Sinful Sunday is all about the image. It’s a fantastic, sexy photography project that inspires people to take their own beautiful photos (usually, though not always, of themselves or other people naked) and share them each week. It is hosted (and run) by my good friend and sex blogging hero – the kickass photographer who started it all: Molly Moore. And it has now been running continuously for 700 weeks!
700 weeks is over 13 years, which is a phenomenal achievement. Massive congratulations to Molly as well as the amazing crowd of people who join in with the meme on a regular basis.
I’ve had a couple of attempts over the years, but for every time I’ve managed to take a passable Sinful Sunday pic, there are at least ten abandoned shoots where I tried and failed to capture what I’m after. I keep wanting to append a pile of words to each picture, explaining that I’m sorry for this or I didn’t quite get that right. It takes discipline and courage and photographic care to take a photo that stands entirely alone: massive kudos to the incredible people who do it week in, week out.
I don’t have enough confidence in mine to simply present them in silence. So. Waffle: you’re getting it. I know that week 700 is a huge milestone for the project, and Molly’s keen to get as many entries as possible, so I wanted to put something up, if only to nudge you all in the direction of everyone else’s fabulously smutty shots. I also know I’m incapable of taking photos right now, so I’m giving you an old one and an explanation to go with it. This is a picture of my tits (as voted for by people on Mastodon who – when asked ‘arse or tits’ – kept replying ‘why not both?’, to whom I can now reply ‘because I don’t have a photo with both my arse and tits in it, I am not that bendy’).
This photo was taken in the autumn of 2020. Inspired at least in part by Sinful Sunday, I embarked on a project just after I split with my ex which involved me taking one photo of my naked (or semi-naked) body each day. I wasn’t especially enamoured of my body at the time, and taking pictures of it helped me to become better acquainted. I did find it pretty empowering.
Not empowering enough to post the pic back then, clearly, but it definitely helped me find peace with something that I’d previously found to be scary. I think this is a big thing that Sinful Sunday does – it takes something that can be scary for lots of us (exposing ourselves), and turns it into something playful and creative. Joyful. And yeah, empowering.
It’s not just about the project, but the person
For me though, Sinful Sunday isn’t just about the project, it’s also about Molly. Because not only has she run this thing – without breaks, for over a decade – she’s also been around offering tips and advice and photography sessions to so many of other bloggers. She’s as generous with her time and help as she is with her hot naked arse, and many of us – writers, readers, photographers and drive-by perverts – are infinitely richer for it.
To illustrate this, I’ll show you the original of the photo that accompanies this post. As I say, it was taken in 2020, and I can tell by the bedsheets exactly where I took it. I snapped it in bed at a mate’s house before I got up to make coffee, and later showed it to Molly to explain what I was doing, and lament the fact even when I managed to take photos, they still turned out to be crap.
Image by me.
“Can I show you something?” she asked, with a semi-amused smile playing over her lips. “Can you send me that picture so I can do a quick edit? I’ll delete it after, I just need you to see.”
So I sent her the picture, she opened it in a phone app and… immediately made it look better. In less than a minute. She deleted the fucking phone cable that I’d not bothered to remove from shot, fucked about a bit with the light balance or something, and suddenly this picture that was ‘passable at best’ became one I considered posting for Sinful Sunday.
Image by me (with important help from Molly Moore
I don’t think I’ll ever be good at taking pictures of myself. But one of the things I’ve learned from Molly is that it isn’t completely out of my reach. If I take some time to get acquainted with angles and equipment and editing, I could get better at this thing that until now has eluded me. And if I don’t? Well… the other option on my Mastodon poll was ‘arse’ and I also have a few shots of that which I’ll use at some point in future: taken by Molly, at least in part as an exercise in showing me that I can do difficult things if I step outside my comfort zone. I am so very grateful to her.
I will always be grateful, too, to the awesome people who take part in Sinful Sunday – showing off their bodies and their beauty in infinitely creative and powerful ways. Although my own photos leave a lot to be desired, I can at least join in every now and then, and direct you towards the site where you’ll find an absolute treasure-trove of sex blogging photography. Some of it moving, much of it horny, and always always beautiful.
Click on the lips to see who else is taking part in the 700th week of Sinful Sunday.
