Sorry for the delay in reporting on the convention, I had to recover from heart transplant surgery as one of my faithful clones donated his ticker to replace my broken heart. Yes, thousand year old, world dominating visionaries like myself need love too. Alas, it is not to be. Oh well . . .
The convention was quite enjoyable, with a lot of new faces. I worked with a new girl named Nikki Sebastian, a petite little Jersey girl who has some potential. Also worked with a lot of my faves -- Kordelia Devonshire, Christina Carter, the previously noted Savannah Costello (who graciously autographed my Playboy), Alex del Monacco, Karinne, Diana Knight, and the exquisite Kim Daniels.
Splurging on a new camera paid off, as I was able to get lots more pics that were also higher resolution (I'll post some samples here as I go through them), so they look much better.
Met some interesting new girls, local ones, that may have some promise. A girl named Ember, who bares a double-take resemblence to Zora from Women's Wrestling World. Tomiko (pronounced Tom-ee-ko, accent on the first syllable) who had seen my work and was interested in working with me. A number of other girls who had either seen some of my stuff or liked my ad in the program -- I dipped into the Chin coffers for a full-page ad in the 8 x 10 program -- guess it worked.
Bumped into Jewel Marceau several times, who looked at me like something that needed to be scraped off the bottom of her shoe. Nice attitude. Guess I'll pass on her from now on.
Also got to meet George Perez of comic book fame (if you didn't know). He's much more, dare I say -- animated, in person than I thought he'd be. A big apartment wrestling fan, he complimented me not only on the gallery but my original work as well. Praise from Caesar, I'll take it. Might get some help on a superheroine style shoot I'm hoping to do for Battling Babes using Kim Daniels. We'll see.
Coolest stage name of the show -- SmokinMaryJane! Very pretty, not interested in fight photography, but she does a whole "stoned Marilyn Monroe / Betty Boop" kind of shtick that's fairly cute. Stacy Burke looked like she's lost 20 pounds, not that she needed to, but she was noticably more petite than the last time I saw her. Lots of girls rockin' the Oriental look at parties, no complaint from me obviously. Diana Knight pulled it off fabulously, I'd of liked to shoot some glamour of her in that outfit. Disappointed that so many of these girls don't have business cards -- how do they expect to get work if you can't contact them. Fortunately, I have plenty.
Got to hand it to these women, though. Many got there several days ahead of time and had been shooting all week. Tons of bruises, it is a bondage convention after all. And most exhausted by Sunday. I shot with Diana Knight Sunday and she was out on her feet, I felt so bad for her. A trooper, the shoot was fabulous, but I cut it short to let her get some rest before the after party that night.
Rumour has it, they may be looking at moving the convention to the land of talking mice and ducks next year. Doesn't matter much to me, just means I can't forget anything when I pack. I'm attaching some head shots of the girls I worked with. I'll follow up with some fight samples during the week.
Here are samples of the exquisite Kim Daniels and Diana Knight shoot. Diana is rockin' that Bettie Page meets Farrah hairdo there. As mentioned, this was my last shoot of the convention and poor Diana was so worn out. I felt so bad for her. But she handled it like a pro, turning it on when she needed to. The hair is of course a wig, she lamented during the shoot her decision to cut her hair short, and it curtailed any aggressive hair-pulling, but the stuff still came out great.
And I much appreciate her arranging a meeting between myself and George Perez, very cool. He lives in Florida, too. Small world.
Very well done. Beautiful woman that make it look real. I like these type of photo shots when the women can act and really try to sell it.. It is very often better than a real fight
Sorry to hear about your recent heart surgery. I didn't know. I hope you are feeling well now and things are comfortable for you. Stay well ol' pal. :)
Thanks for the kudos Rob. As I was telling some of the girls, there can be a benefit to doing still photograpy over video, in that it can be easier to sell a still pose rather than perform an actual maneuver. Also, though I get a few tut-tuts from purists, these girls with bondage backgrounds are excellent actors, used to conveying dominance or agony at will. I am frequently amazed when I review the images afterward at how well they came out.
Thanks for the well wishes Dio. But I don't want to mislead -- my heart replacement was metaphorical in nature. I had flickering hopes of a relationship, dashed. It sucks getting old.
I particularly like the tattooed one in the crossbones bikini.
What I find appealing in still photography is that you can move the women into poses that are unlikely to appear naturally in a video. That sexy mutual face claw, for instance, would be very difficult to choreograph, but here we get to enjoy it and fill in the rest of the frames, so to speak, ourselves. Really a beautiful shot of them.
The little brunette is new girl Nikki Sebastian. She had kind of a "devish" look in that pose, but some of her straight glamour stuff is very nice. Those pics in the next set.
This set is Kordelia Devonshire and Christina Carter. Christina has done some vids for Double Trouble, but I'm not sure if she's going to continue doing fight vids. Her previous boyfriend/manager was pushing that direction, but who knows. She does some superheroine stuff in the bondage arena, and certainly has the voluptuous physique for that look.
Which is why I was happy to get these two together. I think Kordelia has a classic beauty about her. Plus she's a big girl, you see so many petite women in the modeling biz, it's nice to work with someone full-sized. And also all natural, as is Christina, a increasing rare situation. The humorous part of working with Kordelia is she is so used to working with smaller models, that I have to keep telling her to stand up straight, I want her looking tall and amazon-like
Here's the final set of samples from the convention -- Savannah Costello and Nikki Sebastian. Nikki's a cute little Jersey girl who really enjoyed doing these pics. She said she travels a bit, so hopefully I'll get another chance to work with her again soon.
Talking to Savannah about the Playboy thing was amusing. She said she had been on the road and returned home to find a seemingly innocuous e-mail from Playboy. She was stunned to find out it was them seeking permission to use a pic of her in reference to the move - "Fear of Clowns 2" which will obviously be a straight-to-video affair.
