Our main idea with this tie was to welcome gorgeous new model Angel Price to Restrained Elegance. She's not
Swedish (she's British) but she has got that whole blue-eyed blonde thing going on, and it had been a while
since we did anything with multiple rope colours, so the Swedish colours hogtie was born!
It looks a bit looser than a standard wrists-together-rope-to-ankles variant hogtie, but looks are
deceptive- because Angel's hands are linked in to the ropes around her waist, the hogtie rope linked in
to the above-bust rope, and the three rope bands around her torso linked together at the back, it all forms
a rather rigid reinforced structure. Add the knee rope as well and there was very little that Angel could
do- she could do a mega-curl and get up on to her knees, and of course she could wiggle a little and do
some super expressions, but we had to go in and physically roll her over to get some different angles.
I always think that's a result when tying a hogtie, if she can't get herself over on to her side
unassisted :-)
If you are particularly eagle-eyed, you might notice that this set and some others over the next few
months were shot on two different cameras. One is my Hasselblad, as used for most of the shots on the
site over the last five years. The other is a new Sony A7R Mark II, which I bought primarily as a replacement
for a Canon 7D which has served its time and whose shutter mechanism is on the way out.
I'd intended the Sony as primarily an available light camera, but it had to step in to the breach in the last
few shoots because my 50 mm Hasselblad lens developed a fault- it's leaf shutter was sticking, it wasn't exposing
properly. This set was where the problem went from one-shot-in-a-hundred to one-shot-in-two. To compound the woes,
I then managed to drop the lens :-( So it had to go back to Hasselblad, which left me without a wider-angle 35mm
focal length equivalent for a run of shoots. Hence, the Sony.
I'm really impressed with the Sony so far. It's not without flaws- the ergonomics are not great, the menu system is
terrible, and there's no easy way to over-ride the focus point on the fly. But it has slightly higher resolution than the
Hasselblad, and killer in-body stabilisation which even works with adapted lenses. Its best focussing party tricks
like face and eye focus only work with native lenses, but the adapted Canons work fine in most situations, which is
pretty groovy.
The native lenses are absolutely killer, almost on a par with the Hasselblad lenses (although lacking
leaf shutter, so flash sync is stuck at 1/125th for safety). I've got the 55 mm f/1.8 which I love, and the 28 mm
f/2 which I bought for landscape but which has been pressed into service for bondage shoots as well. That's verging
on the focal lengths from hell, but it's been refreshing to try a slightly wider perspective in the rooms in our
house where I normally stick religiously to the 35mm-equivalent lens at the widest. I'm not going to make a habit
of using it for bondage- it is too tempting to step in a bit close or tilt it down and end up with distortions-
so I'd better invest in a 35 mm native lens for the Sony when I can afford it, and an 85 mm too. Because while I
still prefer the Hasselblad shots on balance, I have to say the Sony excels in shooting situations where the
Hasselblad struggles, and vice versa- so the two make a very compelling pair for me.
And it is a lot cheaper- it would have been significantly cheaper to buy the 35 mm f/2.8 for the Sony than get the
Hasselblad 50 mm lens repaired, as it turned out!
P.S. the Hasselblad shots have _reh_ in the name, the Sony ones don't, if you are wondering which is which without
bothering with metadata.
The Hasselblad is 4:3 aspect ratio where the Sony is 2:1 too so you can usually tell from that unless I've cropped in a little.
128 pics 31.5 MB zip