Bizarre Searches

I haven't checked my blog's performance on Google Analytics in a while. After seeing a few stats, I decided to see what are some search terms that lead readers to this blog. There were 203 unique searches leading to my blog. Many make sense. Here are some of the funny ones, the awkward ones, and even a scary one or two and my comments on them.

• Sensual Experiment Help ( I like that one... count me in for that experiment!)
• Model Mayhem See Through (See through what??? Ohh that "See through!")
• The avatar sexiness model mayhem (no comment)
• Sensual (pretty happy that one worked for someone to find my blog!)
• "how people look at art" ( I ask that question all the time)
• Private music of wicked words ( I want to hear that song)
• Anne Geddes (arghh.. my photographic nemesis!)
• Asian Massage (oh yeah... I forgot about that post)
• awesome short film paris car speeding (great movie!)
• becoming a masochist (that one hurt!)
• body painting men think 7 seconds (umm.. no clue on that one)
• crotch shot in hamlet 2 (so absurd it is funny)
• how to trigger sensual feelings from a memory (I want to write a post about that!)
• masturbate 2257 (2257 is not sexy to masturbate to)
• obsessed with sex (yes)
• pubic hair resurgence (DR.L WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE!!)
• sensual gay black and white photos (I would take them and post them here!)
• sensual intercourse pictures (I would take them too!)
• sensual poems he fucks me (not too sensual)
• sensual scraps (very intriguing idea!)
• sensual zen in washington dc (it was a good trip)
• slow sensuous sex movies (interesting idea... maybe not porn.. would be great to see!)
  
• threesomesmmf (heh... none of that here)
• when a partner says, "I ache" (never thought to do a search on that)
• "8th grade" "d cups" (that one creeps me out and is pretty fucked up.)
  

Anyway... interesting searches.

I need to get this type of divorce too!

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager. -

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The Photographic Chasms - Parts 1 and 2

Ying and Yang

Photo by SB

PART 1 Aug 10th

In recent posts, Stephen Haynes asked deep questions about his recent photo shoot and the role the photographer plays in it. As I read it, I am getting depressed about my own photography.

Fire Dancer 2
Photo by SB

When I photograph something, I am separating myself from the subject. I am the first viewer. I am recording the moment, but am not necessarily part of it. The more intense the photo, more I am

separated by the chasm between subject and photographer. Think of it this way, if I am setting up each pose and all the props in a photo, I am very involved with the content and the photo (see Ying and Yang). If I am recording a moving moment of independent minds, whether it be a fighter jet (see Poetry), a fire dancer (see Fire Dancer2), or two lovers together (see A Taste), I am very detached from the content other than to try to capture it.

Poetry

Photo by SB

A Taste
Leila and Hana - Photo by SB

While reading Stephen's questions about the photographer's role, I felt nauseous. I do not blame him at all for this. He is forcing me to look at myself in a deep way that terrifies me of my own motivations. Am I truly creating art or am I intruding on something very private and so personal? Am I trying to satiate something deep in me that is not for the sake of photography, but to just get a thrill. This is throwing me into a creative war with my own intentions as both an artist and human with sexual, emotional, and physical needs.

PART 2 August 12th

The emotional hurt I felt on the 10th surprised me and made me look deep into why I photograph what I do. What was my motivation for capturing the images I did? Are they true to art, erotica, and honor the subject appropriately?

My fear and anguish was discovering that there is a part of me that did get an ethereal erotic pleasure from photographing Leila and Hana and every other model who I've worked with. Even though I felt little or no arousal during the photo sessions, I felt it while planning and printing/editing the images. Was I only creating my own masturbatory materials and needing to add a new experience notch to my life belt?

After some deep introspection on this and reading Stephen and Dr. L's posts on the subject and all the comments to their writings, I am finding some answers for myself. They are not easy to accept yet, but they are becoming clearer.

Is it acceptable for me, the photographer, to have self-serving interests at a prurient level? If "yes," can it still be art and are the motives debasing the value of the work or adding to it? These two questions summarize what I need to answer. I will return to these later.

