journal Archive

Rachel Kramer Bussel Banned from Flickr and Vimeo

by Amelia G : July 22nd, 2008

Rachel Kramer Bussel has a new collection of stories out. This Cleis Press anthology is called Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica. Rachel is an extremely accomplished anthologist of erotica and a vocal enthusiast of spanking.

Although Rachel’s books sell well in their category and she generally has a couple of them charting on Amazon, she hoped to increase her visibility and sell more copies of Spanked. So she commissioned an outfit called What That Noise Productions to make her a book promo video. She posted the video to a number of sites and Vimeo and Flickr both removed it. Although the subject matter is a bit naughty perhaps, there is no nudity or anything like that in the video. At the time of this writing, Vimeo had simply responded to her queries by telling her she violated their terms of service. Flickr had not responded at all.

I know, from personal experience, that Flickr seems capricious at best. There is some truly terrible photography on Flickr, of some extremely explicit material, posted purely to promote quite pornographic sites. I spent a lot of time browsing Flickr before making Blue Blood profiles on there. I was very careful to precisely conform to the way other regular posters placed their photographs on Flickr. The BlueBlood.com profile quickly grew to have more than three thousand friends. Flickr sent a warning, but they refused to clarify what exactly Blue Blood was doing that wasn’t fitting with the Flickr community standards. Eventually, after failing to answer multiple emails from us, Flickr deleted the entire BlueBlood.com account, despite the fact that clearly thousands of Flickr members liked what Blue Blood was posting there just fine.

When someone polices unevenly, it is always difficult to discern the reasons for sure. I don’t know if Flickr . . .

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I need a brilliant Flash designer for a series of small top quality projects. Anybody here do Flash or know someone who can do a really killer top-end pro job? (Obviously this is paid gigs.)

Most of the time, I feel ready to take on the challenges of . . . well, pretty much everything. But some days I just feel overwhelmed, without a lot of situational change. Some days I know which things I wish were not the case, but they don’t totally get to me. Other days, I just feel frustrated and overwhelmed. How about y’all?

Rest of free cute boys and more pics gallery on BlueBlood.net.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

She has various pets I have photographed. Although they do not appear in this picture. My friend L got a puppy and I plan to play with it soon. Rest of free Trash Factory Devil’s Point gallery on BlueBlood.net.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

Full Hooters Ritual Gallery Here

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

I should really go get some dinner and then get some work done.

The project I am working on is difficult and I think I’m procrastinating and making my own job harder by looking at things I can reasonably expect to irritate me.

My friend Sabrina had killer chicken at our book club meeting and I just got the info on the place to get it from her. Going to proteinate now.

Do you procrastinate with irritation?

Hobbiest photographer posts that he likes to give TFCD models gas money to be a “nice guy”. Money does not = nice. Model does not = low paid whore.

He thinks a model’s work is not good enough for him to pay her, but he also thinks she is such a low little whore that he can buy her affections for a tank of gas. How disrespectful. I’m just speaking as a woman here and not a photographer, but, if you are giving someone money to make them think you are nice, that just seems kind of icky. Giving a woman a tiny amount of money and expecting her to think you are a nice guy for it also implies you think she is cheap.

Money does not make a person nice. Especially not a small amount of money. If you give a model $25 and maybe let her use the pictures, then that is a paid shoot with a low rate and some perks. That is not a trade shoot.

Money is for business arrangements and it takes more than money to make a person nice.

There is a site I occasionally particpate in and quickly get discouraged.

When browsing over there, I always feel stressed out by the way people are constantly complaining about a lack of paid work while they expect artists to give them huge money and they do what should be highly paid commercial work for free. I’d honestly participate more except that, although many people have a profile for say modeling and being a makeup artist, there is no profile type on there for someone who is buying photos. As a photographer, I feel like I read stuff from people who expect money to fall out of the sky, when I’m working really hard. As an editor, I don’t participate because it would feel weird to do editorial calls from a photographer profile.

But there are more and more people willing to work for free because they erroneously believe that shooting the cover of the phone book for free means they are going to cross over to some world where everybody makes bank. One of my personal rules is that, while I will work for free, I will not work for free for anyone who has a big office. If they can pay that kind of overhead, they can pay me too.

