Perfect BDSM Photography – Essential Tips To Master
“I don’t look anything like the girls on your website.”
This is about the most common thing I would hear when I would speak to a new client about perfect BDSM Photography.
“Well, let me let you in on a little secret. The girls on my website don’t look anything like the girls on my website either.”
This may or may not be entirely truthful but it puts people at ease.
Everyone has heard of Photoshop and everyone wants it to varying degrees so I let them know we apply it liberally, when required. However I will use every part of my skill set to avoid it. If I get it right in camera, with good lighting and positioning, we can minimize the need or eliminate it entirely…
Yes, I am that good.
Naked Strangers And What Actually Happens On A Photoshoot
I have no idea what this person looks like over the phone. No idea how comfortable or relaxed they will be during the shoot. Don’t know what outfits they bring will be flattering to their figure.
Confidence is far more important than any other part of the skill set, and gives you a massive head start.
I have to be confident.
More importantly, my client has to feel confident.
These days, most of my clients have heard of me through a friend or seen my work. They are confident in my abilities and it’s only themselves they are worried about. It still pays dividends to let them know they aren’t alone.
I photograph every shape and size and nothing is going to be weird or gross or whatever they are hung up on.
So we discuss everything over the phone and set out a rough idea of how the shoot will get. We set expectations for quality, cost and other incidentals. Most people at this point want to, but don’t think they will be taking their clothes off. Nerves and jitters but we soon find out if it’s on the cards or not.
It’s usually 50/50 and it all comes down to the individual. Most of my clients are either simply excited, or ready to fill the porcelain throne with bricks. Very rarely do I get people who are blase.
They come into the entry of my studio, it’s also my office admin space, as well as a viewing gallery. There is a couch, a TV, some desks and computers.
Nothing elaborate.
No fancy bells or whistels.
A small makeup area and a studio in the back that is fully blocked out to natural light. Nothing overly fancy or elaborate. The studio just looks like a clean artist’s workshop. I get a lot of comments like:
“It doesn’t look like some seedy dungeon!”
or
“It just feels like home.”
This vibe is definitely on purpose. I have worked in more intimidating spaces and it puts people on guard. A lot of my clients are NOT from the kink world. They simply want to pretend for a few hours and have something special to look back on, or give the photos to their partner.
If the place looks too luxurious, then people don’t relax. When the space is too niche with a heavy kink and fetish dungeon, it gives people the wrong idea of what goes on behind the curtain. So I have worked hard to establish a safe space, where adults play dress-ups. Rather than an over the top fancy glamour studio or porn production venue.
For the most part, each shoot goes simply.
I very rarely get people who don’t understand the boundary that is the camera. My subjects are sexy for the camera. Not for me.!The only time people sexualise what I do is at parties with drunk men slurring
“Do you get to see titties?”
I will always do a warm up set with some simple portrait work and learn my subjects face and body lines. I will figure out what positions will and won’t work here. You don’t want to be working this out with lingerie or nude work. My subject will also learn how I work.
No, they are not expected to model for me.
Yes, it’s quite easy for the most part.
The only difficult thing is holding some of the poses as they can feel very un-natural.
I don’t focus on expressions and specifics. My approach is to cover a lot of ground. Get a lot of variety and let random chance factor in. People don’t usually like the photographs/expressions I like.
It’s best to get through the work rather than focus in on one particular thing. Besides, if you say to someone their expression – smile/pout/bedroom eyes isn’t working, they will become very self-conscious of it. At that point I might as well put the camera in the bin.
If a session is going swimmingly and I can tell my subject is feeling confident. I use 5 simple words.
“How brave are you feeling?”
If someone isn’t feeling comfortable it’s sooo much easier to affirm that they are at their limit here. Noone feels uncomfortable at all… Usually… like 99% of the time they are feeling the best they have ever felt about themselves.
Then off come the clothes.
A Quick Side Anecdote
There was a period of about 3 months where I was shooting art/erotic nudes exclusively. Sometimes up to 8 sessions a day. I noticed as I was burning out that people were responding differently and seeming very deflated. After some introspection I realised I was too detached.
I was not being friendly at all. Reacting to this person taking their clothes off, like a bitter ex-lover, filled with vitriol and resentment. A real effort had to be made for me to not treat it like mopping vomit off the floor, and get back to enjoying the process.