Part of the reason I am struggling so deeply with these answers was due to my own lust at the moment. What is funny, it wasn't a sexual lust. It was a lust to photograph and to release my creativity.

I have not lifted my camera since my photo class ended a few weeks ago. I haven't edited any photos. I thought I needed a break before my next class started. When I saw Stephen's photos of Brooke and Erin, I felt the deep emotions of lust, artistic respect, artistic jealousy, disdain for my work, and a loss as I felt left behind as others moved on. I also felt some personal pain due to the subject of the photo that is my own personal issue and not a judgment on the content.

Variations on a Photo - The Garage Studio

Photo by SB

Yesterday I was mulling over these emotions and decided to work on my recent photos of Candace. Within a second of my first action on one image, an hour went by. I felt something had changed so I quickly went to Stephen's blog again and reread it and viewed the photos. My answers were clearer, his photos inspired me, and I knew I had discovered something about myself. I need to continually work on my art or I get pent up anxiety for the creative release. Abstaining from art is as difficult and damaging for me as abstaining from sex.

Variations on a Photo - Landscape from a Portrait

Photo by SB

So, what are the answers to those questions from above? They are not fully answered yet and they may change and evolve as I do, but here are my responses for now.

Is it acceptable for me, the photographer, to have self-serving interests at a prurient level? YES

If "yes," can it still be art and are the motives debasing the value of the work or adding to it? As I mentioned in a comment on Stephen’s blog…

The beauty of it (erotic sappho photos) is art, erotica, and all of the other characteristics you mentioned. It can also be pornographic, exploitative, and both objectifying and degrading to the subjects. For me, what determines the outcome is largely due to the intent of all of the participants; photographer, models, and the viewer.

If my motive is purely for my own sexual satisfaction, my product is probably not art. Dr. L. put it best in her blog yesterday when she quoted from Kenneth Clark's The Nude. The quote is his answer to whetherart can have an erotic message in it and still be art.

Clark definitively says: "...no nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow - and if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgment of what is known as 'pure form' is inevitably influenced by it; and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot lie hidden... the amount of erotic content a work of art can hold in solution is very high.”

Variations on a Photo - Still Not There

Photo by SB

Artists must feel the emotions they are trying to communicate through their art. If I am going to make art showing the oppression of religious freedom, I need to feel anger and seek justice through my work for it to be genuine and powerful. To make art that has erotic content, I must feel the erotic emotions and feelings I want to convey in the piece. In this way, I am giving my art some authenticity in its message. If the photo did not make me feel and react, then what is the point? My job as an artist is to use my vision and the beautiful contributions of the models and/or subjects to make the photo rise to becoming art.

PHOTO NOTE: Ying and Yang - I know for this to be true to the title one of the models needs to be black or a man, or a black man. That was one of the first critiques I got on this photo when I posted it online at a photo forum. This is one of my favorite photos I have taken. I don't brag about my work often and will let it speak for itself. This photo is art to me. Whenever I post it online, this photo gets more comments than the more explicit photos of Hanna and Leila. Just curious, on the erotic scale of 1 (none) to 10 (get me a cigarette) how would you rate it? I give it a 3.

So, if you have a better name for it than Ying and Yang, I am open to it. I offered that at another site and someone suggested Ying and Yank... I don't think he got the artistic point.

The Onanistic Self

Other Thoughts

Photo by SB

First, a poem by Joseph J. Capista

Playboy's Guide to Lingering

We read lingerie as lingering.
An innocent mistake, yes, though
we didn't dally in Patel's humid
newsstand amid hanks of cigared
tobacco and men in coveralls logger-
heading with the Pennsylvania Lotto
to expand our budding tongues
but to confuse the single shelf
of cryptograms and crosswords
with the candied shelves of pornos.
Despite our lousy decoding, we
proved adept disrobers, kid-minds
keen to peel what we'd later call satin
from skin like we peeled bright, waxy
clementines slipped in our stockings,
our reward for a year of skirting Satan.
Nonchalant as bubble gum, we thumbed
them cover to cover, lingered, elbowed
one another while we dittoed each
sweet image deep in memory's folds:
love's coy postures, saddle-stapled.
And that is how we imagined
it would be for us on those winter
afternoons: flimsy resistance, a finger's
steady pressure, the split of soft fruit.
We'd puzzle over language later.
For now, we had more important
things on our hands to misread.

