Big Ed's Place

I’m on business travel this week with intermittent internet access, so I’m doing another quick post.

In this picture, it’s pretty obvious what’s happening:

My only real question is: how are the three people in the background not watching? Who hangs around and talks without even looking over at sex happening three feet away?

Even in my days in bdsm, when a dungeon could have a dozen sex acts going on simultaneously and the regulars had ‘seen it all,’ conversations such as these were either away from the action, or turned so that the participants could watch while they talked.

Maybe I’m too much of a voyeur to be that blase’. But that’s what I don’t get about this photo.

Okay, this one disturbs me a bit–just enough that I almost didn’t post it. It’s got a strong element of humiliation, which I’m not fond of, and hints of non-consent. I decided that despite the handcuffs, non-consent is unlikely (the handcuffs aren’t attached to anything, the way she’s holding her arms indicates she’s conscious while the photo is being taken). So I’m posting it because I find it disturbing.

Now obviously, we’re at the end of a gangbang. There are eleven condoms there, and if one guy can do all that, I want to meet the guy. I don’t have a problem with gangbangs, though they’re low on my list of things that interest me (now, a “reverse” gangbang where woman after woman screws a guy–that’s different, and interesting. Though the descriptions of how that happens in Hefner’s bedroom aren’t all that erotic).

What makes me uncomfortable is the driver’s license. If it wasn’t fuzzed out, this picture would be prime fodder for humiliating the woman. Imagine it posted openly so everyone who knew her could see what she’d participated in. Imagine sending a copy of the photo to her parents. I shudder a bit at the potential implications.

The thing is, if she’s into humiliation, those implications may turn her on. Not that she’d want them done of course, but the threat could be arousing. I’ve met two women who got off on being humiliated and I know there are many men who do (and usually become subs or cuckolds). It was strange to watch (they were scenes in the bdsm club), but I could tell they really were getting turned on.

So I realize that my discomfort is specifically because I don’t know the story. I can’t be assured that she enjoyed the hell out of the gangbang and this humiliating picture. I can’t assume that she wasn’t used and abused and this is the result. I suspect it’s not, but the doubt definitely has me wondering, ‘what’s the story?’

When I first reviewed Joymii.com back in March, I wrote “I found it enjoyable and classy, but still not as arousing as I perhaps would have liked.”

Well, things have changed. Wow.

The technical quality of the photography and videos remains high. The models are of course gorgeous. But now it’s not just solo scenes and girl-girl that seems more posed than hot. Now they’ve got boy-girl about every other week, along with hotter girl-girl scenes. I’ve included some samples below (one is a sample video). Some of the solo scenes are interviews, where the models talk about sex before masturbating for the camera (way way hotter than just doing it, in my opinion). Finally updates are now every other day.

I have to move the site from three to four stars out of four. I’m impressed and I definitely recommend it. They addressed everything I said they needed to in order for it to be arousing as well as artistic. Check it out yourself by clicking on any of the images below.

So this is one of my “light” posts in between the deeper ones. I’m in the middle of getting Friends and Benefits formatted for ebook release with some new illustrations, and realized that y’all might like knowing why certain models in my gallery were chosen to represent the characters they do.

So I figured I’d start with Sherri, from the Compassionate Courtesan Universe stories (gallery here). The model Nella seemed to fit her quite well. Nella appears on many sites (images from Met-Art and Craig Morey are below) and is a popular internet model. She’s Czech, speaks good English, is in her thirties, even though some sites claim she’s younger, and a lesbian. I’ve found several girl-girl photo shoots of her and even one hardcore scene with a guy. But that’s irrelevant when it comes to a visual image–what makes her fit?

Primarily, it’s Nella’s smile. The way her eyebrows peak up makes her look amused. It’s like she’s having fun. A good example is below.

It’s a grin that says, “I’m not taking this too seriously. Why should you?” Given how Sherri is often teasing in her stories, the grin fits. Sherri is brassy and bold, and Nella’s smile fits that mold.

That’s not to say it can’t be a little sweet too. I imagine the smile below comes when her partner’s done something particularly nice. I think of Sherri after John’s helped her out.

