Seasons Beatings - Happy New Year to all of you

i've been having a tough winter so far. Bad head cold lead to some hearing loss or so I thought. after a week or so of trying to soldier through it I decided "go to the doctor" I go the ENT - he tells me "it's not an infection or sinus thing - I think you need to go to get a cat scan and maybe an MRI"

i'm 40 - this doesn't help. The bigger issue to me is that i just simply can't hear out of my left ear and the right seems to be following suit. So I haven't been able to shoot. But I have gone through some stuff I shot a ways back and some stuff that I just didn't post...

I wish you all the best of health - the happiest of times - the joy of hope - and the love of someone special.

I hope you enjoy the images i'll post the next few days....

all wrapped up and ready for christmas morning.

JC

Portraits of Mal Martine - Coney Island

Mal Martine In Black and White and Latex in Coney Island - 30 Degrees and Windy

The Closest Thing I've Shot to A Winter Coat Ad lol - Mal Martine @ the Wonder Wheel Coney Island

Mal Martine IN Color and Full Blown Attitude - Flogger At The Ready

Mal Martine Part III

What else can I say - I could waste a 1000 words and not come close to telling you what your eyes will tell you in 1/2 a second.

Mal Martine, Coney Island, 30 Degrees at best. Police presence as well as the typical Coney Island c.h.u.d types. High winds keep me to a bare bulb for the light source. Flat grey skies don't want to cooperate. Who the fuck cares. She rocked it.

Mal Martine Strikes Back

Wonder Thrills Latex - Mal Martine vs Coney Island

Whats not to like about a woman in latex? I don't have a particular fetish for it but I won't lie - I do like to see a woman with some curve hugging latex hanging off her body...Mal Martine does it so well. 30 degrees and windy near the ocean she was still the picture of dominance and poise...

My Own Personal Montreal Fetish Weekend....

Montreal Eh?

I loved my time in Montreal so much that i have to keep coming back to these images...loved the shoot no matter what the equipment decided not to help me with....

Mal Martine

Coated in latex and dripping with attitude the spider said to the fly can you handle this?

I met Mal Martine at the parking lot near my job. We'd spoken a few times but had not met yet. This is common for me. The rule more than the exception. The not meeting - not the parking lot. Within moments I could tell I was going to have a blast shooting her. She had no "real" images in her port to speak of and had done the whole "i'm not good in front of the camera" dance that i hear from many women that I shoot. I knew this was going to be false. I knew she was going to kill it and she did. Within five minutes of being dressed we created this image. It was a 1/5 of a second hand held and she was stunning. I wish i could have lost the car but there was another car just to camera left that was hideous and i wanted the whole church. Her friend makes a sneak appearance by mistake - i didn't see it in camera and for some reason along with the lens flare i think it adds to the image...I have cropped versions without her but I prefer this one. Mal Martine is worth looking for. She is a pro Domme in NYC and if you are looking for someone with gravity and poise in the face of new situations then I think you will be pleased.... More images to follow.

Free Parking Thanks To Sandy

Coney Island A few days post Sandy - the sand moved over the board walk and 100's of feet to the street toward Surf Ave

Has The Edge Gone Dull? Chain Of Strength @ Rev25

it had been 23 years since I'd seen Chain of Strength at City Gardens in trenton - or 22 - as i get older i can't always remember exactly but it was a long time ago. I got to see them again at the Rev25 show in NYC last week and here are the resulting images... thanks for taking a look

Heaven With A Gas Mask

I've been blessed over the years to shoot with some extraordinary women. I always try to give them credit when  i can - sometimes they ask that I don't. This is one of those subjects. We met up a little late and hit the subway. Plenty of people around but as usual not too many people want to be in the picture - they simply want to see what is going on. I hear people say "great guerrilla photography" and this always chaps my ass. It's a diservice to me but more than that it's an attack on my models. I get them to stand out there while i shoot away and people walk by and in some cases open their petty little mouths in less than flattering ways. For the most part it's all positive but not always. They model and pose and wait while i move lights and try to get "the shot"

HB and me hit 9th ave on the D train just in time to have a work crew come from the other side and they made sure to wander down to the platform just opposite us. HB posed and sat and waited while i moved lights to get the shot i wanted. Mixing the flash and the crappy light of the platform and the crappier light from the train yard and the buildings around it makes for a long time nude for a model...

In any event - HB - you rock. Hope people will show these images some love...

couple of color/black&white comparison's here - let me know what you like better.

Life

We all make bad decisions. The thing that makes life nearly impossible to master is that sometimes when you try to fix the thing that you think was a bad decision you make a worse one. Life is really hard. That is all I'm saying....

Gia - Abandoned Building Girl Next Door

So if you've read the rest of the posts about Gia you know already that the day didn't go as planned but was rescued by her grace and beauty under duress. I picked her up and we drove toward one of my most favoritest spots to shoot and it is now under construction to turn into condo's or some shit. Sorry for the lack of tact on that one but it was really one of my favorite spots. Look for the Heavenly Bawdy posts to know which one. 

So I had to think fast and take us to somewhere else. That somewhere else I had shot recently and i don't love going back to the well over and over but I had to and the spot is so big that I think i can coax a bunch more shoots out of it without really causing myself to look like i'm repeating. I say to Gia "Hey is it cool if i take you an hour north of here and take pics..." She never blinks. "YEP!"

Next stop - hour away. Bit of off roading. Bit of exploring. Some lovely outside shots and then inside to check it out. So Murphy is with us. I've been there 4 times now - never another person. This day there is a guy using it to practice rappelling, a family of 4 roaming around and some random college aged kids exploring the crazy place...

Long story short - Gia rocked it. She is a weird mix of pixie and doe eyed sex pot - too skinny to be a pin up girl in the classic sense but she has the bangs and the attitude...

Check her out...

Gia In Black And White

 Black and White - Stark by comparison to the color work and in some ways I feel like it takes the feeling away from the subject. In others I love that it makes it so much more just about the light. For a long time before I understood flash at all I shot black and white exclusively. It was a a big part of the name Stark-Arts which I came to use for the web. These days the majority of my work is color but every now and again an image says Black And White to me and i make the move - These images are all stronger due to the nature of color conversion...

As for the lovely doe eyed Gia - I'll let the pictures be worth their 3000 words....

Gia Bound

I did an introductory post to Gia earlier in the day but now we are down to what she wanted to shoot. She asked to be bound. She asked for suspension. She brought her own kick ass ballet shoes. What more could I ask for. Fun, inquisitive, intelligent, great eyes. Really looking forward to more with Gia.

Many models would have complained when the first location i took us to ended up being a no-go (another of my favorite locations has succumbed to being redeveloped. Damn It!) - Many models would have gone shy when the 2nd location was also being explored by a family of 4 (never saw that before) Gia kept her spirts up and kept on giving me the looks I wanted. More to come...

Gia NYC - Non-Rope First

Gia is a model i've been doing the "we should shoot" tango with for a while. She had no rope in her port so when she first contacted me I envisioned more of a fashiony style shoot. When she said "I want to shoot rope!" my heart started to pitter patter. I looked at a model that in the right place and outfit I think I could do fetish, fashion, and everything in between. The fact that her daughter was born a week after my own made an affinity grow even though we hadn't met. Upon meeting her I was blown away at how mild mannered and gracious she acted. I knew it was going to be a great day...and it was.
Stay tuned for more images from Gia

Streets of NYC

 Kishti on the streets of NYC before the rope went on...

Check back for the rope pics.