Feature Photographer |
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Name: | Hywel Phillips | ||||||||||
| Based: | Reading, Berkshire | |||||||||||
| Style: | Elegant Bondage | |||||||||||
| Status: | Professional | |||||||||||
| Experience: | 6 years (+20 years as an amateur landscape work) | |||||||||||
| Format: | Digital | |||||||||||
| Camera: | Canon EOS 5D and 10D | |||||||||||
| Portfolios: | Various fetish magazines | |||||||||||
| Portfolios: | No-one's asked... | |||||||||||
| Paid work: | Mostly I work for my own site, open to offers! | |||||||||||
| TFP: | Not usually | |||||||||||
| Film: | I'll go for Mr. Vampire (Hong Kong action movie) | |||||||||||
| Author: | Glen Cook | |||||||||||
| Destination: | Snowy mountains or spectacular sea, ideally both! | |||||||||||
Introduction: Hywel Phillips has had an interesting career path.
A brief flirtation with the real world after his first degree scared him back into the arms of academia, where he spent the next decade as a particle physicist, most of it working on experiments at CERN in Geneva, where he spent a lot of his spare time up mountains with a camera and ice axe. An interest in Medieval re-enactment saw him take up pencil and paper to draw portraits, initially of friends beating the crap out of each other on the tourney field. This clicked with a very long held interest in bondage, and he started drawing portraits of bondage models based on the work of other photographers. However, he soon tired of basing drawings on the work of others and took up his camera to shoot reference material to draw from. One photoshoot with a professional model convinced him he was a much better photographer than he was an artist, and he was hooked. The only problem was how to pay for all this expensive gear and hiring models... and RestrainedElegance.com was born to solve that little problem! Three years later, frustrated by the constant conflicting demands on an academic particle physicist, he quit his day job and went full-time as a photographer. |
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How did you get into photography? |
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From a VERY early age. I vividly remember a trip to Penscynor
Bird Gardens near Neath where my parents bought me a little fixed-lens fixed focus camera. It took roll film! My Dad has access to a darkroom at Swansea university, and I can still remember seeing some of my first efforts appearing like magic in the developing tray. In my late teens I really got into landscape photography, particularly in the mountains, and that was what really drove my photographic |
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endeavours until I discovered bondage photography, which finally gave me the chance to indulge in my other great passion- tying up beautiful women! |
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In fetish work, how do you make the model feel comfortable? |
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You have to develop a "bondage bedside manner". Unlike glamour photography, there is a certain amount of unavoidable physical contact:
it is simply not possible to tight a tight chest ropeweb and crotch rope without making some contact! So one has to remain |
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more-than professional especially during the tying up, shoot fast, show the model the shots so she is reassured that she is looking great, and don't leave her in there longer than you have to. Other than that, just the same as you'd do when working with any other professional:
show consideration, be friendly but not TOO friendly and remember both of you are there to make great photos... a photoshoot is not a date or a chance to perve. And that goes for models too... I'm a bit lairy of "lifestyle" bondage models these days |
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because a few of them treat photoshoots as a chance to live out their fantasies rather than a professional job to make beautiful photos. Everyone should enjoy what they do (and I certainly do enjoy it) but never forget you're there to shoot great photos! |
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Where did you learn your rope work? |
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Picked it up over the years looking at the work of other
riggers and practicing, mostly. I learned a great deal from
looking at the work of |
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Jim Weathers (and from trying to
replicate one or two of his ties- a few models have shown up
with Jim's photos and said "Tie me up like THAT!").
Recently I've been working quite a bit with Chanta Rose,
who used to push my rigging skills to the very limit back when she was a bondage model. My first ever suspension was dangling Chanta upside down in a hogtie from her knees from the ceiling of my living room. Eeek! Way to break a guy in gently, Chanta! Shortly after she left for San Fransisco and has become one of the best |
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riggers in the world, hey should I plug your book, Chanta?