13 Comments
Ahh I remember this and the arse ones. I loved creating those with you. Maybe next time I see you we should do some more…. could I maybe even lure you into the woods? *laughs
Love you, and thank you so much for joining in and giving Sinful Sunday a bit old shout out.
Molly
Ohhhhh I would absolutely love, one day, to be brave enough to go down to the woods and get my arse right out =) If there were anyone in the world who I would feel comfortable doing that with, it would be you. Maybe in the future…
Love you too, mate, you are the best of us xxx
call me crazy but i like the unedited version better, particularly the color and the light (i don’t care about the cable either way).
Regardless, *thank you* for sharing yourself (literally). It is a rare thing, full of grace, when someone chooses to do so, and I think we lose track of that sometimes.
How simply co-incidental … Hubby and I spent a wet, and soggy, afternoon a few days ago listening to your interview with JM Seaborn at Written in Kink ! And here you are popping up on Sinful … just lovely!
And, actually, I rather like your original photo !!!
But then, I’m not technical enough to have the patience for edits and apps and such. So consequently most of my own Sinful contributions will always be rather candid, spontaneous and probably not “technically, photographically, aesthetically” correct.
But that’s just me … and I always do admire Molly’s creativity with her imagery.
Anyway, lovely to see you on Sinful (I do seem to remember one many years ago in a hot-tub I think, which I rather liked) … but your words are always fun, and giggly-interesting to read!!!
Xxx – K
That is so good! Sexy and compelling.
Thank you.
Yeah, like I know the entire history of art is “paler things are better”, but I don’t think that’s 100% healthy? I prefer the first one too.
Of course Molly did a great edit with your photo but it was great in the first place.
I totally get where you’re coming from with the whole taking good photos but I often find some shots are better when they are raw and a bit rough because it’s not some carefully crafted angle and edit but shows the real life.
Love how Molly has managed to make it to 700 weeks, she and others have inspired me to take better photos and be really creative.
Great pic an so sweet an what looks to be innocent….but I’d like to confirm that…
Thanks all so much for your comments!*** Very kind of you to be nice about this picture/me. Modesty Ablaze – I have always absolutely LOVED your photos, especially your scavenger hunt ones: often my faves of Sinful Sunday because you take the challenge on with so much freedom and JOY! Love love love.
Those of you saying you prefer the other one, that’s nice of you but Molly is working within constraints that you are not party to, namely: I really desperately didn’t want to post the first one. It made me feel sad. Photos are about more than just the specific look of the thing, imo, and in this case Molly made enough changes that I was like ‘OK yeah I reckon I could do that’. Maybe some of that is about making me look more ethereal, less like me(?). I’d not thought about that before (so thanks for helping me get to that realisation!) but that’s possibly at least part of it. Even now, talking about this, makes me so powerfully uncomfortable. And it’s always interesting to me to sit with my feelings when I post nudes online, and explore the shape of how I feel – often genuinely angry and sad that people are commenting on them, which is… a really irrational way to feel. But I guess feelings aren’t rational. For me, posting this stuff is more about facing my fears (and those feelings) than it is about getting anyone to say ‘nice tits’ or what have you.
A friend messaged yesterday to say ‘wow nice pic’ or similar and although they meant well I immediately cried and hit the eject button on that conversation. I just don’t really like talking about my body in any way, even a nice one. So yes. Thank you for your comments! I appreciate them! Even though I recognise that my feelings towards this thing are completely batshit! You are helping me to confront those feelings in a way that’s extremely helpful!
Worth pointing out though that without Molly’s edits you’d never have seen either picture, because a) being able to show the first one to her and have her tell me that it was OK, and tweak it slightly so it became something *other* than just my work gave me better feelings towards that pic as a whole and b) now I can publish the pictures framed by the story, and the story itself is what I wanted to post about. I become comfortable posting the pictures because they become a part of the story, a sidebar to it, rather than just me going ‘here’s a picture’.
***except you Brian, what the fuck
Thank you for sharing
What a lovely lovely comment about your process GOTN
Genuinely LOVE this! I’m really glad you shared (it’s a pretty sexy picture IMHO) and I appreciate the vulnerability and honesty around your process with taking nudes.
Thank you for sharing! And thank you for doing the scary thing and being vulnerable with us here :)