Today, I am going to write about alone time. I mean that type of "alone" time. We all do it. Some of us treat each occurrence as a sensual ceremony. Some treat it with about as much passion as brushing their teeth. Sadly, some feel deep shame about it (side note... they should not feel shame about masturbation, but where they do it and what they are fantasizing about may be another issue).
I can't remember the first time I touched myself in any sensual way. I do remember my first climax from doing it though. I was thirteen and found one of my older brother's Playboys that he didn't take to college. When the climax ended... my life changed. I had never experienced anything so internally powerful, intense, or wonderful. It almost hurt, but I knew I wanted to do it again. There was some deep primal urge to want that. For me, I think that was truly a day I started to become a man and a human.
The physical product of it was a big surprise. In sex education, the teacher had mentioned ejaculate, but just what it contained and that it would happen. In some way, the full mental, soulful, and both body-physical as well as physical relic of the moment made it complete. There is something sensually important about all parts of it, including the cleaning up.

Since that day almost three decades ago, I still desire it. It is the only routine activity in life that I deeply enjoy. Dinner may be a distant second. Sleep is OK when I don't have night terrors. I can't consider intercourse as routine because it depends on participation of another.

For me, the greatest reward is not the end, but the journey. Whether it is fantasy-based, visually inspired, spontaneously enjoyed, shared with another person beside me, or whatever it brings, the build-up is the ultimate pleasure.
Since masturbation is a type of sex, my tastes for it and intercourse are similar. It is all about the journey. I love a long erotic journey as much as I like the quick, intensely passionate sessions.
We all have triggers, stimuli, and needs that make us take this solitary journey. Mine are mostly visual like the things I mentioned in Those Simple Little Things. They include a scent, a memory, a sound, a voice, a setting, or most anything can send me along my way was well. Being a sensual (and/or very horny) guy, it doesn't take much of a trigger. I wonder what are triggers for others.
Some common things that must happen during the session. Even if it is a photo of a stranger that starts the journey, I must have some connection to the person other than that. It could be as simple as a shared glance on the bus, a deep conversation, worked together, ongoing correspondence, and other personal interactions. For this reason, I never had a movie star play a role in the "monent" except one who I met at an event. We shook hands and chatted for fifteen seconds. That was enough.
As mentioned above, alone time does not have to be alone for me. Some of the most intimately deep moments with a person were both of us together doing that. You have to feel very comfortable with the person to share that. I think intercourse is easier and less personal.

Life Ratios

Vitruvian Man
Leonardo DaVinci

I just heard an interesting NPR story about a new cookbook , Ratio, teaching the basics of cooking through ratios. It does not teach you how to spice or determine flavors. This book teaches how to make the basics by the ratios of simple ingredients. For example: Pie dough - 3-2-1. 3 parts flour, 2 parts butter, 1 part water.

In the story they made a quiche. With the basic ratios, you get a basic quiche. The fun part is now you can experiment with spices, veggies, bacon, mushrooms, whatever you want to put into it. Talk about an interesting concept. I wonder how it applies to life.

So many creative endeavors these days have very precise recipes for how to do them. If you want to paint something, you can get paint by numbers which pinpoints every exact color and placement. If you want to learn music, there are so many detail-heavy guitar and piano learning systems that teach you how to play certain songs.

I wonder if we are getting to discrete in our learning of the arts? In photography, I can find things called "setting up the perfect portrait." and many other techniques that teach a very specific setup. Use your camera on this setting. Set the tripod up like this. Put one light at 45 degrees above and to the side of the subject and then the other on down and to the opposite side. I guess those are good for learning lighting basics, but God, I hate exact methods for taking a photo.

A friend of mine got hired by a photography company to take graduation pics during the local university commencement. They had very tight procedures for exactly how to take the photo. I know they wanted to control the output and to minimize set up time between students, but it took the soul out of the photos. I would have quit after a day.

