Task 17: Dramatic Lighting

Previous Task | Next Task

“Look at dramatic key lighting and try to achieve that look with your nice new ball gag. The bit rope gag is also beautiful, try making a dramatic lighting photo set with the ball gag and the bit gag, that is your next task.”

Low Key Lighting

Noooo, are you telling me I have to repeat this task I struggled with so much? Whyyyy. I mean, I know why. It will be beneficial to me to get a grasp of how to use light. Having a bit more of a direction actually made me quite determined to do this right away, as opposed to my last approach.

I googled how to do low key lighting and realised that this is how Charlie makes his pictures. I had been wondering where he’d found such a perfect black background in his house but turns out you don’t need one! However, the tutorials on low key lighting on google weren’t very helpful to me. They all said that ideally, you would use a black wall and clear bright light, as well as a reflective screen. Well, I had none of those. Thankfully, Charlie was more than happy to help me and tried to talk me through the steps all day long because I just didn’t get it, lol. (See his tutorial here)

Pillow

Instead of trying to capture myself right away, I started photographing this pillow on the couch. Charlie said to start with the lowest amount of light and to slowly work my way up to the light. In the end, I took about 100 pictures of a pillow, though some are completely black. The problem I had was that the pillow would be too dark when I could keep the background black but when the pillow was bright enough, the background wouldn’t remain black.

Charlie also reflected that the shadows weren’t quite strong enough. I tried it with two different lamps and started photographing my face instead of the pillow to see if it made a difference. It didn’t really, I just didn’t seem to understand how this worked. Once again, there were several times that I wanted to give up. I wondered if this would be another task I couldn’t do?

I took a few breaks here and there but I felt like there had to be a way to accomplish this. I wanted to grasp it today because otherwise, I knew I wouldn’t pick it up again. I first started trying at 10 AM and finally managed to capture what I wanted between 7-8 PM. Determination goes a long way, huh?

Natural light

I mentioned I tried using a lamp but it just didn’t work; I found that their light wasn’t bright enough and Charlie reassured me that it’s definitely possible with natural light. I prefer to work with natural light so I welcomed that sentiment. However, by the time I finally got it the sun had turned and now shone on the opposite side of the room. The cough was serving as my dark background and I wasn’t about to move it!

I thought that perhaps I just had to wait, then noticed that the shadows cast through the blinds were actually quite pretty so I rushed over, put in the ballgag (and there came the arousal) and started taking some pictures. When I got into position and had just started having fun, ready to take some close-ups after the following picture, the sun had already gone under. Sigh, onto the actual low-key pictures then…

The Bit Gag

I had tied the bit gag about 2 hours prior to taking these pictures. I had thought it might take a while but it was very simple to make one. Initially, I’d made one of black rope but then realised this might not work great for a dark picture so instead I made a purple one. Yes, this is purple rope, not blue.

I placed the camera opposite the couch and the light from the window fell onto my right. I came up close to the camera ensuring there was quite some space between me and the couch, which would make it easier to accomplish the black background and it worked! I was so happy with myself and suddenly, this whole experience became fun.

I took these pictures, not worrying about whether I was showing my face or not because Roxy obviously knows what my face looks like. But once I had taken some successful ones I tried to capture one of just the bit gag and as you can tell, the result worked out so well.

Following this, I tried to take some with the red ball gag too but these pictures weren’t really working out. I guess the purple works a lot better with the dark and the light from outside had become less quite quickly. Nevertheless, I have now learned how to do low-key photography (with natural light, at least) and I’m quite glad for it. And, was quite aroused afterwards because apparently, gags do that for me, haha.

Xx Mila

Previous Task | Next Task