thebeautyofrope: thebeautyofrope: rope and photo by TheRopeGeek model: @dumdollyI think mode
thebeautyofrope: thebeautyofrope: rope and photo by TheRopeGeek model: @dumdolly I think models who make stuff look easy give people a mistaken impression of what these sessions are like, so I’ve decided this a good photo to ruin for y'all by way of example.For this photo, I broke one of my own rules—when tying a big criss-crossing clusterfuck, Always Connect the End of One Rope to the Start of the Next, so that it’s one continuous line.Because if you start and stop in multiple places, and then you lose track, you will be fucked.But I wanted a certain aesthetic, and I was running low on rope (so much of what I did to build this is unseen *under* the table) and so I broke the rule. Thus, when I started untying, it should not have been surprising when I quickly reached a point where I couldn’t find the next rope I needed.I start scrambling around looking for loose ends, but it felt like the entire structure had turned into fucking Escher staircase with no beginning or end.After two minutes of running back and forth around the table, I’m starting to break a sweat, and poor @dumdolly—who’s laying there with her back in an intentionally mean twist—starts going “DAAAAAAAD THIS SUCKS”I’m finally like, fuck it. Another rule is Never Try To Untie Starting From The Middle, but at this point my only other option is to start blindly hacking through hundreds of dollars worth of rope. So I whip out a knife and snip off the knots from a connection point relatively close to the end.That means I’m finally able to *start*, but now I’m untying from the middle. So I need to handle it with care, because if I yank the wrong thing too hard, it’ll all just collapse into one giant ass knot that’ll take forever to deal with. Dumdolly is really unhappy by this point, but thankfully I’d put in the back-twist towards the end (another rule is “most difficult shit goes in last and out first”) and so once she can un-twist there’s a big sigh of relief.After I finally get everything off of her, I go “You ok? Fingers all moving ok? Ok awesome.” Then I take about six steps and promptly collapse face up on the hotel bed while I attempt to catch my breath and wait for my fucking heart rate to slow down.There was no harm done—if there’d been “real” risk I could’ve easily cut her out in ten seconds (even if it meant that we wouldn’t get to do any more rope because my entire kit was in tatters). But still, shit. That was stressful. Things like this aren’t *that* common. But in the world of complex improvisational rope intended for photography, it’s also not *that* rare. So I want to start telling this story to potential models to help them better evaluate risk.Lord knows I do my best to avoid stressful experiences; but basically, if we Go Hard doing rope, I also can’t tell someone it definitively *won’t* happen. So there ya go.-RG -- source link