You think dommes have less than deserved egos? Then you
don’t hang out with photographers.
If a fashion/adult photographer is good enough to support himself then
in his mind he’s the new Robert Mapplethorpe. Sure I’ve told people they were “blessed by my presence,”
but that’s the game isn’t it. Have
you ever met a person who honestly felt he or she was bettering your life by
just being in it? Had to spend a lot of time with said person? Had to work with him or her? Huuuh-boy.
The top of this list was Will Santillo, with whom I worked
with a lot. Well, it was a lot of
work and expensive but I would get what I wanted.
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| Me-owch. |
This is from my first photo-shoot with Will in April of
2003. This picture is freakin’
EVERYWHERE. Keep in mind these
were the days when most photos of dommes were still taken with a point and
shoot 35 film camera by their slave or boyfriend or dungeon owner and scanned
on a scanner from Office Deopt.
Nobody was hiring a make-up artist or a photographer at the time, let
alone spending a whole afternoon and $900.
I’m still surprised at the prevalence of this photo. Go ahead, take it (everyone has) and do
a Google image search of it. It’s
everywhere. I rarely get credit
for it even though I commissioned it for my own promotion. Every so often I get an email by some
eagle eyed kinkster saying he found it in some ad or promotion and asks if I am
associated with them or are now doing sessions in Butt-Fuck, Kansas now. I’ll go to the source and politely ask
them to take it down because it’s my freakin’ image and will get the inevitable
response, “Oh, I thought it was just a generic picture of a dominatrix.”
(Generic??!!?! Bah.)
I always art direct my own photo shoots. Sure, while there is a lot of give an take with the photographer, but I always have something in mind. One of my all time favorite photos is this one as it came out exactly as I imagined it.
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| Boobs . . . legs . . . wait a minute! |
Man, I love the elegance and subtle story it tells. This was taken in May 2005 when most
“action shots” were of a domme staring blankly into the camera next to her 300
lb, 65 year-old slave’s tied up penis.
Yes, darlin’, we can see that you can actually do a CBT tie. Good on ya’.
I spent the better part of an hour trying to get Santillo to
get this shot. I wanted the focus
to be on me in my signature pin stripped suit and the male model in a business
suit not really visible except for my shoe in his groin and his tensed hands. The whole point of this photo was to
get someone to look at it long enough to make a story in his head. Sure most pictures will get a guy
excited and he’ll go jerk-off, but if he had a story that photo would stay with
him and then he might actually call me and book a session.
Santillo didn’t get it. But I was paying $2,000 for this particular photo shoot, and
like fuck was I going to let him shoot for his ego. This was for my image and promotion.
A lot of good photos came out of this shoot and the one
before it, though. Like this one:
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| Boobs. . .legs. . .boobs again. |
Which you might recognize here:
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| Boobs! My boobs are famous! |
Sure it’s great to be on the cover of Skin Two as well as in
the featured spread, but I didn’t get any credit for it. Nope. None.
Somewhere along the line, around 2006, came the big M and
Santillo feud. Santillo wanted me
to sign over the rights to the photos so he could do a series of coffee table
books. I wouldn’t get credit or
any of the proceeds. So why would
I do that? Because I would be a part of his dream. Lucky. Me. Here's a bit of that story:
