A Little Fix - PTAS

There's a concept called Learned Helplessness, a feeling of lack of control over one's circumstances, which can lead to listlessness and depression. That's a small snapshot of one element of a broader area of research, but it's relevant today in a dramatic way, as many of us shelter at home to try and slow the spread of an as-yet unpreventable and incurable (though generally survivable) disease that is sweeping across the globe.

Learned Helplessness is thought to be especially prominent in people with generally pessimistic worldviews, a category of the population that I probably could be said to belong to. When all this [gestures at everything] winds down, I may even seek out some cognitive behavioral therapy to see about shifting my perspective.

One simple thing though that people can do to counter the impulses of helplessness, stress, and apathy brought on by the current state of our world and lives, is to make or change something. It's a small way of telling our brains "look, I have some power over the world, regardless of how things might feel."

The explosion of people baking bread right now is one good example of that behavior pattern.

Which brings us neatly to today's photograph. What you're looking at is the carburetor of Sadi, our 1950 Pontiac Chieftain. If the engine is the heart of a car, the carburetor is the lungs of a pre-fuel-injection-era gasoline-powered vehicle. The carb mixes fuel and air into an explosive mixture that is drawn through the intake manifold into the combustion chamber of each cylinder during its intake cycle, that mixture is then detonated to turn the piston, and by extension, power the car.

This particular carburetor has been something of a headache for the two years we've owned Sadi, prone, among other things, to leaking gasoline. Engine compartments are full of hot things, the exhaust manifold for instance, runs right behind the carburetor in a 1950 GM L6 engine. Uncontained gasoline + hot engine components is a good way to end up with Pontiac flambe. An ignoble end for a car that has survived for seventy years, and one we continue to try and avoid.

Saturday, I decided to go out and do some work on the car. I'm in the midst of re-wiring parts of the electrical system, and there is plenty of springtime maintenance needed after sitting for the winter. But once again, the damn carb started tinkling out gasoline at a steady rate, and I was determined to put a stop to it for good this time.

First on my own, then with Owen's help, I traced the leak, determined the cause (the bowl was overfilling), and made the necessary adjustments, namely bending the tabs on the float to reduce its travel. We then ran the car for a considerable amount of time without any leakage.

As victories go, it's a minuscule one. We've got two quite nice electric cars that we drive nearly all the time, and we're not driving anywhere right now regardless.

But I felt like I'd hung the moon anyway. For the first time in over a month, something had changed because I had made it different, had made it better. It sounds silly to say that an old car I'm not driving right now anyway, running a bit better than it was, gave me hope for the future, but it did.

Brains are weird, and mine is a bit more atypical than the average, but for now, I'll take the victories, and the serotonin hits, where I can get them.

Isolation - Picture Tells A Story

It’s been several weeks since I posted a Picture Tells A Story, though that doesn’t actually mean I haven’t been thinking, or even taking photos for them. 

I got… stuck at the end of last month, when my PTAS was going to be a shot of the receipt from an expensive food shop, talking about the privilege inherent in being able to stock up on food in preparation for going into COVID-19 preventative isolation. I knew exactly what I wanted the photo to look like, and what I planned to write. But I ended up not going ahead with the post, since many folk I talked to at that point were of the opinion that we were being a bit ridiculous in our concerns, and the steps we were taking in preparation. 

The next week I couldn’t figure out what to do or say for my weekly post, as I was still stuck on the previous idea. By the week after that, I lacked the emotional resources to charge my camera, much less take pictures or write a PTAS. I had a stack of photo editing work for paying clients that wasn’t getting done either, and I’m only now getting back on top of. 

Of course, the developing situation, that on February 29th, I worried my husband and I were overreacting to, is rapidly turning out to be one of the most impactful global events of my lifetime.

One thing that is becoming fast apparent through all of this, is that I, like many of us, am not emotionally or intellectually prepared for a slow-motion disaster. That isn’t news to anyone who has followed climate change-related dialog or policy over the last decade or two. Like climate change, COVID-19, both the public health calamity and the accompanying global depression that appears inevitable, is moving at a scale unfamiliar to most people alive today. 

My peers and I are used to the big-thing-happens-quickly-with-lasting-effects model of traumatic change. There was 9-11, the September 15th 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers that heralded the Great Recession, Hurricane Katrina, Super Storm Sandy, school and other mass shootings beyond counting, and so on. And looming behind all of those, the awareness that we will someday have to personally confront the impacts of climate change. 

COVID-19 is an ongoing disaster that takes far more than a day or two to unfold, but without the time scale or feeling that everyday people can do much to help, that we find with climate change. 

About the only thing most of us can do is stay home for an as-yet unknown amount of time. The world is holding its breath, and we know that things are going to change, probably for the worse for at least a while, but we don’t have any way of really knowing what that will look like, when it will happen, or who amongst our friends and loved ones we will lose along the way. 

That uncertainty and stasis is taking its toll on many of us. 

As an asthmatic diabetic with a lifelong history of upper respiratory infection, I am considered at very high risk for COVID-19. It’s been over three weeks since I’ve left the house even for a quick errand, and fortunately my husband can work from home, as well.

That brings us to today’s photo, a macro shot of the rear brake rotor of my car. As you can see, the enforced idleness of COVID-19 isolation has eaten away at the rotor surface, which is now thoroughly encrusted in rust. My mental health can relate. 

Tomorrow I am going to take my little car out for a drive. Those brakes will squeal terribly from disuse at first, but I’ll warm them up and break them back in a bit before returning. Shooting and writing today’s post hopefully does a bit of the same for me. 

Intimate Moments - Picture Tells A Story

Today’s Picture Tells A Story finds me well out of Maine, having driven over six hundred miles with my husband in his fabulous all-electric Hyundai to attend a conference where I’m teaching two classes and doing event photography. 

The event is part of the other side of my work, the not-so-mainstream photography I do in the adult sexuality/kink world, which I mentioned in last week’s post 

This is a community I have long been a part of, and I find being a photographer in it to be an absolute joy, as well as quite a technical and artistic challenge. So given as this is the blog of a photography site, for today’s PTAS, I thought I’d go into some detail about why. 

First off, some background on what goes on at these sorts of conferences and events, and how photography works for them: 

Whether a hotel conference or outdoor festival, there are typically a wide array of workshops during the day. These cover everything from detailed demonstrations of particular skills to discussions about relationships, healthy communication, the intersection of spirituality and sexuality, and personal growth. Generally in the evenings, though also sometimes during the day, there are areas set aside where people can come together to engage in all manner of intimate play, from the sensual to the sadistic, to the silly, and everything in between. There may also be structured events, such as themed mixers, games, or even orgies, that people can choose to engage with or not. 

Obviously, this is a sensitive area, and people have varying levels of comfort with others knowing that they are part of this lifestyle. This makes photography a delicate thing, and many events simply forgo having photographers at all. 

But many people do want pictures, which is where I come in. People who are interested in having their photos taken sign a model release, which includes age-verification documentation of course (though age-verification happens throughout a variety of steps to ensure everyone is who and how old they say they are). They are issued a colored band that denotes them as wanting to have their pictures taken. Everyone who doesn’t want pictures, wear a different color band. Multiple organizations I shoot for use some variation on this system. 

Ownership of the photos is generally shared between the event and the photographer, with attendees who buy photos being granted unlimited usage rights. It’s this shared usage between the photographer and event that is why photographers are willing to shoot these sorts of events at quite low rates for the amount of work involved. 

This brings us to the first significant challenge: it is vital that I only take photos of people who want their pictures taken, and no one else. Even in the background of my shots, there can’t be anything remotely identifiable. It also means that if I am unsure of whether someone is photo-ok, I have to simply move on and not shoot their play, even if it means passing up a killer shot. 

From a technical perspective, this means that I do most of my work with very wide apertures. Well over half of my event photos in this community are shot at f2 or wider. 

