

Does anything kill a website stone dead for as soon as you get through the door?

I started my own site because no-one was making exactly what I wanted to see. Lots of people were making interesting stuff, and lots of people still are. I still join websites that I like. I joined a couple recently, solo model foot fetish sites that looked fun. The photos on both sites looked nice.

One site had nicely arranged sets in ZIP files so I could download them. The other had some ghastly Flash-based gallery system. So not only no ZIP files, but I couldn’t even easily set a web spider to download galleries I liked.

That killed the second site stone dead for me. They’ve got years and years worth of content… but I’m never going to see it. Even though I’ve paid for it. It’s just too frigging painful obtaining the photos in a suitable form to view where and when I want to view them. They had an option to download the videos but I prefer stills.

I’ve explained before the dilemma that all adult websites face to balance the bandwidth bills with the membership fees. That’s why we have a rotating members’ archive rather than leaving every set from the last 13 plus years up all the time. It’s not an ideal solution, but it reminded me that there are worse ones!

This could be why that second site is set up that way: making it difficult to just grab everything or flick quickly through sets is one of the ways websites try to limit each members’ bandwidth usage. Or maybe it is some idea of “You want to see the pics? You need to stay a member FOREVER”, which I think is misguided. It’s a little incoherent with being able to download the videos. Maybe they think that people will use less bandwidth downloading videos once rather than repeatedly streaming it to watch it every time? Videos are big compared with stills. Maybe they are right, I don’t know their usage patterns or their business strategy.

What I hope that it is a misguided attempt to make the site user friendly by presenting photosets in nice galleries to click through shot by shot. Maybe I’m unusual in preferring to download the lot and do that on my local machine, flicking between shots with only the delay from a fast SSD rather than having to download the next picture each time by manual intervention. I spent too long at the computer already- when I’m signing up to something fun like a website, I want it to make it easy for me.

Whatever the reason, it killed that site stone dead for me, which is a shame because I was looking forward to seeing, saving and enjoying their work. Sad face.

The first site had a daily download limit, which was mildly annoying, but since the limit was quite generous I downloaded all the stuff I was interested in in a couple of days. I only joined for a month but if they keep producing fun new stuff I’ll very likely go back.

I’ll never go back to the other site. So they’ve potentially lost a fair amount of money, and I’ve not got value for money from my one-and-only membership of their site, either.

I have two questions for you.

1) Is there anything that kills a site stone dead for you? I mean flaws on legitimate sites, not rip-off sites which don’t provide what they advertise. (Those I’d ask for a refund/chargeback for- I haven’t needed to in YEARS).

2) Is there anything about any of our sites which kills it stone dead for you?

I’ve tried to make our sites support the way I like to use sites I join myself, but you may prefer to use them a different way. If I’ve made it impossible for you to do so, I’d really like to know about it. So if you could post a reply here it would be much appreciated!

Cheers, Hywel

British Fetish Film Festival – 21st February 2015

1 Reply

Hi Everyone,

Sorry we went so quiet on the idea for a British Fetish Film Festival. We decided to move house (and country) at the start of this year and we put off organising it until we got settled.

We’ve moved, we’re settled, so now we’re organising the festival!

We plan to hold the event in Welshpool, Mid-Wales, on 21st February.

Train and road links are pretty good- we’re only an hour from Liverpool or Manchester, an hour and a half from Birmingham, and it’s not too cruddy even from London (especially on the train). Sorry we couldn’t be further north for the Scottish contingent, but it’s the best we can do 😉

We’ve found a venue who are happy to host us, we’ve got plans for how we want to run the event.

We’ll have a session for film-makers (the proposed theme of the first one is “how to make your fetish videos
look more cinematic”) and a session where we watch a bunch of fetish films. Everyone is welcome to come to both sessions, but if you’ve got no interest at all in making films you might just want to come to the screening session.

Watch this space for details of venue and prices very shortly!

The event will be invitation-only, but if you’ve got a strong interest in fetish films or film-making just drop us a line.

Exciting!

Not for the likes of me

3 Replies

Hi All,

This is a reply in the on-going conversation with @bandreesub that started on Twitter. See earlier posts here and here.

The first bondage shoot I did was with a lifestyle BDSM couple who ran one of the very earliest British bondage sites. I remember the male/top/photographer explaining that what he found sexy was the SITUATION. The way in which she was tied, the loss of her freedom, the pain she was experiencing. That the identity of the submissive was at best secondary to the situation in which she found herself.

This was very useful for me because it triggered the realisation that what I wanted to do was the absolute opposite. For me, the identity of the submissive was the critical thing. I didn’t want to make photos of any old person tied up- I wanted it to be the duchess, the princess, the movie star, Ashley Renee or Andrea Neal.

I know of course that those people are fictional- even Ashley Renee or Andrea Neal is only the stage name or scene persona of the real person. But that’s fine. I’m a romantic at heart. My work is romantic fiction.

So I care more about the story and the identity and personality of the submissive in the romantic fantasy world that I do about realism. I care more about making sure the model looks at her best in bondage than portraying her ordeal.

My approach opens my work up to the charge of being “Bondage Lite”. It’s true that we avoid completely immobilising the model, because then she can’t pose or find different poses, and can’t generate the 40+ photos customers demand of a website update. (Unlike buying a single dramatic photo for your wall, for example).

We also use masks and blindfolds sparingly because the eyes are the windows of the soul and eyes are powerful tools in an actress’ storytelling arsenal.

