Let's pretend for a moment that video wasn't the overwhelmingly preferred medium to consume WAM content and some producer out there wanted to kick it old school and provide a WAM offering centered around photography reminiscent of Splosh! magazine. I know we already have some outstanding WAM photographers who specialize in PPV photosets but I wanted to take the temperature of the community and see what they would expect from a paid WAM product that was strictly photography. A few specific questions:

1: The natural instinct and training for photographers in other spaces is to publish only the best of the best, which could amount to only a fraction of a percent of the photos they took during their session. Would you be okay with buying from a photographer with that high level of selectiveness when it came to what to publish? Or would you want to see even the redundant, uninteresting, and otherwise good-but-not-great photos with your purchase?

2: How many different "models" would you realistically like to see per each "issue?" In the video world some producers will batch shoot a bunch of scenes with the same model and then release that model either all at once or over consecutive releases before moving on to the next model. Would that setup work for this hypothetical photo product or would you need to see a variety of different models in one piece?

3: In a similar vein to the first two questions, quantity vs. variety: Say you purchase a photoset that has between 50 and 100 photos. Would you rather all the photos be of the same model in the same scene, of the same model but across two or three different scenes, fewer photos each of a few different models, or some mix thereof?

4: The rise of streaming has made a lot of consumers in the kink video space okay with not "owning" their media anymore. Would you insist that your purchase have all of the photos available for download? And, if so, does the resolution of the downloadable images matter (more resolution = more detail but larger file size)?

5: How much do you miss all of the text-based stuff that would go along with the images in the magazine era (interviews, narratives, captions, etc.)? Would you just prefer to buy a ZIP file of jpegs and call it a day?

Any other thoughts you have on WAM photography (The concept, that is. Everyone knows the UMDer "WAM Photography" is a creative genius), I'd love to hear them. Again, I'm really looking for the opinions of those who still have a soft spot for WAM photography. If you'd never buy only images, that makes sense, but not really what this is about. Thanks as always for the interesting conversation! If anything comes of this I'll let you know.

Let's see.

1. 100% quality over quantity. Even if they're all great pictures, we don't need 10 of the same picture of Jane picking up the bottom of her evening gown as she climbs out of a mud pit.

2. I guess consecutive releases? I know if I go to one of my favorite producer sites and I see "Amber gets slimed pt. 1" and it's not necessarily a scene I might be interested in, it still gets my attention because I know there's going to be at least one more scene released that could work for me.

3. Mix of a different models. That way, like the previous point, you know you're gonna get another scene with them.

4. I kind of assumed that if you buy a scene you're getting everything. Unless what you mean is that a membership gets you everything, buying the scene gets you almost all of the pictures but not all of them.

5. Doesn't really apply to me but I appreciate when a scene with preview pictures has a caption. Especially considering how specific my tastes are, if a model's top could go either way but the caption says "Kate gets slimed in an off the shoulder top and jeans" instead of "Kate gets slimed in a cute off the shoulder dress" then I'll just go onto the next video.

Since I started having disposable income and buying scenes I've become probably 80% video preferring but there are still definitely circumstances where I'd buy pictures (ie if it's an old video where the quality isn't as good).

Thanks so much for your insights, BarryMcCockiner2! Good call out that made me realize it wasn't that long ago when the quality of still digital photos was better than video. I know it's not exactly what you said, but I remember a time in the mid-90s when I accidentally saw a nude picture from an AOL SPAM email that, in retrospect, looked better than a lot of the 1080p video still being pushed out there.

Personal opinions here, naturally. But this is an interesting topic presented thoroughly.

1. I would want as much of the full take as possible. Both to best tell the 'story' of the set, and because the specific moments and images which might appeal most to me may not be the ones that appeal to someone else, or even the majority in general. So I would hope to err on the side of being inclusive. For example, I really like seeing the model wipe herself off after getting messy, and sometimes producers edit this part out, which is always disappointing. Presumably more people have various little tastes like that.

2. Model variety per 'issue' would be fun, but not essential. If a single model in a single scene was featured, and the content was high enough quality, that would be great.

3. Ideally, multiple models, or one model across multiple scenarios would be spectacular. But, if it's a choice between a 'complete' set of 1 model, 1 or 2 scenes, or 2+ models across 2+ scenes in more of a 'just-the-highlights' format, the former is strongly preferred. Because as above, the highlights for me might not be the same as the highlights for someone else.

4. Ownership is more important for still photo content. Unless the subscription model is very affordable, I would feel hard pressed to pay monthly for stills. Not because they aren't worthwhile, but because part of the appeal is the flexibility of the format; the ability to compile your own set of selects, view across multiple platforms, etc. Resolution is important, even if it increases file size. A quality still image provides tremendous detail, if the resolution is sufficient.

5. Text could be a lot of fun, but probably not a deal breaker. It would have to be pretty high quality to warrant much of a premium price-wise. Although, interviews and narratives that really added freshness and novelty to the images could be very special. This might be hard to maintain over time though.