I celebrate the basic premise of this book. It is very important to learn fundamentals in any endeavor. Through a solid foundation, you can experiment and try new things to make it uniquely yours.

So, what are life's ratios? Are there basic ratios that we can apply and experiment with in our daily living? Would they be too limiting? How about the daily ratio of: 2 parts work, 2 parts sleep, 1 part eating, 1part chores and recreation? What you do during any of those parts is your choice, but overall the ratio is successful.

Another fun one, the perfect date: 2 parts dinner and fine wine or some other activity of choice, 1 part dessert, a pinch of looking into eachothers' eyes, 1 part of listening per person, two pinches of ... pinching, 1 part stroll along a romantic place of choice, 1 part deep kissing, 3 parts foreplay, 2 parts sex, flavor with love and intimacy to taste. Is that too limiting?

I am kind of mocking the life ratios thing, but maybe there are true life ratios that help keep things in balance. I would prefer to live by ratios than recipes. Can you think of any life recipes or ratios?

Most Cleanly Alive

Because only when you fuck is everything that you dislike in life and everything by which you are defeated in life purely, if momentarily, revenged. Only then are you most cleanly alive and most cleanly yourself. It’s not the sex that’s the corruption - it’s the rest.

— Phillip Roth, The Dying Animal

So true. In vino veritas (in wine [there is] the truth). In sex, there is absolution? Can sex be another form of baptism that cleanses our being? If that is true, then I need a really good baptism.

Found this quote through a link at Any Fucking Day to another blog called, Nightmare Brunette.

David Found the Answers to Hamlet's Questions

I learned today of David Carradine's death. From early reports, it looks like it was suicide. Carradine was not the greatest actor, but he was one that I liked.

In a recent post I wrote about Hamlet's soliloquey "To be or not to be." If Carradine's death was by his own hands, then I guess he answered so many of the questions Hamlet pondered. He knows the undiscovered country.

"But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will..."

Here are a few quotes from an interview with Carradine in 2004.

"You're probably witnessing the last time I will ever answer those questions," Carradine said. "Because this is a regeneration. It is a renaissance. It is the start of a new career for me.

"It's time to do nothing but look forward."

I hope he is regenerating.

In my mind, his best work was this scene from Kill Bill 2. If you haven't noticed, my blog profile pic has always been a photo from this scene.

If you have not seen the movie, Uma's character (Beatrix Kiddo) was an assasin working for and the lover of David's character (Bill). She discovers she is pregnant with Bill's daughter and goes into hiding. This is the scene of her wedding rehearsal and where Bill finds her.

The cinematography is beautiful. Uma and David's chemistry are perfect.

To Be or Not To Be...

My Type of Place

Photo by SB

... that is the question.

Not long ago I quoted part of Hamlet’s famous “To be, or not to be” bit from Hamlet 3/1 written by William Shakespeare in a comment in Joe and Dr. L’s blog. Joe was writing about dreams and it made me think about the line.

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub

I know Hamlet was contemplating the benefits of suicide at the moment, but I was not making a comment about suicide on the post. It was just a line I thought of for that moment. Since then I've read these famous lines over a dozen times. Each time I get something new from them.

I suffer from sleep walking and night terror dreams. Every night I sleep: perchance to dream. Many nights my dreams and sleep are peaceful, frivolous and sometimes fun. Other nights, not so great: ay, there’s the rub for me. Which will it be tonight?

It has been 23 years since I really looked at this famous speech, soliloquy, or whatever its literary term is. I was a junior in high school and had lived through a close friend’s suicide (you can read about Laura’s death here). I read this play in my humanities class. Back then, I didn’t see Laura’s death relating to these famous lines. Now that I’ve added some life experience to my mix, I still don’t know if these thoughts went through her head before she jumped off the cliff.

Occasionally, I contemplate suicide. I don’t think I suffer from depression, but sometimes I wonder if my existence needs to exist. As I read through Hamlet’s contemplation over the issue, I deeply understand his questions for I ask them of myself.

... To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. I wonder if my friend Laura felt this overwhelming need to end those thousand natural shocks.