I have yet to come across an alternative modeling agency which really hooks up particularly alternative people. There was an offline one in Los Angles when I got here, but they had really mainstreamed up zed cards where I personally couldn’t tell that I’d want to shoot some of those folks. In my experience, most of the online ones are just people who get off on associating with models or companies which make money off getting people to work on music videos for free or close to it.

If I am looking to post in my capacity as an editor, what is a good site for photographers to sell photos on?

Hollywood Hooters Hello Kitty

by Amelia G : July 15th, 2008

Blue Blood’s SpookyCash webmaster affiliate program sent yours truly and Forrest Black to the XBiz Hollywood show. As the XBiz show was this past weekend, I was reminded that I had some entertaining snapshots to post of the fun we had. (Footnote: Webmaster affiliate programs are what people with sites reaching thousands of visitors use to, ya know, make money.)

The first night of the webmaster show, we went out to dinner with my friends Lange and Warren. I tried to convince them to go to a restaurant called Koji’s. Koji’s serves sushi and shabu and features pretty good food in a kind of weird mall setting. Some of the same folks who Disneyfied Times Square built a structure called Hollywood and Highland adjacent to the venerable Mann’s Chinese Theater and across from the Disney one and the historic Roosevelt Hotel. Hollywood and Highland features a variety of paid street performers dressed as costume characters and it is a mall, but Koji’s is tasty. Nonetheless, when Lange and Warren realized I was directing us through a mall, they nixed Japanese food and peer pressured me into going back across the street to Hooters.

I’ve never been to Hooters before, but there had been an open bar by the Roosevelt Hotel pool earlier, so I was feeling tipsy agreeable. At the time, we all thought our waitress was super hot. Warren offered to put her in Penthouse and she giggled and he was like, “no, seriously, I’ll put you in Penthouse.” It seemed like she thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. Warren really does shoot for Penthouse. Actually, come to think of it, Forrest Black and I have both shot for Penthouse as well, but Warren . . .

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It was one of those beautiful wet Portland days when Voltaire, Forrest Black, and I drove all around town looking for a good spot to shoot. Voltaire guided us to this railroad crossing underpass, but it turned out to be under construction. Never ones to be daunted by such a minor inconvenience as heavy machinery and tons of people around, Voltaire and I made a beeline for the bulldozers while Forrest stayed in the rental car as lookout. Voltaire had just handed me her underwear and lifted her neon green skirt, when a construction worker waved me over. I was bummed because we were not going to have good light to shoot by the time we found a new location. But I came when he beckoned because I’m a nice girl like that. I think he was the construction foreman and he told me it was cool if we wanted to shoot pictures to our hearts’ content, but please do not actually climb up in the seats on the trucks because the city’s insurance won’t cover that. The guys working construction didn’t even roll up on us to ogle. The foreman and everyone was so nice that I actually asked Voltaire not to get in the seats. I think that, even with our good behavior, she looks most excellent in the big gravel shovel and in the danger zone and I’m really pleased with how these shots came out. I hope you all enjoy them too. It was quite an adventure and, yes, I did just give me and Voltaire good girl points for shooting erotic nudes in public but only near the seats of trucks and not actually in them. Full series via BlueBlood.com or BarelyEvil.com. Additional free NSFW shot from the series after the jump, although registration is unfortunately now required to view NSFW free pictures, it is free registration and you can post once you have a free profile set up.

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I shot some pretty pictures. Free gallery with more on BlueBlood.net

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

I’ve been writing a lot lately, so I thought I’d take a moment to post photos I’ve shot. These turned out nice. Free gallery of pics from this shoot on BlueBlood.net now.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

I wrote an article for BlueBlood.net called Fashion Show in the Champagne Room and shot an accompanying Trash Factory Fashion Show at Devil’s Point photo free gallery which this is one of my favorite shots from.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

Independence Day Last Words

by Amelia G : July 5th, 2008

Alex Groh is an unofficial sort of cookie monster. He claims to subsist on cookies, jilting his loving refrigerator in the process, and only getting out of bed to draw and get milk for his cookies. This may be exaggerated for comedic effect, but that’s really not a bad quality in a cartoonist. Alex Groh draws a webcomic called Last Words and cookies and the blood of small children are his inspiration.

The comic strip stars the severely psychotic Loc with his trusty kitchen knife. No whining if you get cut. And remember to keep a magnet under your pillow, so your computer can’t come assault you while you are sleeping.

Alex Groh says just because I’m looking at porn doesn’t . . .

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