Sinful Sunday Weekly Round-up 293
As per usual here I am reminding you of the prompt for December. You have just over a week to get your images ready!
This week it is my delight to welcome my beautiful and talented friend Malin James to the round-up.
Malin’s Top 5 Pics of the Week
It’s a wonderful honor to be choosing the Sinful Sunday Round-up for the second time. The first time I did it I’d never participated, though I was already a great fan of the project and the people who participated every week. Choosing five the first time around was hard, but it was even more challenging this time. Not only are the images stellar in terms of quality, but, since then, I’ve been on both sides of the camera and my respect (which was already sky-high) for the people who participate has only grown as a result…which is a long way of saying that I had fantastically hard time narrowing it down to five.
The Regrettable Kiss lives up to its title and then some. The grainy exposure takes her gorgeous red lips from what could be a sort of manufactured perfection to the perfect expression of that kind of swollen, gritty desire that you know is going to hurt, even as you run right at it. While it feels like an impulsive shot, it conveys the moment before the kiss, the moment after, and the kiss itself so powerfully that I could almost taste the bruising emotions behind it.
Full disclosure, I loved the photograph that inspired this image when Exhibit A and The Other Livvy posted it last year. If someone were to tell me that it would be possible to create an entirely new, equally gorgeous image from it, I’m not sure I’d have believed them, but Tom Starling did it. The rain forest around them gives the whole image an extra kick of lush, wild abandon. It’s a fascinating, sexy juxtaposition of photography and graphic art. It’s made me quite a fan.
Oh, this image…it grabbed my brain and wouldn’t let go. There is so much power in her hand and how it reaches into the lens, but what really got me were the stories that popped into my head as a result. Who is she reaching for? Or what? Where is she? Is she demanding? Imploring? Begging? Grabbing? Why? What’s at stake? What’s going to happen? It’s nine different stories wrapped up in one image, and a brilliant example of visual storytelling.
These two images made me smile and smile and smile. This woman clearly knows how to play both sides, and I’d wager she does both extremely well. For me, it’s all about her posture—her graceful supplication in the first one is only strengthened by the calm, shoulders-back authority of the second. If I had to show someone a visual representation of switching, it would be this. As examples go, it’s fantastically eloquent.
I need to be up front here—I love necks. I fucking love them. That said, I tried not to let my bias railroad me. Exposing 40 is such a master of photographic technique that I honestly can’t tell you why this image feels like perfection, but it does. The swoop of her neck into her shoulder, highlighted by noir-ish lighting? Gorgeous. Beautifully balanced composition? Hell yes. Even if I didn’t fucking love necks, this would have knocked me out.
Big thank you to Malin for her fabulous round-up. You can find her on her own blog Malin James and on Twitter @MalinMJames
Blast from the Past
Sinful Sunday Week 171 – A to sub Bee
I will admit to being a big fan of the images that sub Bee and her partner create together but I think this might be my all time favourite shot of theirs. It is deceptively subtle but once you realise what the background is the whole thing takes on another sexy dimension. This is really creative and skillful photography.