This picture also gives us the mid-back length black hair, which fits Sherri perfectly. However, when she turns, below, we get more of alluring smile. It’s an inviting tease.

We also see her breasts in this shot. They’re well shaped but not too large. But Nella, like Sherri, can also turn that smile to pure invitation, as in the picture below.

For me, if this was a real life instead of a picture, I’d find it all but impossible to avoid moving in to touch, or do more than touch.

So those are some examples of why I picked Nella as the model for Sherri.

The Morey Galleries these are from can be found here and here. The Met-Art Gallery is here.

For some time, the site FEMJOY has published high quality nude photos and videos of very attractive models. However, other than the nudity, their site is fairly chaste. None of the poses or activities of the models cross the line from modeling into sex. No licking, sucking, masturbation, or penetration.

I happen to appreciate that. It’s far too easy to let the quality degrade, or for the photos and film to become crude, once the line between nude modeling and actual sex has been crossed. We certainly see that in a great deal of the sex industry. “Class” seems to be hard to maintain, when the lowest common denominator will still sell. You’ll never go broke appealing to man’s more basic and coarser urges. Similarly, you’ll never go broke selling something that can be addictive for a fraction of the population, but that’s a different post some day.

So recently, the FEMJOY folks launched a new site, Joymii.com, that attempts to capture the quality of FEMJOY’s main site, while loosening up the limits on what happens. I figured it was worth a look.

Well, I’m pleased to say that the photography and video production quality remains top notch. I’ve included two examples below (click on the images to get the full associated promo gallery). Two new galleries and two new videos show up each week, usually in pairs (two photoshoots with a gallery and video for each).

The content is a little harder. The galleries to date are all girl-girl or solo girl masturbation. Many of them involve dildos and other toys. Some of the girl-girl scenes (like Karlie and Riley below) are particularly hot because it’s clear the girls are really getting into it. Others don’t rise to that level and feel more like friends putting on a show. There’s no male-female content so far.

As a result, I found it enjoyable and classy, but still not as arousing as I perhaps would have liked. I think it’s definitely a nice addition to the FEMJOY catalog, and also a nice addition to what’s out on the web. More class is good. And of course, seeing one of my favorite models, Ariel, in action is also good. So I recommend it, but at the 3 out of 4 star level. More frequent updates or more chemistry in the girl-girl scenes would push that higher.

UPDATE
Joymii has released their first boy-girl video and photo set, Miela and Tom. There’s an example below. Video and production quality are high. The enthusiasm and interaction between the two is good. It doesn’t come across as acting. Hopefully we’ll see more like it in the future.

You can see more of Joymii by clicking on the images below.

So back when I mused about Tumblr, I wondered if some of the amateurs who posted to Tumblr realized how quickly and how far their pictures could propagate. Well, the question became a little less theoretical when I was browsing Tumblr recently. I found nude pics of a friend of ours.

Now it’s not a close friend, so I’m not faced with having to deal with her in person anytime soon. Nor do I feel a need to say anything to her myself. After all, what would I say? I’m sure that her husband had to have taken the picture, and I’m not sure why he or she let them get to the web, but… there they are. We’re not close enough for me to even hint at an insight into their sex life.

Amusingly, I’m not the only one with an experience like this right now. Pillow Talker, one of my twitterati friends, found a nude picture that a coworker had stored on the company server. She doesn’t know if it’s his wife or just a random picture he’s keeping but it still created an interesting pause for her.

Furthermore, I once stumbled across a picture on a swinger’s blog that looked an awful lot like one of the members of my customer’s team. None of the pictures had her face in them, but the body type and hair style were a dead match.

So, in all of these cases, the etiquette’s clear. We don’t admit what we found. But, honestly, wouldn’t it be more interesting to be able to walk up and as, “Hi, was that your nude picture I saw?”

As an erotica author, I can imagine all sorts fun stories that start with a variation of ,”Why, yes, it was.” It’d be a fun romp of a tale most likely, but a cautionary morality play could also work.

