Play Sessions
Come for the experience
Leave with the evidence
A Play Session combines a bespoke shibari experience with photography, allowing you to become completely involved in what is happening rather than spending the session focused on posing, expressions, or how you look in front of the camera.
Instead of performative guided posing sequences we design a scene containing real sensations and raw emotions that you experience, and I capture them.
FORGET ABOUT THE CAMERA
At my Exquisite Photography shoots everything happens for the camera, from set design and lighting to where you look, and the goal is to craft the most beautiful photos of you.
A Play Session works differently: once we begin, rope, sensory restrictions, impact, wax and other forms of play take over while photography happens in the background. The intention is not to manufacture a perfect arch with appropriately fitting facial expression.I photograph what actually happens: anticipation, focus, resistance, tension, release - all the moments when you forget completely that you’re being photographed.
“I was so engaged with the experience and very rarely thinking about the camera at all.”
BUILT ABOUT YOU
“Normal” boudoir sessions follow a plan, moving from set to set and going through posing sequences. No two Play Sessions follow the same script.
Before your session, we discuss what you enjoy, what interests you, what you would like to experience, your boundaries, and how far you want the intensity to go. From there, I design the session around you.
Some people want only the rope. Some want to go all in. The choice is yours.
YET SOMEHOW, THERE ARE PHOTOGRAPHS.
This is the strange part.
You may remember the texture of rope or sense of releasing control. You might recall the feeling of anticipation or specific sounds or studio fragrance.
You will barely remember me picking up the camera.
And afterward, you get to see yourself inside something you normally experience only from within.
One client admitted that after becoming completely absorbed in her session, she wondered whether it had even been possible to make beautiful photographs while she wasn't thinking about the camera.
Then she saw them.
“I swear I fell in love with every single shot.”
WHAT A PLAY SESSION IS LIKE
Your session begins long before we meet.You will complete a detailed questionnaire covering your medical history, interests, boundaries, and intensity, followed by a private consultation where we go through the details of your experience together before the day of your session.
When you arrive, we’ll chat again to make sure we’re on the same page and there is no unanswered questions. And then we play.
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It’s the moment that the energy shifts that you know. The immediate change in intensity and intension. A welcoming smile. “Can I get you something to drink?” And then the air leaves the room. “Turn around.” Rough hands rip your arms behind your back. An arm loops through them and holds you there. You can’t move.
The rope moves around you quickly, binding you and freeing him. His hands. Fine white lace. Its soft, delicate, light on the air until its wrapped around your face. Blinding you. And then you’re being hauled backwards. Your heels desperately click along the floor as you’re dragged. Dragged.
You forget you chose it. For a moment your heart is in your chest and you almost scream. Danger. You must be in danger. You force yourself to breathe. Your chest hardly expands. The ropes. And your muscles are so tense already. You must be shaking.
In another room your face is pressed into something cold. Then his body weight is pushing the rest of you against it. A door, a wall, you don’t know. You may never know. He’s warm. It makes you feel warm. Hot. Alive. You chose it.
He has your hands above your head. “Hold the ropes.” You barely can they’re so tight at your wrists but you do. You must.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Moan. He just pressed against you. His face so close you couldn’t stop the sound before it formed and fell from your lips. You’re excited. Your blood traces his every touch. Swims after it through your veins to the surface of your skin.
Snap. The tassels of the flogger are soft when he drags them up your inner thigh. Smacks them between your legs. They’re shards glass when he whips them across your ass. Your body hums with your breaths. Throbs against the ropes. Around your waist. Between your legs. Tied to a bar spreading your ankles. Each knot pulling you into place. His place. Snap. The sting doesn’t spread like a warm wave, it digs. Sharp shards that bite at your hips. Once twice. Thirty times. You don’t know. You shake. You arc. He pushes you back. You hold onto the ropes. He pulls at them. Drags them against your panties. A dangerous delicious friction.
Your dress. Your pretty little dress you wear for the first time, is pulled up around your chest. You hold the ropes tighter as he spins you around. The bar is gone now and your heels click along the floor trying to keep up. The lace still keeps you in the dark and you stumble. His grip is quick and brutal when he catches you. Pushes you back against the hard surface. Snap. Your back arches and you squeeze the ropes in your grip tighter. Sparks fly across your chest. Moan. Moan. Breathe. Moan. You can’t catch your breath before another blow steels it. You can’t take any more. You can. You chose it. You want it. You take much more.
You tremble under your own weight and stumble forward into him as your arms come down. Blood rushes back, a tidal wave of hot sensation that tingles and burns.
A scraping noise fills your senses. Temporarily becoming louder than your ragged breaths. There’s a moment of something hard at your calves before he’s pushed you down. A chair. You don’t relax, he doesn’t give you the moment. The ropes around your wrists pin your arms behind your head. His knee pins your breath in your chest. Breathe. Moan. Breathe. You can’t keep up with the waves of your body. The pressure of the rope. The pain on your skin.