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

I don’t usually feel weary, but I feel life can be dreary and empty of fire and passion. When I feel this, I wonder if there is any worth or meaning in my efforts to accomplish anything. I question if my accomplishments even have meaning beyond my existence.

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

There is the ultimate question of faith. We fear that undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns. This bit is the most powerful part of the whole soliloquy for me. Of course it applies to my fear of death and the unknown beyond it. Is there some spiritual afterlife or when my spark of life goes out, is it gone from the universe?

While that question of faith and the great beyond is there, I also see the last part of it as a test to my ambitions to try anything new while living.

And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Damn, that is a powerful sentiment. I am looking at one of those moments in my life. I am forty. I am doing well financially (not rich, but comfortable and protected). From the outside I have it all. Yet my heart yearns for things that “ ...makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.”

I want to dedicate myself to becoming an artist. The creation of art is a deep part of my soul. I don’t want to create it to admired or loved (although the praise is embarrassingly pleasing). I want to create something that shows my soul and how I see beauty. This is my “undiscovered country.” Why was it so much easier at 18 to go to college and start that life change than to do it at 40?

I look at my friends, family, and coworkers and see how this fear of the unknown paralyzes us. So many times I hear them (and me) say, “I wish I could (insert dream or passion of choice here).” We are afraid of that big step into the next part of life.

Some of my role models are Dr. L, Z, Stephen Haynes, Jim, and Joe. They all have made(or in the process of starting) huge life choices that followed closer to their heart’s desires. They took that plunge into the “undiscovered country.” I hope to join them soon because I am already looking back at my life and wonder why I haven’t done it yet.

Here are Hamlet’s famous lines.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Photo note. I love the empty decay of this room. One solitary bright chair in a dead place. I plan to try to get in there and work with a model in that simple setting.

And here is Kenneth Branagh’s take on it.

Thanks Stephen Haynes...

http://www.modelmayhem.com/sidebphotography
Me and the book
Note - I am trying to redact (cover up) her tush with my hand, hoping this photo does not fall under 2257)

Look what came in the mail last night. I finally got Stephen's book and started reading it on the bus to and from work. I will get my early review of it out of the way first. I have read about half of it and here are some of my thoughts.

I work in a highly-regulated industry (big pharma) and have read my fair share of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFRs). They are dry, boring, dense, confusing, and too often vague. Stephen's book helps make the CFRs concerning nude photography (2257 and other numbers) understandable. His interpretations are down-to-earth and well thought out. As a small time photographer of nudes (very different than a nude photographer... I doubt too many models would like to see a nude guy behind the camera) I need this book and highly recommend it.

Here are my first impressions of 2257. Stephen, as well as a friend of mine who is in the UC Berkeley school of law summarized one aspect of 2257 well. It is a "chiller." It will chill the enthusiasm of the photographer since the burden of documentation is so high. Most will abandon the daunting project of CYA in terms of this law.

So, how compliant am I with 2257? After reading a bit of the book, I would say I am ok, but not bullet proof. The problem is that saying I am sort of protected is like saying I am sort of pregnant. I definitely need to get some things better organized and controlled. I am comforted to know that I have the basic model information documented and saved.



My big question to everyone is, "how do you fight it?" I can tell my progressive friends about it and they will agree that it is censorship and join the cause. The hard part is to make a logical, factual, and convincing argument to the fence-sitters and even the proponents of this piece of crap regulation.

How do you answer the statement and question, "This protects kids from being exploited into making child pornography. Are you for lessening their protection?" How do you logically (and succinctly since the fundamentalist mentals who support this love sound bytes) rebut this and go on the offensive?

Seriously, does anyone have suggestions for talking points when presenting this topic? I can always talk about my experiences, but I want to go beyond that and have a strong argument against this censorship law.

How often do you think about sex? Every 7 seconds?

I tend to think about it a lot. I mean "a lot a lot." It may be as subtle as seeing the arch of a woman's lips and wanting to taste it to something so explicit that it fills my mind. Here is a snopes article about it. It sounds like the "every seven seconds" number is not right.

So what is the number for you?