But in real life… I can also imagine a time in my life when I would have been tactless or hopelessly optimistic about my chances and done so, with disastrous results. It’s really not too hard to remember those clueless days. So one of the benefits of being older and wiser is that I won’t ask the question.

But that certainly doesn’t mean I won’t think it the next time we see our friend in the flesh.

So I’ve recently stumbled (tumbled?) across Tumblr sex blogs, which are essentially photoblogs much like Nick Scipio’s Picture of the Day. Lots and lots and lots of photos, with very little commentary. The majority of the tumblr sites I’ve come across are essentially collections of porn and nude pictures put up by various individuals as their favorites. They can be amusing and sometimes interesting, but it didn’t take long for all the pictures to blur together, at least for me. And then it didn’t take long for all the tumblrs to look the same either, at least the ones I was coming across. Sure, they had slightly different themes, but they often swiped pictures from each other. Furthermore, they tended to get pictures from the same sources. Many of the pictures still had the watermarks or other labels from their original sources and I constantly kept seeing ones I’d seen before.

So this got me musing about several subjects–the first of which was copyrights. Given the rather large number of images tagged with copyrights by professional sites (Met-Art being one of them I saw frequently), I wondered how many were actually used with permission, as all of the ones in my gallery are. Similarly, I saw some that I knew were from professional sites (because I’d seen the originals), and they lacked the labels of where they came from, which means they certainly weren’t promo shots where permission had been given. I wondered if the tumblr site owners cared about copyrights or were just grabbing the pictures because ‘if it’s on the internet, it must be free to use.’

Now there’s easily a longer rant on copyrights and piracy, but that’s for another time.

For my second musing was for the pictures that were obviously amateur snaps. A few of the sites actively solicited amateur photos and clearly got some contributions. But, as I said, then those pictures started being copied by other tumblrs, and then by other tumblrs, and so on. I couldn’t help wondering if the original submitters had really understood how widely their quickie private snapshot could be distributed. I also couldn’t help wondering how many of them would get recognized by people who knew them. I certainly had to look more than once at a couple where the woman’s face (rarely obscured) appeared familiar.

And of course I couldn’t help note that few of the tumblrs contained the legal language about models being over 18. After all, how could they check?

But what struck me more was how, after a while, even the photos really did look all the same. The professional shots were clearly professional, with full color, busty models with makeup and flowing hair, and similar poses. The amateur shots had similar lack of composition, natural lighting, and not quite-so-perfect bodies, though often the poses were the same as the pros.

Aside–I must say, pussy spread shots get old really really fast. I think in part because there’s just not a range of emotional content that can be conveyed when a model’s legs are spread so wide.

And when I realized how similar the poses were in so many photos, it got me wondering–is this the definition of “sexy”? And if so, how did we get here? Why is a woman lying on her back on the bed with a pouty smile and spread legs sexy? What happened to the other emotions or moods? Heck, the reason I picked my model for Lisa was that she looked playful (and there are better pictures of Nadine and Sabrina laughing at Erotic Destinations, but I didn’t have permission to use them). I think ‘what is sexy’ has far more answers than the bulk of the tumblrs I’ve discovered.

Which also led to my final Tumblr musing–what would it take for a photo to take me breath away? Or to really make me think? Or to inspire a greater rush of desire than “oh, she’s hot” does?

And I realized that this was ultimately the question of Art. I can’t say whether it’s being jaded or more sophisticated, but simple sexy shots of naked women or people having sex don’t do much for me anymore. Maybe if I can fantasize about the activity in the photo, I can get a sexual rush, but that’s no different than a stroke story. I want more, at least most of the time now.

And realizing that spins me into all sorts of other musings. Am I creating Art? Am I showcasing and promoting Art when I find it? The former is tough because a writer is their own worst critic (can’t see what they’ve actually done objectively) and the latter is tough because my tastes may not match yours. 90% of everything might be crap, but I suspect there are long arguments about what clears the hurdle and what does not.

And what should I be doing with these revelations? I don’t see myself throwing my personal picture collection on the web in a tumblr blog for sure. I want something… classier. Which I hope is what this site is.

Time to go get tea (Earl Grey, hot) and let the musings continue…