Your hair is made to choke you. The rope is made to fuck you. Grind. Your knees should hurt as you kneel on the floor but you don’t feel them over the burn in your quads and glutes. “I didn’t tell you you could stop.” Grind. The soft rope is white pressure on your clit and it blinds as you do as your told. Grind. Moan. Grind.
The silk sheets are cold against your skin. Or maybe your skin is hot against the satin sea. You sink into it. It cools you. Comforts you in your lace induced blindness before his hands are back again. Your leg is tied and held open at the hip. Your panties are long gone leaving only soaked rope between your legs. His weight in around you, on you. A hand squeezes and slaps you. And then a blade cuts across you. The sharp tip drives down your chest parting the sea between your breasts in two. Scream. Moan. Scream. “There’s no-one here to hear you.” Scream. You chose this. You want this. More of this. You take it.
There’s no blood only pain. Red trails of pain across your chest. Around your nipples. Over your nipples. Your belly button. Down. The sharp point veers off just as you convince yourself your okay with it going... He pulls the rope tight. Moan. Moan. Moan.
You’re numb as the ropes move around you again. Your leg is freed but you don’t move it. You’re not sure it would do as it is told. Not like you. “On your knees.” Your weight sinks into the soft, safe, bed. Pain. Scream. Scream. Squirm. Writhe against the tight ropes. Your nipple burns and cries against whatever pinches it into oblivion.
Try to breath. Gasp. Scream. Squirm.
Breathe. Slowly. More slowly than you imagine you can handle, the sharp pain dulls to a throb before he finally releases it. You chose this. Your taking this so well. Breathe. Shudder.
Shake.
The pain repeats in patterns. Sharp bloodless trails that mark every inch of skin. Tight lengths of rope, pinning and bruising in new places, new positions. His positions. Rough hands pull your hair, choke you, slap you. Your breasts. Your face. You take it. Fingers in your mouth force you into a gagging drooling mess. You chose it. You want more. Your tongue laps at the fingers, sucking. He pulls away.
Brightness. Your blinded by the retreat of the lace down your face. The room is hazy through your tear soaked mascara. For a moment you think your vision means its over until it focuses on the camera. It’s not over. This thought fills your overfull body of senses with relief.
You want more.
“Stick out your tongue.” You obey quickly. “Farther.” You fight to please, opening and reaching for him. The sticks clamp down and a thick warm pain fills your mouth. You drown in it. He holds you there as your mouth fills, pools. You can’t swallow. Breathe. Try to breathe. He tilts you by the chin and you drip. Tendrils slip from your mouth. Hang down to your chest. Your eyes chase the drips all the way down. You’re soaking the sheets.
The camera sees it all. Sees you like this. Tied up, your arms behind your back, your tongue pinched outside your mouth. You’re vulnerable. Not just now, but forever. Each click of the silent shutter capturing your sick pleasure permanently. You chose it. You like it. You want more. You pose for it. Look into the lens and will it to see you.
The ropes move again. You’re made to watch in a tall mirror as your naked reflection is pinned in another new way before you're forced helplessly back onto the bed. Face down. The pattern of pain repeats. The hits are harder now. You know this from the sound his hand makes as it slaps your ass. You know from the way he rubs them away now. But they don’t hurt more. Your body sinks more quickly into them now. Welcomes the next one more easily. Even the red trails of pain feel shallower as they run down your back, over your ass.
You’re moved again. He slides the ropes across your skin. Drags them. Each time the position changes the dragging is rougher, longer. When will the rushing river of pain run dry?
You want it to be now. You want it to be never.
On your back your arms are separated. One is tied down to the bed, the rope stretching from your wrist to wrap around your neck. He ties the other to you. He places your hand between your legs where the rope has been all night. Its gone now and your fingers easily find where it was and they touch. They slip into your wet folds and stroke. Stroke. Stroke.
The rope tightens around your throat. Stroke. His hand covers your mouth. Stroke. Your fingers find that hard bundle of nerves and press into it. Roll over it again. Again. Again. Your other hand flexes against the rope. Every muscles flexes. Stroke. Inside flexes. Stroke. Faster and faster. Harder and Harder.
Your body floods with dark intense sensation until its black. As black as the glove covering your face, stopping your breath but not your fingers. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. His hand releases. You don’t mean to but you breathe. Breathe. The blackness bursts and you shudder against the ropes.
I chose this.
The session develops according your expressed interests, your responses in the moment, and within the boundaries established beforehand. I will be taking photographs of you throughout the experience without interrupting. Afterward, you will see a carefully edited collection of photographs from the session and choose the images you want to keep.
YOU CHOSE THIS.
It’s incredibly powerful and vulnerable to see photographic evidence of yourself in a state you normally experience only from the inside.
The camera remembers details you don't from the second-by-second changes in your body to the expressions you never knew you made at the moments where control slipped.
And the person looking back at you afterward is still unmistakably you.
That is the point.
PLAY SESSIONS
Bespoke shibari and bdsm experiences in Victoria, BC.
Experience Fee: $500
includes pre-session consultation, scene design, 3-5 hour session, aftercare, and viewing appointment.
Digital images and wall art are purchased separately with packages starting from $1,000