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This was a fun shoot!  

The idea for this shoot came from my friend and advisor Suzanne Sease.    We’re leaving interpretation of the image  to the viewer, although another friend has suggested that this might be the perfect way to quit smoking.

I was a bit nervous about how Shannon would do wearing the latex hood since she didn’t have previous experience. I know some people find hoods terribly claustrophobic, but she was a total trooper.  I love her spirit.  

At the end of the day, we asked artist and impresario Neke Carson to stop by for a drink.  

Very special thanks to our stylist Tanya Seeman for the amazing job of getting Shannon into and out of the latex,  to her friend John for moral support and cigarette wrangling, to the Gershwin Hotel for the fabulous back lobby location, and to The Baroness, elegant latex fashion designer and hostess of fabulous parties, for lending us the catsuit.  

David Samuel Menkes is well known for his fabulous creations for leathermen, and for his signature leather straightjacket.  But he also makes amazing clothes for women.  I adore this birdcage skirt, and so did Sigail.  We had a blast with it.  Thanks, David!

My friend, Sully Walsh, invited me out to his loft-to-die-for in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago, and I spent a day taking pictures of the lovely Sigail Currie for my fashion portfolio.

The centerpiece of the shoot was Sully’s hand-built metal bed, which is an amazing piece of functional artwork.  First, it’s an ingenious bondage bed because you can use it to tie somebody up a million different ways. But it’s also a very elegant piece of sculpture, and I’m sure a lot of people would be happy just to live with it and sleep in it every night.

Sully makes all kinds of custom metal furniture, and also little specialty items.  He happened to have a pair of small hand-tooled custom handcuffs on hand and let us use them too.  I thought they made wonderful accessories to one of the evening gowns that our stylist Tanya had pulled for the day.

Gentleman that he is, Sully even sacrificed a piece out of his tee shirt collection so Tanya could make a feather hat out of it.

Of course, most of the credit for the overall beauty of the shoot goes to our amazing glam team - from left to right, Andrea Wilson genius hair stylist, Khush Singh brilliant makeup artist, our model Sigail, and Tanya Seeman stylist to the stars!

I met the fabulous D, aka Missy Po,  through Vivian at the Sex Carnival.  She lives in Washington DC and has been incredibly gracious about taking the Chinatown bus up to New York for my Polysexual photo shoots.   She’s a dream to photograph - sexy and beautiful in a totally non-standard way.  She has become one of my official muses, and actually as I write this I realize we’re due for another shoot.  I miss her!

For one of our adventures, she brought her new gold fish hook and asked me to do a pinup style shot of her wearing it through her lip.  I don’t usually do pinup style pictures because I’ve more than been there, but this one was a blast.

Her friend Sam asked to use it for the 2009 CD sampler of his Projekt record label.  I loved the way he manipulated my image and turned it into something magic!  The music is fabulous also, and you can buy the CD practically for free here.

Do you hear what I hear?

My Friend Mara and I have been creating a Christmas card together for many years.  We collaborate on the theme, and Mara acts it out for me to photograph.  Usually the ideas bubble up out of Mara’s highly entertaining unconscious, but this year we got our inspiration from a popular political figure  - guess who!

Unfortunately we can’t divulge the identity of the dead body, although many people have expressed their theories as to who it might be.

A few months ago, Chris March (brilliant designer from Project Runway Season 4) sent me a note asking if I’d be interested in doing a cover shoot of him for a literary magazine, New York Tyrant.    I suggested a trade - I would do the cover shot if he’d come back to my place and do a quick portrait for me.

Chris put me in touch with Tyrant’s editor, GianCarlo Di Trapano, and we set up a date.  As soon as I heard his concept I knew it would be a total blast.  He wanted to have Chris in a bear suit sitting on the steps of the New York Public Library.  How did he know that I’m a huge bear fan?  The human kind, of course!

We did the library shots with GianCarlo lurking in the background wearing a  fabulous pig mask.  Then we went back to my place where Chris agreed to put the bear suit back on, and GianCarlo volunteered to take off his suit and put on the bear head.  This was one of those days when I just love my life!!!

I felt so proud to be an American on the night of November 5th when we elected Barack Obama as our president.

And so ashamed the next day when California voters outlawed same-sex marriage.  In the wake of such an enormous step forward for our country and the world, that step backward for gay people seemed all the more small-minded, petty, and spiteful.

Do people really think that the love between beautiful people like my friends Matt and Angelo is going to hurt them somehow?  I just don’t get it.

asdfa

What fabulous friends I have!

I had been trying to carve out some time to figure out how to use this blog when along came my friend Viviane.  She’s a famous sex blogger - www.thesexcarnival.com - and she offered to help me get this thing started.

She gave me all kinds of tips, installed my rss feedburner feed, added some other stuff -  and now I’m trying to see if I can understand my notes.  YIKES!  This is not as easy as it looks.

But in the meantime, I thought I’d post a carnivalesque image in Viviane’s honor.  It’s from Dark Odyssey’s Summer Camp, an event that Viviane and I both love.    I took the picture on a beautiful balmy night around midnight, when everybody was down at the bonfire, beating drums and dancing and spinning fire pois.

The house where I grew up in Alaska, perilously close to the evil empire of Putin

Actually, I’m setting up this blog to tell you the little stories behind my photographic adventures, and I’m sure I’ll have lots to tell in the upcoming months - after I figure out how to work it!

But in the meantime, a Czech guy named Rick recently sent me this note. Aside from being funny, it’s so appropriate to the times that I can’t resist sharing it:

Dear Barbara,

What a surprise I got when I was googling to find ways to spell the name Barbara and there you were right at the top of the list. Ironically Barbara Bush came second. Love the work and may even buy a book or two, though living in the former Eastern Bloc money is tight, though thankfully that moron Bush has so screwed your economy it makes dollar based goods pretty cheap for us now.

I hope you will beat down the CDA [he didn't realize we had already lost it], it seems so typically US to have cutting edge photographers like yourself and then crazy bible belt folk believing the Bible so literally. Something we Europeans will probably never understand. Why you managed to get rid of your 42nd pres because he spilt some spunk on a young girl’s dress, here in the Czech Republic the President has openly admitted to having a girlfirend and a Lovechild!!!! and no one really cares that much.

In fact so much so that the prime minister went and did the same thing to boost his popularity ratings.

Anyway all the best and sorry about the spelling. [I corrected the spelling]

Rick

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