Perfect BDSM Photography
The best way to handle the situation is to act like an asexual pixie. Be really excited about everything but sexualise nothing. This will temper people and make sure things never become inappropriate.
It’s hard to hit on the professional BDSM, fetish and kink photographer when he is a naive puppy, and it’s hard for the naive puppy to offend anyone. It also solidifies the notion that they are being sexy for the camera, not for me. The demeanour has been effective for all clients, from stay at home mums to escorts and exotic dancers.
I have seen it all.
Clients who have had full body lifts after massive weight loss and are completely covered in scars. Amputees, people in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and even 80’s. I have shot multiple women who have had full double mastectomies. People who have every inch of their body tattooed/pierced. There was even had one lady who had a severe physical disability that caused her bone structure and muscles to never properly develop. She was wheelchair bound and I had to literally lift her from the chair and move her into the poses.
There are definitely times where I know I could do better with a second go, but I have a 99% success rate, with everyone leaving feeling amazing. They might only have 1 or 2 photo’s they love or they might have 50. There are times where you do get it wrong, but usually another session a few weeks later fixes that right up.
Regardless What You Are Shooting The Process Must Remain The Same
It doesn’t matter what you’re shooting. I could have a client who is timid to the point of only perhaps showing an inch of cleavage. Or someone who wants to just do very dark, moody art nudes. There are people who bring their own BDSM kits, doms, submissives, lovers and all sorts.
It’s usually very much the same process. We talk, we meet and we shoot. I talk about my puppy mostly during sessions at the moment. Sometimes she is with me at the studio, and people want to play with her more than they want to do the photo shoot!
The One Thing That Never Changes
People are impossible to read up front. At the start, everyone is roughly the same. Their mask is on and their guard it up. Give me 30 minutes and a camera and they relax and open up entirely.
I am always surprised and usually wrong about who will want what.
The single mum of 3 in her 40’s with one small bag will want to be tied up or do very sexualised erotic art nudes for her dating profile. She won’t mention that to me in the consultation phone call…
The stripper with full body tattoos,will just want some headshots for her personal training business…
The guy in his 50’s with terrible hair and teeth! He is adamant the photos are for his partner I will never meet, and she wants him to look like a sexy Twilight inspired vampire…
The 20 year old uni who is wearing a trench coat and a beanie and looks like she hasn’t slept for a week. After hair and makeup she looks like a BDSM goddess who only brought nipple clamps and a riding crop as her “outfit.”…
And the quiet ones? Well you know what they say about the quiet ones.
I have been asked a lot of times if I date clients. Those drunk dudes at parties might not put that quite so politely. A lot of people expect that I live fast and loose. They expect that I lead a very sexually adventurous, party lifestyle due to the nature of my work. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
I have dated a client exactly once. Many years ago when I was still working freelance in other studios. She pursued me aggressively after the session and with the studio owner’s knowledge and permission, we started dating. Early in the relationship her life situation changed and moved to a different state to be with her family.
It has been a hard no ever since!
It’s never even been something I would consider. Quite a few of them have become good friends, joining my Dungeons and Dragons group, gaming online or playing board games together regularly.
Author: Jason is a consultant from Adult Lifestyle Centres
Meet Our Newest Expert To The Team JJ Maher
Hi! I am JJ and I struggle to take myself seriously!
Sometime in the yesterday years of 2008, I began working as a professional photographer. I’ve shot anything and everything you can imagine. Bread and butter wedding and family photography. Everything along the spectrum from kids to high end shiny glamour.
Even working in fashion/editorial photography. I’ve Tried my hand at products and catalogs. I’ve often dabbled in cars and bikes. I have shot countless runways, bands, events and even the odd funeral here and there.
Early along the path, I diverged, careened, rocketed, tripped and stumbled headfirst into the erotic arts.
Nothing else felt as comfortable or as rewarding.
Is it Kink?
Is it Fetish?
Is it Alternative?
Is it BDSM?
Does it involved a bucket full of glitter and lube? Are people taking their clothes off and celebrating their body? Is it weird? Could this make someone close-minded uncomfortable?
This was my reason to be for the better part of a decade.
Did I work only with models? Some of the best, but not exclusively.