Other sites clearly emphasise the situation over the person. A lot of stuff produced by Kink.com, for example, or House of Gord. Not that they aren’t crediting the models – just that the most important thing is what’s happening to her, not who she is.

That’s great, if that’s your preference. It doesn’t happen to be mine – I don’t want to feel that the girl is in any way interchangeable. Because in my head she’s the Princess or the Pirate Queen or the Winter Witch or the vicious CEO getting her comeuppance. Identity trumps situation, for me.

What sometimes does annoy me is to take it a step further and say that because we’ve done everything in our power to romanticise the photos, choosing bondage positions that flatter the model’s figure and work with how she poses best, lit as beautifully as we can, in a romantic setting… that the bondage is somehow fake. Not real. Maybe lacks conviction, as @bandreesub says. That, I must take issue with.

It’s a real girl, and she’s really tied up, and she’ll really have rope marks to show for it, and that’s a real ball-gag, and it’s just as hard for her to cope with as it would be for anyone else. They might make it look easy, but it isn’t. It’s as real as any other bondage photo that was created for art… and anything more real was probably a criminal act, not something we should consider.

We won’t tie a reverse prayer or an elbows-together tie on someone who finds it borderline impossible to hold. So you will see those ties done repeatedly with models with narrower shoulders and longer arms, where girls with broader shoulders will get tied in box much more often. It looks better on them and it is safer to tie. Even in the relatively narrow range of body shapes we shoot, there are massive variations.

There is a reverse prejudice that one also hears fairly commonly in the media and online as a reaction to the ridiculous over-representation of particular body types in fashion, porn or commercial modelling… that something is for “REAL women”.

I get where this is coming from, I really do. The fashion industry in particular is grotesque in its narrow-minded pursuit of a single, extreme body type.

But saying that the women in the shots aren’t REAL is not fair either. They are real people, they get real back ache and real knee problems and get every bit as upset when people say horrible things to them as anyone else does.

My wife is a professional model and she’s every bit as real as any other person. Her physical type is closer to some of the ones commonly used for commercial work- although actually she’s too tall for fashion and nothing from the high street fits her. Waists are always under her bust and there’s no such thing as an ankle-length skirt, jeans that come down to her shoes or full-length sleeves.

My previous partner is very outdoorsy and slim, but quite short with a long back and short legs and nothing ever fits her either.

So one might imagine looking at them that fashions would be exactly for the likes of them- but it turns out, not so much. What I think we really need here is not just a broadening of the range of body shapes fashion companies use in their advertising, but also a broadening of the range of body shapes they actually make clothes for.

Here I would say the bondage world is actually in a better state than the fashion industry. If what you want to buy is bondage gear, you can get it in a wide variety of styles and sizes. Actually the main issue we have is getting bondage gear small enough to fit- we invariably have to punch extra holes in straps. But even so, custom-made equipment is readily available, and much closer in cost to the off-the-peg versions than is the case with mainstream fashion.

To return to @bandreesub’s point, I would say that the bondage equipment manufacturers do a good job of catering to all shapes and sizes. I think that’s because all shapes and sizes actually buy bondage gear to use, so they have to.

What is demonstrably not so well covered is portraying that wide variety of body shapes in bondage photography. Clearly, for female submissive imagery, the overwhelming majority of images one encounters browsing random bondage photos for free feature models who are dress size 8-14 women under the age of 40.

It’s better than fashion photography. There are sites out there featuring a wider range of shapes and sizes, and amateurs of Fetlife feature a wider variety too. But yes, if you google Bondage Photography what comes up is a bunch of dress size 8-14 girls under the age of 40. My strong suspicion remains that this is just what the people who are willing to actually PAY for bondage photos will pay to see.

It’s not meant to be exclusionary. It’s unfortunate that people feel excluded by it. But it is a by-product of who is willing to pay to make the art- it’s the market at work. Long ago people discovered that to sell magazines to men, put a pretty young woman on the cover. To sell to women… put a pretty young woman on the cover. It is possible, certainly, to buck the trend. Magazines with steam trains on the cover do sell. (But allegedly not as well as they used to sell when they had pretty girls and steam trains on the cover).

So it comes back to the point about paying for art. Breaking it down, @badreesub wants something pretty but not too pretty, realistic but not amateurish, well-lit but not so well lit as to become too perfect, not too graphic, and featuring a model who will make her feel like the bondage is for the likes of her. Evocative of the intensity of the moment but not overproduced (to her tastes).

I think one will agree that’s quite a specific set of requirements. So I’d again encourage anyone who finds their artistic needs not currently being served to reach out and commission someone to bring your vision to life with you, or take up the camera and make some yourself. I think it could be absolutely splendid, and might broaden consumer’s horizons and mean there will be more of it around. Someone has to be the pioneer.

I’d still be happy to give it a go, but suspect that the critical difference between the focus on the girl, or the focus on her situation, makes my work the antithesis of what @bandreesub is looking for.

Parenthetically not all of my ideas are terribly commercial either- Georgian ladies always bombs horribly (apparently Jane Austen fans are not bondage buyers, who knew?), historical stuff in general doesn’t go down so well, and where I have ideas I have to moderate it to the commercial realities and shoot with models who will sell rather than the actress I’d ideally cast for each role, given that we have to produce 5-8 sets every day we shoot. So I do them, but compromise on them.