Turning the Wheels

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Sometimes, you’ve just got to cartwheel across the grass. It’s an overwhelming urge, especially when you used to do gymnastics (I spent hours and hours doing ’round offs’ in the garden. Cartwheeling and hand standing always makes me feel about 8 years old).

These were all taken on the Isle of Wight by Mark Davy-Jones, whose whimsical, sometimes ‘twisted’, style of post processing is brilliant, and who I’ll hopefully be working with again at some point next year. Mark and his lovely wife kindly fed and put me up overnight amongst their gorgeous maine coon cats (sadly I failed to entice one onto my bed at night).

I’m modelling here alongside Miss Kayleigh Lush, who you’ll have seen on this blog before. Click to enlarge as always…

Fresh Zing

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I’m back in the UK! Woop! Gotta love those long-haul flights, especially when they decide not to bother putting your suitcase on the plane (ahem, delta airlines, NOT impressed!)… The conversation at the baggage reclaim desk went as follows:

Me, in London after a four-hour delay (during which I read an entire memoir of an ex-prisoner at Alcatraz cover to cover; pretty intense!), a re-routing from New York to Minneapolis, terrible vegetarian food, definitely not enough leg room and not really enough water to drink: ‘Excuse me, my bag doesn’t seem to be here.’
‘Help services’ man, glancing at my passport: ‘Oh yeah, your luggage didn’t make it onto the flight.’
     
(Un-elaborating pause while I stare at him…)
Me: ‘Riiiight. What am I expected to do, in that case?’ (I am extremely polite, despite my piercing glares)
‘Help Services’ man: ‘Fill in this form. We’ll then post your bag to you.’ (NO APOLOGY OR EXPLANATION! (Until I, reminding myself of my mother slightly, say ‘Will I be getting an apology of any kind?’ to which Mr Blasé finally replies ‘sorry madam’ and ‘sometimes that happens. They don’t tell us why.’) HUMPF!)

Anyway, so far I’m amazingly un-jet-lagged, so am spending a few mins addressing the ever-present and imminently overwhelming backlog of stuff to put on this blog of mine, before I address the rather exciting pile-up of emails I need to reply to. I’m hoping to cram in as many shoots as possible before I go away again in 3.5 weeks. Lots of Canadien/American stories to follow in due course (camera-computer cable pending), some with photographic evidence of the more artistic variety… but first… presenting what I call ‘fresh zing’, a development of a theme, by Rebecca Parker. So fresh and so clean (with cool lens stuff going on with trees and grass):

And something Rebecca found from a previous shoot:

Two To Tango

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Just thought I’d show off a few shots from a recent shoot with J H (I think this was our fifth shoot, but I may be wrong) and Kayleigh Lush, before I go away for a while for fun and holidays.

J wanted to photograph a tango theme. Both Kayleigh and I have varied dance experience, but neither of us had properly done this particular style before; I took one class once! Everyone knows that this is the dance of love though – passion and drama are what it’s about! We did this shoot in Brighton, and there were many, many people walking past constantly, who were suitably blasé about us (mostly).

Kayleigh is wonderful to work with; I highly recommend her to photographers looking for a versatile (and tall) art model with fantastic dance skills. For this shoot she was playing the masculine role, and did a great job of being strong and supporting me. (We’d worked together before; I will blog some very cool images from that shoot another time!) We had lots of fun trying to work out the anatomy of the positions as we did them; whose leg should go where, how best to place our arms, tension in the hands, etc… For some of the poses we tried, we worked out that it was best to swing into them or for Kayleigh to catch me as I fell into a position for the shot, so you can see my foot tipping and hair blowing in some, etc. It made the tension and passion more real. Other more investigative/ambitious poses ended up with both of us falling on the floor in a heap of giggles and a knee-in-sternum position which should never be repeated by anyone ever.

Anyway, without further ado, and with thanks to J again for a fun challenge:

Fertile Lands

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These were taken by Imagesse in Gloucestershire. The lavender field in this first shot was one of many streaming, dazzling, potent beds of rich colour, which were just incredibly beautiful. The bees thought so too; I posed amongst a constant buzz of them, busily going about their pollen parties by my feet.

The rest of the shots here were taken in a corn field we found nearby; the weather had started to crack just as we were finishing our very impromptu session; my fertility dance worked – fat drops of rain fell out of the sky! (Notice the strip of lavender field in the background of the colour shots)

Mmmm… lavender…

 
So yeah… Check out the lavender cupcakes I made. They were AMAZING, quite frankly (despite the haphazard icing). I felt a bit bad stealing a few sprigs after the shoot, but only took a tiny little bit, honest… And they had plenty. (BAD morality; I strongly disapprove of this type of rationality in general…)

Feature in PHMag

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I’m featured today in issue 11 of PHmag. 8 pages, featuring a long interview from me about why I love modelling and what I think about it all… plus images of me by Erotic Photographer of the Year Gregory Brown, John Evans and Richard Lund.

It’s a special ‘model’ issue, featuring 10 other art models from all over the world, with interviews and pictures. I’m in some pretty incredible company there, so it’s a real honour to have been asked and included. Go and have a look at the beautiful photography (you can read it online)… It’s fun to read the thought processes behind what other models think about why they pose for art; interestingly, there are a lot of similarities in what we all say!

http://phmag.ca/index.html
Some snaps from my computer screen (you can click the images to make them bigger and read the interview):

 

The Gentle Fall

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(Note to American readers: this post is not about autumn!)

Some new work from Collin Lyons, who was fantastic to work with; high energy and buzzing enthusiasm. He even made me halloumi salad for lunch before we started, despite my train getting in late. Collin had this enormous piece of sheer fabric, so we played on my apparent freak-ability to throw fabric wildly in the air then pose serenely within the same split-second while it fell in front of my skin. We did this over and over again, fascinated by the range of shots we were getting on the back of camera; each time the fabric did something completely different, depending how I threw it and how it felt like floating, and at what point Collin caught its fall with the click.

Rabbits

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Paul Bartholomew has sent me a few more shots from our short shoot at the ruins/river/forest location near me in Oxfordshire. He’s a great photographer; check out his stuff at the impressive site 1x.com, where the last portrait below has just been published.

 
I really love the light and bokeh in these, and how natural the portraits are. For the set in the blue skirt, I was imagining being in a fairytale, lost and distressed, or calling on my animal troupe to help me with some quest, so naturally began channelling rabbits and other small woodland creatures through my poses… Good to have a story in your head! 🙂