Interview with Bondage/Fetish Model

Lorelei

-- Eric, Find and Bind All the Pretty Girls

I was getting tied up for private pics when I was about 24. Soon after that Harmony (Communications) hired me, but not for modeling. So for several years I did photography, editing, directing and rigging, but almost no modeling as a captive. I didn't become an active captive until I started my own website.

How were you first introduced to the fetish community/fetish modeling?

When I was in college I found Harmony's "Bondage Life" magazine in an adult bookstore. Up til then I'd thought I was the only person into bondage…! The magazines inspired me to doing bondage pics.

I started doing personal bondage because I was into it. I started taking pictures because it was fun. It was a big surprise to me when Harmony suggested that I come out to Los Angeles to produce as a job.

I probably look my best just tied to a chair, frankly, my best physical feature is my chest. But for personal enjoyment, I like to be tied in frogties, strappados, and suspensions.

Duct tape! I like the style Brian Tarsis called the "bargain basement"-- at least 3 strips, slightly crossed. Sometimes in the bedroom Jon (Woods) does a "compromise" gag with me -- big fat cloth cleave gag and then layers of duct tape criss-crossed top.

My favorites for private/sexual play are cloth (torn bedsheet strips) or thin cotton rope. For modeling I like cotton rope or duck brand duct tape. Duct tape bondage is a blast.

My earliest influences were detective magazine covers and John Blakemore (H.O.M). Later on I was heavily influenced by the training I received at Harmony, learning to conform to Harmony’s style. My site currently has a mix of all those sources.

If I want to do anything different, unusual or difficult, I test it on myself first. I do sketches and talk with Jon (Woods) about how we can work up to it ourselves. And I don’t roleplay when trying something that’s new technically; that way we can talk about it while it’s being done. If the bondage goes well on me, then I feel comfortable rigging it on a model later.

My fave is damsel stuff, detective magazine stuff. And since most of my fans are Harmony fans, I also do reasonable amount of glamour bondage.

Our occasional private photo-sets tend to go off in the sexual direction—showing me having a vibrator orgasms and stuff like that. Since that’s what tends to happen in my bedroom. There are probably a couple dozen orgasm MPGs on my website by now.

Artemis Antone is going to shoot Jon and me acting out a force fantasy for her website. That will be a blast. I Artemis is the cat’s pajamas.

I’m fortunate that almost all the ladies I’ve wanted to tie up, I was able to get together with them. The only model I tried to get but couldn’t, was Brittany Andrews. I got in touch several times but I guess her secretary just couldn’t fit me into the schedule.

There are hundreds of bondage sites now, so it’s hard for everybody to stay afloat. There so much for fans to choose from.

I guess fans stick with me because they know me so well. What with my guestbook, forum, the old diary, all my writing onsite, and the intimate stuff like orgasm MPEGs, a person can really get to know me very well. There are fans out there who’ve never met me but they practically know me as well as my friends do.

I guess cause I still like getting tied up? I don’t know. :)

It has completely changed modeling—in one really good way, and one really bad way.

Pre-internet, models were paid per shoot, and the photographers kept all the rights. So the day a model retired, she’d have no ongoing benefit from all the work she’d done, but the photographers would have pics they’d created that they could portfit from for years after. These days many models can have their own paysites, or produce their own videos, etc., so they can continue to receive the benefits of those efforts afterward. I think that’s a positive change, it’s given the models more control and they benefit more from their work.

The bad thing about the internet is it’s made it possible for anyone to become a rigger/photographer. Sure that means there are lots of good ones and nice ones, but there also a huge number of nasty, unsafe rigger/photographers out there, and there’s no limit to the number of new models coming in. So even someone who upsets, hurts, and lies to every model he works with—he can still find a naïve new model for next week’s shoot, and she doesn’t know what she’s in for until it’s too late.

I run my website myself, so I’ve always just done what I liked to do. In terms of explicitness, perhaps I expose more of my personal life than most other models, what with our bedroom pics/MPEGs, but that’s just because I’m not embarrassed to share myself like that.

I can only recall a few times customers tried to contact me to do extreme or explicit custom work. I turned down an anal-plug bondage request….

I’m not picky about my poses, but I’m picky about presentation. If a site’s style presents the models looking their worst instead of their best, that’s probably a site I wouldn’t want to model for. :)

I don’t know… the overall national response seemed to be, “Ohh, tee tee! Okay, now we’re bored and we’ll go to the next news flash.”

So I don’t know if it had a lasting effect on many individuals out there.

No, like most bondage sites out there, my membership is getting smaller every day. The economy is in bad shape and everyone is worried about the future. I have a survey form on my site for cancellations, and most canceling members say they have to cut costs, or they lost their job, or no longer have money for entertainment.

I’ve been all that just as much as being a model…. The years I spent working at Harmony and Close-Up Concepts were more about producing videos and photos than modeling. My website has been half me as model half me as rigger. Starting this year I plan to be more rigger than model.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop rigging and webmastering; I love that stuff. There are a few non-bondage things I like to do on the side, eventually; for instance I studied music composition in college and still want to do some of that…someday.

New models:

1. The minute you pick a modeling name for yourself, reserve the internet domain name to YOURSELF. (yourname.com) Have a fellow model show you how to do it, and don’t let anyone else reserve it their name, no matter what excuse they try to give you for doing that way. You might never use the domain to have a website, but it doesn’t cost much and it will prevent someone else from messing with your career.

2. Check out the photographer thoroughly before you work for them. Bring someone with you the first time so they can meet the photographer and see where the shoot is taking place.

3. Don’t do what you don’t want to do, don’t let anybody talk into doing something unless you’ve thought it over for a few days, don’t be afraid to end a shoot early if something is wrong with the rigger, and don’t anybody tell you “you HAVE to do these if you want to get work.” There’s room for everybody at all levels of modeling, without ever having to get yourself shoved into activities that you don’t like.

New Photographers/Riggers:

1. Learn to make webpages. Put up a starter site so models can read about you and look at your sample work. If you don’t have any sample work yet, put up your photos of sunsets, anything to show that you do at least know how to hold a camera.

2. Use the net to locate your first models. Email them via modeling boards, their websites, their Yahoo groups. Be honest, you don’t have to make up anything, just tell them exactly what your vision is about what you want to shoot. If you can’t afford to pay modeling fees yet, offer time-trade or time-share shoots to models who have their own websites. Be patient and don’t be discouraged by the percentage of non-replies. Usually, all you need is one or two good first shoots to get things going in this industry. And by good shoot I mean, a shoot where the model is happy with the shoot. Because if happy, she’ll go tell 5-10 of her friends, and soon you’ll have plenty of contacts!

3. Don’t try to leap in and make a living on this. Plan to be a weekend warrior for a few years. Shoot when you can, what you can afford, stockpile your pics, develop contacts by being a freebie photographer… and when you have enough material to start a paysite, start with a token site or pay-per-view so that you’re not immediately locking yourself into constant updates. Don’t quit your day job until/unless the site makes more than your regular career.

Just my two cents!

Thank you Lorelei for taking from your busy schedule for this interview.

Fans can visit Lorelei's website at BedroomBondage.com and ForceFantasies.com.