It's called "Bondage For Sex" and it's great, I've learned a lot from Chanta. |
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How did your first nude shoot go? |
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Completely fine. Never had a big issue with nudity- first nude shoot
was first pro model shoot and first bondage shoot, too. Really
enjoyed it, too worried about f/stops and lighting ratios and rigging
bondage to have any embarrasing physical reaction! The studio
was horrible, though... fag ash years old on all the surfaces. Yuck! |
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Shot abroad recently? |
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Yes, just been to the South of France with Sabrina, Hannah, Joceline and my assistant Kate (who used to model on the site way back when we were getting started), second time we've done a trip with that crew. I like location shoots, but they are expensive and stressful to organise. With the right group of people they can be a real blast once you get there... and with the wrong group of people you can end up feeling like a bloody school-teacher looking after a bunch of sulking |
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drunken teenagers. My advice is don't go abroad with anyone
you haven't shot with for at least a full day... and if you are going, I'd
thoroughly recommend taking Sabrina, Hannah and Joceline! |
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What do you love most about the job? |
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Probably the thing that ultimately made me leave my Particle Physics career- the ability to deliver work that you're actually
proud of. There were so many demands on my time as a lecturer
that I was |
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always pushing out work that I knew could be ten times
better if only I had another day or two to work on it. Being my own
boss and running my own business, I can make sure that I do things
RIGHT. Sure, there are lots of time pressures, same as any small
business (weekends and evenings off are a dim and distant memory)
but at least sometimes I get to a photo I'm editing, sit back and
say to myself "Wow. I took that!!" That sense of satisfaction just
can't be beaten. |
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What makes a great model for you? |
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Oh, wow. You're not giving me any easy breaks on the questions, are you?
Obviously, she has to look a million dollars. That's kind of given,
Obviously, she has to be professional in attitude and perfect in her preparation for the shoot, and she has to show up! |
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just with her eyes. So the good models for me are 60% actress 40% model, and you can tell from the "hit rate" of good vs bad shots, too. A good model will get 90%+ of all shots good enough to use. But the GREAT models have something that sets them apart and that something is individuality. A way of doing all the acting and looking staggeringly beautiful but in a way that is totally and immediately her own. Whether it is Joceline radiating her total passion for bondage in every shot, Jasmine Sinclair pleading with those incredible eyes, Hannah sexing it up, Sabrina smouldering, |
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Sophia Smith looking every inch the beautiful ice queen or Paige Robbins getting into physically implausible positions, the great models are the ones who put their own unmistakable stamp on every photoset. There's never a moment’s doubt who the model is. |
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What would be your Ideal location for a Shoot? |
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Somewhere VERY expensive- the palace of Versailles, say...
Somewhere sumptuous, decadent... and with strong suspension
points in the ceilings! |
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Photoshop, how important is it for you? |
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Don't use it!
I use Corel Photopaint, partially from habit and partially because you
can streamline its workflow a bit more than you can with Photoshop.
Ten seconds saved per pic really adds up when you're uploading 2000
shots a month. |
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smooth off any zits and rashes and we're good to go,
so long as I've got the lighting spot-on in the first place. |
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Any tips for new photographers? |
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Shoot what you have a passion for. If you don't care about your
shots, no-one else will. Chasing the market is a mug's game- you'll
never compete with someone doing something he loves so much
he'd pay to be doing it. |
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Plans for the future? |
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I think on the stills, Restrained Elegance can punch way above its league.
But after all, even the cover shot for Vogue is probably only shot with a
model, stylist, makeup artist, photographer and maybe an assistant or two. |
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great fun, hugely expensive
and I learned a lot, but there's an awful lot more to aim for.
A slick Hollywood film has a budget and crew orders of magnitude higher
than I can ever dream of- the stills equivalent is trying to shoot magazine
covers with a REALLY cheap mobile phone camera (no lighting and
an first-time amateur model). But I love the storytelling aspect of making movies, so we're getting more and more ambitious with things on the video side of the site. If I won the lottery, I'd use the money to make real movies. Or retire and write a novel! |
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All images are the copyright of Hywel Phillips |
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Links |
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Web Site |
Portfolio Link |
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Past Feature Photographers |
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