What really happens before In The Flesh

I don't know who all the hands belong to, but the boobs are Mollena's. She was a surprise guest at In The Flesh, and I'm hoping to see her again and talk for more than 2 minutes when I'm in San Francisco, which is coming up soon - readings in the Bay Area 1/29, 1/30, and 2/2, details TK (or on my site) but all are awesome events. Photo by Stacie Joy

Check out my new In The Flesh Flickr account. All I want is to make sure Flickr leaves it as is. A mighty thing to ask, yes, but I think I'm up for the task. I still don't know how to set privacy/safety settings on individual photos, but I'll deal with that later.

Swooning

Over this image, and my way-too-late discovery that you can search on Flickr and narrow it down to images that are under a Creative Commons license. Well, now I know, and my blogging life will be a hell of a lot easier, though I have found with Cupcakes Take the Cake that about 95% of the time, when I ask, people let me use their photos. But still, this takes the guesswork out of it. And is how I discovered this hotness by Idan Cohen. It's part of an amazing set that has many more less risque, but perhaps even more captivating, images. Check them out.

Flickr-itis

Gerard Depardouche's winning Big Quiz Thing trophy

For anyone on Flickr, a heads up that rkb1 is dead, long live rkb1. I have a pro account there that I'll just let run out there, but personally, I'm ready to delete all those and start over. Maybe I just get bored easily, and while I love looking at old photos of friends, and seeing the growth of my cupcake blog and such, old photos of me get, well, old. Plus ever since my account being set to moderate, hardly anyone can even access them, and while I'm fine with some of the more salacious ones on there, I feel a disconnect with them.

I don't really want to be some naked girl on the internet anymore. It seems almost antithetical to my real goals - to fall in love, settle down, have babies. And please note, I'm not saying you can't do that and be naked on the internet, I just personally feel like that's not really what I'm about anymore. Kindof like how I'm committing to editing erotica well into the future, and doing sex journalism, but I do NOT want to be only a "sex writer." Because I think that pigeonholing keeps me, or could keep me, from writing about other topics I'm equally as passionate about.


Photographer Anya Garrett let me take her picture

I'll keep that account, and if you have your safe settings sorted and are into that sort of thing, you can see the Christmas light bondage photos and the nipple peek from the He's on Top/She's on Top party, when I was too stupid to know from search settings. So having ruined that account effectively, I've decided to start fresh with two new ones, with no nudity. Along the same lines, I'm gonna be revamping my website a bit and getting rid of the way old photo gallery for some new ones. After being topless on the cover of a Polish newspaper and in GQ Italy, I think it's time to say goodbye to those pics, which I personally don't like that much, and say hello to new ones. So if you want to find me on Flickr, there's one account that's all about me, and one that's all about cupcakes, and they're named appropriately, with some samples in this post. Friend me if you're into that sort of thing.

rachelkramerbussel

rkbcupcakes

And, as always, the food porn to end all food porn, the Cupcakes Take the Cake Flickr pool


Gloria gets a backrub from photographer Jerry Ruotolo at the Happy Ending staff party (no, I'm not "staff," but for party purposes, running a reading series there counted, I guess - was super fun with very yummy food and I got to say more than two words to the people who help keep everything running smoothly for In The Flesh)


Sirius Radio show host Frank DeCaro eats a sugar Sweet sunshine cupcake

I heart Michael Thomas Ford

Not only is Michael Thomas Ford an amazing (and amazingly prolific) writer (and blogger at www.dollaraword.com) but he has the most amazong photos of himself up on Flickr. Here are some of my favorites:

My friend Flickr

(if you can't read them, the stickers say top and bottom - I don't really consider myself either exclusively, cause it's so circumstantial, hence, both. For the right person, I can be anything, but that's a story for another time.)

I'm doing my usual frantic pre-trip running around (I'll be in London 12/31 to 1/6), so lots of posts I wanted to write will have to wait for the New Year. But I did want to say that for anyone wondering, yes, I have a Flickr account, which is now mostly cupcake-related and quite G-rated but once upon a time, I showed some nipple (actually, that wasn't the first time, and that's one of my favorite shots from the He's on Top/She's on Top party) on there so my entire account is in moderate mode or whatever they call it, so all you have to do is adjust your safe search settings to basically say you're up for seeing anythin. There are photos there, and armed with my trusty pretty new green Olympus, I plan to be posting lots more there soon. So set your SafeSearch OFF if you want to see my photos, even the G-rated ones.

From Flickr's guidelines:

Don’t forget the children.
Take the opportunity to filter your content responsibly. If you would hesitate to show your photos to a child, your mum, or Uncle Bob, that means it needs to be filtered. So, ask yourself that question as you upload your photos and moderate accordingly. If you don’t, it’s likely that one of two things will happen. Your account will be reviewed then either moderated or terminated by Flickr staff.

For those who want to know more, Violet Blue, who has an amazing and must-see photo stream, has blogged extensively about her trials with Flickr; go look through her archives. Here's another bit about that.

I could go through all my photos, take off any naked ones or make them friends only, and reapply, but...I have 1,255 photos on there, and don't really feel up to the task. I use Flickr every day for cupcake blogging and to store images of my book covers, In The Flesh readers, and interview subjects, so I guess my feeling is I'm just happy to have it as a resource. As anyone who's seen any website I've done by hand knows, I'm not a techie girl at all. I want to learn more, truly, but don't have the time, so Flickr is perfect for me because it's easy peasy. I resisted it for a long time until, like Bloglines, my friend Allison convinced me I needed to get on there, and now I'm hooked.

In sum, though, if you want to see my photos and they're not showing up, add me as a contact and fix your safe settings, and voila. I'll close with one of my favorite photos in my account, of Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Jessica Cutler taken at the original True Sex Confessions Night in April 2006 (has it really been that long??) at In The Flesh. Oh, and I'm doing another True Sex Confessions Night May 15th.

No more Flickr, maybe

Update: Other people seem to be accessing my photos just fine, so...it's not so bad. Just very scary to log in and see NOTHING except my friends' photos. Thank you for your help! Hopefully they'll show up for me soon too.

Anyone have any idea what might have happened to wipe out all my photos and groups on Flickr? This was my account. I'm baffled - any help would be MUCH appreciated. I had a lot of personal photos but also ones for In The Flesh and Cupcakes Take the Cake. I'm just really curious if it was Flickr or a hacker or what. Guess it doesn't really matter at this point, but still, if there's any hope of recovering all those photos, I will pursue it...in a month.

No time to really deal with this anytime in the near future, so I hope you guys enjoyed my photos. At least I ordered my Moo cards in time.

I do have a very old gallery on my site BUT I somehow lost the password and haven't been able to get into it in about a year, so all my favorite photos, the new ones by Anya Garrett and such, aren't there. I may get rid of that gallery in the near future too, but that'd be voluntary.