Did I work with single mothers, gay couples, people in their 50s? 60s? 70s? People with physical disabilities? Exhibitionists? Introverts? Societies outcasts? Heavily tattooed? Modified? Pierced? People who have travelled the world? The rich? The powerful? The poor? The meek? People disfigured by accidents or surgery?
Yes to all of it and more.
I never wanted to limit myself. I had discovered a beautiful world filled with enriching, sex positive (or working on it) people. I have had endless opportunities to help people be at peace with their imperfections or even come to celebrate them. I have had the privilege of getting to help women and sometimes even men “feel the sexiest they have ever felt or the sexiest they have felt in years.”
Or in other words, I have been one of the luckiest guys I know!
My first love was music. I play a bunch of instruments badly. Some even more badly then others. I have always been drawn to the “characters” in the music industry. Personalities that were so large they could not avoid the spotlight of fame or infamy. Sometimes to tragic ends.
This truly inspired my photographic direction. As polished as my work became, I tried to maintain an element of the grunge, rockstar aesthetic that was my origin.
When I started out, I wanted to take photos that looked like a guitar solo sounds. I have always enjoyed helping people who would normally avoid the spotlight feel like the most important person in the world for a couple of hours.
Photgraphy Has Given Me Access To The Most Interesting People
Through photography, I have gotten to meet some of my absolute idols in the music and art worlds. Specifically I am now lucky to call my all time favourite illustrator and artist a true life friend. It is surreal, knowing, associating and working with people you have admired for more than a decade.
People who inspired your work from the beginning to later be sitting across from you at conventions sharing silly musings via facebook/snapchat to pass the quiet moments. I have never been one to be star struck but I still get the odd butterfly in the stomach when their user names pop up when we game online together.
READ MORE OF JJ’S ARTICLES ON THE ADULTSMART BLOG
As a straight, cis-gender, white male aged 18 to 35. I didn’t think I had anything of value to really offer in terms of sexual insight so when I was asked to start contributing to a sex blog, I wrote what I knew. I hoped and hope to share lots of sometimes interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes downright awkward stories of what apparently has been an incredible and unique decade.
Along the way, in a valiant effort to impregnate some kind of value into these stories, I intend to sharply analyse what I got to see both on and off camera. I hope to dive headfirst into self reflection and see where I went right, wrong and how I have learned and grown. Maybe, if I bang my head against the keyboard long enough. Something inspirational or original might fall out.
Failing that, maybe I can just entertain.
Some Of My Favorite Quotes
“I’ve always been attracted to the beauty in the “Abnormal.” The strange and the deformed, in its sometimes comical, sometimes horrendously chaotic lack of structure, it becomes something so much more perfect. Limitless and without comparison As I one day strive to be. Limitless. Without comparison.” – JJMAHER“An artistic force to be reckoned with.” – Some guy, probably.
“Delusions of grandeur the likes of which have never been seen before or since.” – Picasso
JJ Maher
You can check out some of my works at the JJ Maher Website!
My muse is like no other woman I know or have ever known. Once a week I am blessed by her presence for a 3 hour block. More than enough time with her, the muse.
But far less than I wish for.
She is the reverse of all others before her and she bares her body, but conceals her soul. The bristle of my brush caresses the canvas in the same way I long to do to her.
Long gentle strokes. Short dot work. But either way, a work of art.
An expression of passion.
Emotion given shape, given form, visualized. Sometimes I am lost within the moment
Using my fingers to smear my vision, my paints, between the tiny cracks. And I hate getting my fingers dirty; I eat pizza with a knife and fork.
But Not for Her, the Muse
Nothing is taken for granted nor immune to the very thought of her. I go all in, every fibre of my being finds its way to that canvas, pining for the three dimensional version.
By now I could paint her from memory. I know every curve of her body, the location of every mole, the precise point her hair brushes against her slender neck.
Without her, my canvas remains blank, no matter how hard I try.
Or how high I get. The white frame just stares back at me. They say if you stare into the void long enough, it begins to stare back at you.
So what then, becomes of staring into your carnal desires?
Into love?
She is my inspiration. And in the cold of night, my perspiration. Alone in body, but not in mind. I’ve attributed her the skill of the soft touch.
With my hand stroking the length of my cock, mimicking her gentle ways.
Slow yet purposeful. Impassioned, yet lingering. Indulging myself in the moment, longing for release, but savouring the moments.
