Another rainy day here in Minneapolis. Sitting down at the coffee shop with so many ideas for upcoming Steemit posts […beyond just the cute pinup model blogs]. Thanks for all the comments and upvotes yesterday, by the way! I can count on one hand how many times I’ve managed to pull off two posts in the same day. Yesterday was one of them. I worked for hours on my Photoshop tutorial “Dark pinup Photoshop tutorial; retaining shadows and mood!”. Unfortunately, by the time it was exported from Final Cut, uploaded to YouTube and ready to post, it was 1:30a.m. I pushed it off to the following afternoon, and managed to sneak in a blog of my newest edits from my last trip to the west coast. Read that post at “First edits from LA and Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend!”. Anyway, currently earning $120 in rewards for one afternoon is just one of countless examples of how Steemit can impact our lives […especially as a freelance artist].

Today’s post surrounds one of the many Suicide Girls that’ve made it to Instagram fame. Her name is Milenci and as of this afternoon, she has over 112,000 followers. Before she was Milenci, she was Bailey, and she contacted me back in 2014 hoping to become a Suicide Girl.

Full disclaimer here. I am not a fan of Suicide Girls as a company. I’ve been shooting for them/with them since 2008, on and off. Last I recall, they were purchased by Playboy LLC and restructured the way you become a Suicide Girl. They introduced the “Suicide Girl Hopefuls”. What this means is any woman could post photos or herself with the hashtag “suicidegirlhopeful” and be included under the SG’s brand umbrella. The only way you can become an “official Suicide Girl” now is to submit and be voted as Set Of The Day. My problem with it is that it exploits tens of thousands […very literally] of young girls with absolutely no promise […and in many cases, expectations] of both making money, and/or being a part of them company, while THE COMPANY absorbs all the benefits, traffic and momentum. Naturally, it is the choice of every Hopeful Suicide Girl to participate in that transaction, but to me, it seems unethical […in fact, I just took a note in my phone on a future post regarding the role Steemit could play with that same audience of alt models. Steemit very well could one day put Suicide Girls out of business].

Regardless of my personal opinions, however, Bailey new this was something she wanted. She contacted me, she paid my rate […which was an investment on her part, and a flattering one as there is no shortage of male photographers that would shoot nude photos of her for free in Minneapolis]. We decided to shoot two sets of images once we picked a date. One set for Suicide Girls, and a second for Zivity and similar artist based platforms that tend to reward the models a little more fairly, and gives the artists retaining rights to their work […naturally, those will be the ones you’ll be seeing today].

Milenci’s first Suicide Girls set went live two months after her shoot, and I remember getting an ecstatic text from her while I was shooting in LA, “WE DID IT! WE GOT SET OF THE DAY!”. And just like that, Milenci was a bonafide Suicide Girl […I also received $200 from Suicide Girls for being voted SOTD].

Suicide Girls owns the rights to our set on their site, “The Artistry Of Heat”. If you’re already a member of SG’s or you’ve been thinking of joining, you can check it out at the link just mentioned. I can’t share those photos, but I can share the set we shot for Zivity and similar platforms, shot the same day.

Bailey is an outstanding model and has always been great to me. I was humbled to receive a message for her a couple months ago inquiring to hire me for a shoot again, even after her success and extensive portfolio with so many fantastic photographers.

I hope you enjoyed the photos. I post daily here on Steemit at @kommienezuspadt. I’d be grateful for a follow and more Steemians to share my art, photography and thoughts with.