Video is definitely the dominant medium for good reason, but personally I think there is absolutely a market for high-quality photography too.

I still take still images of the scenes I shoot, and enjoy going through them, even though in sales terms video is absolutely god-emperor, never mind king, these days.

A still image taken at exactly the right time can capture a fleeting moment in a way that video just can't, and allow you to linger on that moment for as long as you like, drinking in the details. Plus if taken with anything resembling a decent camera, will be at much higher resolution than even the best current video files. I have a shot I took last weekend of the moment Honeysuckle really started to feel the effects of the custard-drenched shorts she'd just pulled on while otherwise completely clean. It was flash of a few seconds on the video, but the still image freezes it in time, the stance, the shocked reaction, the contrast of the mess-soaked shorts and the completely clean rest of her outfit. The ironic thing being, it'll probably end up being one of the free promo shots to promote the video when it goes on sale.

The things I tend to want to see in still wam photos, is detail of what is happening. If the model's trousers are being filled, I want a shot that shows the actual filling, where you can see the substance pouring in. And here I would want some redundancy, as for instance if she's wearing running pants, which tend to show the substance first wetting through and then leaking through from inside, each shot will show a little more of the process having happened. If there isn't video, then I'm going to want to see that process developing in a sequence of still shots. Plus all the usual caveats about photographers so obsessed with keeping heads in shot that they manage to crop the actual action out of the frame altogether (a perennial issue with wetlook).

Regarding models and batch shooting, rather than releasing the same model's scenes one after the other, do more than one day of shooting, with different models (or combinations of models), and the mix up the releases, to keep things varied. I've sometimes shot seven or eight scenes with the same people over a weekend, but those scenes will get mixed up with others, of other people, shot months or years earlier. The two things I try and avoid are having exactly the same people in two consecutive scenes, or having too-similar outfits.

Text: Absolute yes, as long as it's well written. When it was announced that the Splosh store would be closing and I bought all the fully clothed scenes, I also copied and pasted Bill's sales blurb from each scene into a text file in the folder the scene was saved to. He wrote descriptions that were both informative and very sexy to read, a skill largely lost in most modern scene descriptions. So I wanted to ensure I kept those as well as the actual content. They definitely add something to the overall packages.

Brave to consider a photo-only WAM product in this day and age, be very interesting to see if it takes off. From my POV, i wouldn't be averse to buying a photo-only scene, but only if it ticked all the boxes - right outfit, shot so we can see things properly, and the description would need to be very detailed to explain exactly what we're going to see if we purchase. Though to an extent that depends on price. If something's $5, you can take a punt and if the product turns out to be terrible, write an honest review to warn others, and then just write it off. Less tempting to take risks like that when the price is up in the $20s though.

Personally I love photographs as my mind goes ahead and makes a story. I have lots of photos that turn me on, but very few videos. That being said, in the 26 years I have been here, it takes something epic to actually affect me.

But to answer the quests:

1. Offer both, then people can have hand selected few or loads they can sort though themselves. Remember your taste will be different from consumers.

2. Variety for me. 1 model might not do it for me, or 1 scene is good and the next not so great. The more varied you have, the better the client base.

3. Again, different models. but not sure why you would bundle them, better to sell scenes separately so folks cane pick and choose. That way you can also see what sells and what doesn't, saving you money by not shooting unpopular scenes.

4. I am old. I loke to own thanks, though this does mean 'sharing' (AKA theft) happens. Better resolution = better pictures. File size means very little nowadays with modern hard drives.

5. I don't know about this one, I guess putting them in would be interesting, but not sure if I would pay extra for it.

Just a general point. I shoot both photos and video for my own enjoyment, but it's more often the stills than the video that I come back to. Even with very good video equipment, a good still photo has a lot more detail in it than a frame from a video. While video is superb for conveying the "flow" of the action, you can't linger over a video, zooming in the the bits that excite you in the same way that you can a photo. So I absolutely think there's a place for still photos, but they need to be sharp, well lit and high resolution, because I'll be enjoying zooming in to see, say, how the strands of her gunged hair are clinging to each other, or to look at the mess oozing between her toes, or some other detail that is hard to make out in a video. For me, that's the real advantage of the one format over the other.

Pies and nudity. A lot of both.

Are you me? That's exactly the motivation to start this new project. I was taking some behind the scenes photos of my video shoots and thought, "Some of these photos look great. If I actually use deliberate lighting and photographic techniques for stills instead of video I might have something going."

Your process is the inverse of mine . My videos are almost all just a documentation of my still photo shoots, but I'm working on integrating more narrative content. It's awesome to know there's other folks considering the importance of the impact of still photography.

One thing I am always hemming and hawing over is how high of resolution should I provide as the finished product. Because one of my other outputs is in physical media (some of my clients buy large 24"x36" canvasses for example) I don't really want to release files that could be easily used for enlargements.