I take my time with myself, like never before. No internet. Just my thoughts. My filthy, dirty, unrequited thoughts. She lays herself before me, everything laid bare, except her mind, her soul, her being. Just her perfect form.
Naked, for none others to see by me. Unless I paint her.
Unless I share her with the world.
Allow them to see what I am blessed to see.
My muse has a body worthy to commit to stone, had I that skill. Not the surgically enhanced, app filtered duck faced shit we are forced to endure on a daily basis.
She is a woman, with everything that brings with it to the table. So she gets rolls on her belly when she sits, but doesn’t try to reposition herself to hide them.
No awkward reclining, just natural curves
The way a body was meant to be. While my brush can nearly mirror each of those curves, where I struggle is to capture the light in her eyes.
She has a love of life that permeates beyond anything my art can reveal. A spark, as it were, and as whimsical as that sounds, I can find no other words.
That’s not my forte.
Until yesterday.
Something changed yesterday.
Not in our lack of conversation, not in my ability to paint this divine being.
Something deeper beyond her body, that I couldn’t put my finger upon. A change my mind hadn’t even acknowledged, but then my mind was never really on my art when I painted her.
It was just sprawling, strokes and swirls, my hand acting from outside my being. Nothing I put a logical mind to, just a feeling I let my hand take hold of.
Much like my nightly solo visitations with her.
At the end of our session, when I was sure I had captured her spirit once again, she shuffled over towards her clothes, hesitating before she reached them.
‘May I please see?’ her husky voice echoed through my studio.
It took me by surprise, her time after posing was something she always enjoyed in silence. And never, within the past year or so, had she asked to see my work.
For all she knew, I was doodling finger paintings while perving from not so far away.
Not entirely untrue.
‘Of course,’ I stammered. As she moved closer towards me and my canvas, I tried to ignore her state of undress, and bumbled some excuses for my weak skills.
She either ignored them or didn’t hear me, and continued to approach regardless. I felt my heart stop beating, my breath escape me, the nearer she got.
Not for my midnight infatuations with her, but that she would see my art.
And once seen, that meant it could be judged and by her, at that.
As she stepped around the easel, I shuffled back a few steps, terrified of her nakedness. Well, her nakedness in close proximity to me.
What she saw was closest related to what I would call, ‘the lazy thinker’.
Her right foot propped up onto the chair, her matching arm dangling uselessly over it. Other limbs hung limp on the other side, her face, almost vacuous.
She regarded it for a moment, and my breath was still yet to return.
Finally, within a minute, or a lifetime, she reacted.
And not at all the way I anticipated.
Her hands clasped her face, trying to withhold the tears welling within as she sank to her knees. Then her strong facade crumbled, as her body, and the uncontrollable shaking of her shoulders told me all I needed to know.
It was then I realised her face hadn’t been expressing emptiness.
But in fact the very opposite
Somehow my futile little brush had managed to perfectly encapsulate that moment. That emotion I hadn’t been able to see with my own eyes, but my brush knew.
My heart knew and my spirit knew.
I’d perfectly stumbled across expressing exactly how she felt that whole time while sitting upon her chair. Not at the circumstance, but at whatever she had carried inside her that day.
I’d often wondered why she kept coming
Beyond my own very fleeting fantasies that it was to tease me with her perfectly formed body, what kept her turning up each week.
Perhaps it wasn’t the dollar value of her time, but the chance to sit and let the world roll on by. Three hours of forced meditation, as it were. But whatever was going on in her life at that point, could no longer be contained solely within her heart and mind.
Because there it was, exposed for all, or me, to see.
Of all the times I’d longed to wrap my arms around her naked body, this was unlike any of those.
My own fantasies were rapidly cast aside, as I engulfed her within my arms, as a fellow human that has previously suffered. She let everything go, and sobbed uncontrollably.
That kind of sobbing some call ugly. Tears streaming from eyes and nose and mouth, shoulders convulsing, chest trembling.
I don’t know how long I cradled her for, nor did I ever find out why.
‘The Muse’ was the only piece of art I have ever sold, months down the track, when I could finally allow it to leave my side. Send it out into the world so it no longer watched me, hurt me.
The creation of ‘The Muse’ was also the last time I ever saw her.
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