— We were invited to
capture the after-hours
of a bondage session,
not for leftovers but to
get a sense of the fl esh
marks left by the ropes.
We’ve gone through our
fair share of physical
pain – both called and
uncalled for – and never
did we imagine that it
could be captured in such
a sensual manner.
Photography Sarah Eechaut
(The Word Magazine, volume 02 — issue 05)

Last month pluu & I were asked to do a photoshoot for a Belgian expat magazine  called The Word: Neighbourhood Life + Global Style (available for free in Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven, Knokke, and several hotels. For their Japan issue they were interested in some pictures, not so much of bondage, but of ropemarks and the model knew our site. Could we produce some ropemarks? Yes we can 🙂

In the end, pluu couldn’t make it as the shoot needed to be done within a few days to make the deadline. So I took a day off from work to go to Antwerp with the model, where we would be doing the shoot in the house of some of the models’ friends. A house with big wooden beams, so we could do a bit of suspension. Handy, because a) the model wás interested in getting some bondage pics as well, and b) what better to guarantee  ropemarks than a bit of hanging…

After getting there somewhat late (traffic, walking around looking for the address as were it a Next Top Model go-see and the model getting a ticket for jaywalking because she didn’t recognise the Belgian police officer), it turned out an interesting shoot. The house had great opportunities for the shoot, the model enjoyed it, and so did the photographer, who got, after all, the ropemarks she wanted to shoot.

In the end, she did sent the magazine a few of the bondage pics as well, but only the ropemarks were used. But for those who are also interested in “the making of”, here’s a little view behind the scenes.

• See the gallery (thanks to Sarah & L.N.)
• Visit The Word (Magazine also available as a free .pdf download)
• Visit the photography site of Sarah Eechaut
  

Photo: Philippe, Model: Aukje, Ropes & Edit: Guilty

During the rope bondage camping weekend 2009 we got into a discussion with Aukje, the girlfriend of our event photographer Philippe. Until then Aukje had seemed a pretty quiet and shy girl, so we were all rather surprised when she told us she has a profile on an amateur erotic site. But when she did, the first idea that came to mind was to do little bondage shoot. After all, we had ropes, a model, a photographer, and a BDSM location with a tackle that we could use to do a shoot. That way, we would all get some content.

Photo: Philippe, Model: Aukje, Ropes & Edit: Guilty

We decided to do a lot of positions within a short time, to maximise the variety of pictures within the limited time we had. We started with two full suspensions. The first, a horizontal face down was a little too tough for Aukje, so we quickly changed it into a sitting/face up position. That worked much better. After that we did another three positions: a classic ebi (shrimp tie), a sitting partial suspension with one leg up nd a crab tie, and a lying partial suspension with the hips raised from the crotch rope  – one of the most fun positions I’ve ever seen on hogtied.com, simple but very, very effective. In the gallery, by the way, the order of the positions is mixed up completely to attain a more logical feel.

Watch the gallery in b&w or colour
Visit Aukje´s page at http://www.aukjelive.com/

A few notes on the “Touwtjes@Budapest”  shoot (august 2009). Pictures (c) Touwtjes.tk. For the full gallery, please visit our website.

Outdoor

The area near Budapest where we spent most of our vacation is nearly ideal for fotoshoots. The Hungarian people go on vacation themselves elsewhere so most of the Pilisz mountains area is rather quiet. If you go hiking, there’s a good chance you only run into other people a few times if you stay on the marked paths. If you go cross country, it gets even more quiet. So the main worries are ticks and the heat. And of course the fact that you don’t want to hike with a full rope set, a shibari ring and a nikon DSLR for too many miles.

So, what did we do. For starters, for those who haven’t noticed yet, we brought our synthetic rope set, which is much lighter than real hemp or jute. As I always have to take loads of food with me on vacation due to food allergies and intolerances, every kg we save on luggage is welcome. Second, we decided to pick a path into the mountains that started close to our holiday cottage and to go there by bike. Good plan, except that the path didn’t exist anymore. Visegrad and surroundings are expanding, building more and more new houses for the richer people in the Budapest area. So it took a while to find another path. Fortunately we did, really close to our cottage.

Fortunately, about a mile after the last house, we felt sure enough that it was a quiet enough path for our purposes. It was the semi-circle of stone immediately next to the path (as seen in the standing bondage pictures at about 2/3rd of the shoot) that drew our attention first. But we decided to do some other stuff on the hill above first so, we went off road and uphill for some 50 or 60 meters. We started with the suspension pics. Bad idea. I wasn’t warmed up, and the rigging was pretty hard work on the sloping hillside. And when finished, it was even harder to get some really good shots. Difficult to find the right angles, and damn hard to get lighting right. Until then I usually had to struggle with ” not enough light, even at F/1.8″, now I had to struggle with ” way too much light at F/10″  for the first time (in the end, quite a lot of pics had overexposed parts, I really have to get more outdoor practice).

After that we continued with the floorwork, which went much better, though the lighting remained problematic. This resulted in some of the best shots of the day. The opening shots with pluu leaning forward with her legs on the ground play weird tricks with the perspective that worked out great. I love the shots of pluu crosslegged between the trees – though my foot shouldn’t have been there… After that, we went back to the path and took the final shots of the standing position in the semi-circle of stone. Tired, hungry, and way to hot. Although the setting was great, these turned out the sloppiest pics. I’d forgotten to cinch the chest harnas and waist straps, so it looks rather sloppy and not-very-tight, and it was sloppy and not-very-tight. We did get a few nice close ups thought. But looking back I wish we had done some more positions down there.

For the record: N47 47.824 E19 00.222 and N47 47.803 E19 00.262

Indoor

The indoor shoot was taken in our hotel room somewehere in the outskirts of Budapest.  There were two three  reasons to do it. First, it looked like the ultimate hotel room, with the furniture and the weird patterns on the floor and the bathroom tiles. Second, it wasn’t really a hotel room, but a small appartment in a hotel. So it looked like a hotel, but it was much bigger and had a living room with plenty of space to shoot (and without beds standing in the way). The third was that is was a really cool idea to call the shoots “outdoor”  and ” indoor”.

Although the circumstances were much easier (bless your deity of choice for inventing airco), it was as difficult to get great pics. Again, we were tired, so we couldn’t spend too much time on the shoot. The position were rather static, so it was rather difficult to shoot enough different pictures from each tie. So there’s why this gallery has way less pics than the outdoor gallery. Still, it was fun to do a hotel-shoot, and the pics in the tub turned out great (thanks to some funky editing by pluu).

For the record: N47 31.267 E18 58.410