So this morning I learned there was a Lovefest going on at the San Francisco Civic Center, the Lovefest Parade that kicks it off starting at about the time I was reading the description over breakfast in the paper. Stupid me. I knew the Folsom Street Fair was tomorrow and I'd decided to photograph it, but a Lovefest Parade conveniently starting at the Embarcadero BART station sounds so very much more inside my comfort zone: sunbaked people without the leather and pain. This bondage thing is a scene I know little about and have no sense of the rules involved. How far do you go with “pain”, for example, before it's considered rude?

I do have friends I've worked with in the past who've both shot bondage pictures and posed for them in leather frocks (there are books for photographers describing how to tie your models up without doing damage and driving your insurance rates out of sight.), but the folks I know are into image and the outrageousness of the thing. (I think. There's little in life we know and with bondage I'm not all that sure I'm interested in finding out.)