Forbidden (ooh-la-la)

Thanks to a contact-on-the-inside, I was able to get a gig as photographer for Forbidden, the lapdancing club in Glasgow's Maxwell Street, so they could update their website with pictures of girls who actually work for them.

This shoot was originally planned for a few months ago, but various logistical difficulties prevented it happening then. However, at the end of last month I got chased up for it, and I decided what the hell, my 40th birthday was approaching, and it would probably cheer me up a bit to spend several hours taking pictures of scantily-clad young ladies gyrating round a pole; think of it as a wee present to myself.

And it worked a treat! Despite the "challenging" conditions (extremely poor light, and blaring music which made communications with the girls very difficult during each shoot) things went very well. I ended up with over a dozen pictures which will hopefully end up on the club's website, and lifted my spirits a little bit from the middle-aged gloom they were in, albeit temporarily.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to complete the assignment before punters started arriving and I had to pack up my kit. So I volunteered to come back next Saturday and finish the job. How big-hearted am I, eh?

To be honest, I'm not really the type for places like this. I'd never even been in a lapdancing club before Saturday, and the shoot hasn't changed my mind. However, I would like to say that the girls were charming, polite, hard-working, and very professional throughout, and it was a pleasure to work with them.

You dirty old man

I've always been a bit lazy with the content filters on Flickr, for two reasons:

(i) the internet is full of explicit porn... in case you hadn't noticed. If you're worried about your kid seeing photos which contain mind-warping atrocities like a woman's nipple, then your best bet is probably to keep him away from a computer, full stop.
(ii) Flickr doesn't allow you to set a filter up before you upload images.* So even if you're quick and well-intentioned, you can't help but corrupt some poor innocents during that brief window between your shots becoming visible on the site, and you getting to the page that allows you to adjust the various settings. My personal record was 25 views on an image in the few seconds before I could lock it down, which frankly was a compelling motivation to not self-censor.

(* I now think this isn't true, but as a function it's hidden away somewhere, and you have to go looking for it. Which is almost as dumb as not having it at all)

Anyhoo, someone at Flickr finally noticed that a few of my pics weren't 100% kiddie-friendly, and reset the permissions on them to "moderate". Hey-ho, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I think I got lucky; I've heard stories of entire accounts being marked as restricted on the basis of one complaint about a single shot. Clicking on my own "nude" tag reveals 24 shots, and only five were moderated, so I can't complain.

However, what amuses and perplexes me is the randomness of the censorship. Of the two below, the top image was restricted, the bottom one left unfettered:



For a while I wondered if it was something to do with the pubic area. In the case of the two black & white bodyscapes, if the model had a fluffy ladygarden it would be visible in the top shot, but possibly not in the bottom one. Then again, both this shot and this one have her bajingo visible, and neither was censored.

Furthmore, both pictures of Karen1985 (below) show her foo-foo. Well, just about. In the largest versions. If you squint. Yet while the colour shot on the left was moderated, the black & white version wasn't:



No clue about those two at all. They're right next to each other in my photostream, are in pretty much the same groups, etc. Is there some kind of complex formula involved? Or was a Flickr staffer halfway through censoring me on a Friday afternoon when it came time to go home, and he never finished the job when he returned on Monday morning?

Addendum: Following an alleged complaint, my entire photostream was moderated in early December. Only took a couple of hours to resolve things, and their actions this time round made more sense; a bit heavy-handed given that nude images comprise only 5% of my stream, but not unexpected given Flickr's history in this kind of thing. I've marked everything as moderate that needs to be, although I think I'll have a second look at some of them; interpreting the big F's filtering instructions literally, I think I'm entitled to disable my self-censorship when nothing incriminating (e.g. breast, buttock) is actually visible.

With apologies to Ingmar

I had a hoot-and-a-half at Dunure with Roxy Stardust and Karen B on Thursday, putting together a little spoof-cum-homage to the 1957 Ingmar Bergman classic The Seventh Seal. My first attempt at this shoot last month with just Roxy was curtailed by a lack of time and some heavy winds, so we planned to return when there was more daylight, and once I'd recruited a suitable assistant (i.e. Kazza).

Three bods, three rucksacks, three poly bags, two tripods, a portable studio lighting kit, and Mr Bones himself meant using my wee Arosa as transportation was out of the question, so I hired a Vauxhall Zafira. Brand spanking new: a 60-plate with only 300 miles on the clock, and a lovely set of wheels it was too. Although I suspect the fact that I'm singing the praises of a diesel people-carrier means I am truly, incontrovertibly middle-aged. Boo-hoo...

Anyhoo, because it was the October week, there were more people around than I'd planned, but they didn't really affect us. I left my phone in the car as well, which was a bit daft since I'd copied the movie onto it so I could crib from it as required. D'oh! Still, looking through the shots I think everything went ok regardless. The only real trouble was the very rapid rise of the tide, which forced us to move onto an elevated rock for the games themselves after the introductiory pictures were taken. But even that wasn't too bad, since the new location was quite grand. My only regret is that I didn't get an out-take snap of KB and Roxy with Mr Bones once the shoot was done. Hey-ho.