The next challenge is that by their nature, spaces set up with intimacy in mind, don’t tend to be brightly lit. Some events go in for a beautiful array of different colors while others choose monochromatic color schemes, but either way, low lighting is a common variable. Some photographers simply blow away the color with a flash, but the result doesn't’ fit my aesthetic, as it isn’t a good representation of what the space looked like at the time, which is part of people’s memories. 

While I will use fill flash, I tend to expose to capture as much of the ambient light as possible, and whenever I can, I skip the flash entirely. It is common that a shot of mine taken at f1.6 and 1/50th of a second, may still require ISO6400 or even ISO 12,800. I use the camera I do specifically for its ability to produce high ISO images that I can still manipulate significantly in post processing. 

Finally there are the artistic aspects of the work. It’s important to remember that I’m not working with models, or even with people I can interact with most of the time. People come to these events to have a good time exploring and indulging their erotic imaginations in new and exciting ways. Nine times out of ten, even people who have signed the release allowing them to have their pictures taken don’t prioritize photos over experiences. 

As a photographer, I need to be as unobtrusive as possible. That means I can’t get up in people’s faces, I can’t ask them to shift or hold their positions, and I can’t shoot them for more than fifteen or twenty seconds at a time so as not to make them self-conscious or feel like I’m part of their experience, rather than outside of it. 

But my pictures need to be beautiful. They have to capture the subtle intimacies between people, the feel of their play, these incredible, ephemeral, moments that many attendees may only get to experience a few times a year. 

And that’s entirely on me as the photographer. I have extremely limited control over lighting (basically what I can do with one flash and/or camera settings), can change the framing only through moving myself and my choice of focal length, and I have to balance a tricky exposure triangle to keep motion from blurring, exposure correct, and enough background separation to protect other people’s anonymity.

Before you ask: no, the pay isn’t very good. Some events have attendees pre-pay a flat rate that ensures they get all the pictures (worth looking at) that the photographer(s) take of them. $20 a person isn’t unusual. Other events, the photographers put up proofing galleries after the event and people choose what photos they want to buy or they don’t. That’s part of why it’s so vital that my pictures are fantastic, if they aren’t, I’m not likely to sell very many. 

It also means that every moment I can be shooting, I need to be. If I’m not taking pictures, I’m not going to have pictures for people to buy. At a five day festival, I can find myself walking six miles a day and it’s not unusual to come home with three thousand pictures to sort through.  

So, it’s a ton of work, the pay isn’t great, and to be really successful you need pretty specialized equipment. Why in the world then do I do it?

There are several reasons. 

First and foremost, it’s incredibly engaging. The spectrum of ways that people explore their erotic imaginations, both alone and with other people, is so much broader and weirder than people outside of this community know. Some of it is dark and scary, and can be remarkably beautiful in its brutality. Other elements can be so absurd that I have to put the camera down because I’m laughing so hard. And others still are so intimate that I can’t help but feel a sense of reverence and gratitude for being allowed to witness or document it. 

The next reason is the one I tend to give when people want a short answer, and that is that I get to take pictures of things that I never would in any other field. My camera has captured everything from sex in just about any position you could imagine, to people being waterboarded (consensually, of course), a group of people simultaneously being penetrated by a multi-spoked fucking machine based on an early aircraft piston engine (got video of that too), people being lit on fire and thrown into a swimming pool, and best of all, the looks people give each other when in the midst of intense intimacy, sexual or otherwise. 

And lastly, this is my community, my people. I understand them and their play. I want to give them images of these moments, be them intense, joyous, or (consensually) horrible, because it’s a part of their lives that they rarely get to see reflected in anything more than cell phone pictures, if that. I take great pride in my ability to capture the beauty found in everyone and every form of play. There’s a stereotype that kink pictures are all of lithe young white girls with large breasts in rope bondage, and I want to buck that trend. I also love making beautiful images of play modalities that aren’t obviously beautiful to everyone, which is why I’ve specialized among other things in shooting intense scenes involving medical play and blood for instance. 

So that’s why I find myself here. I’d write a good summation sentence, but there’s a class all about bondage with neckties starting soon, and I think it might provide some fun photo opportunities.