More from Mr Cam Attree. (A third blog post will come later, to show some final sets). None of these have been retouched skin-wise, so they come complete with wet sand stuck to limbs and the odd insect bite, but I still love ’em! Fun times! Can I go somewhere hot again soon please..?
Happy New Year everyone! Hope things get better and better and reality is aligned with your bestest dreams (and certainly not the creepy dream I had last night about my poor cat being attacked… a little too much NYE wine, I think…) Hope everyone had fun last night, whether it was a big party for you or a quiet night in. I definitely invented some new dance moves with my friends in their lounge, and have now finally recovered. Felt ill all day (well, it’s only once a year, isn’t it?). 😦
Here are some more shots from Ron Skei – somehow I’d lost the email he’d sent them to me in (ooops!!), and so I’m rediscovering them now. The prop in the first set is a chair/basket thingy. Cool huh?
…They called me to go and model for Dave Aharonian, and what an honour it was! We were very excited to be able to make stuff together for his Rainforest Nudes project (see his incredible website if you happen to feel like being blown away). I just adore his technique and finishes; the pure quality of it needs to be seen in physical prints. We had 40 frames available and about 1.5 hours. Luckily everything just ‘clicked’. I hope you like these as much as I do.
Any favourites?!
Also, Dave took these on his iPhone a few mins before we left the house:
 …And, just to lower the tone a bit, here are some shots of me on the ferry (also iPhone-snapped – there’s just no escaping it, is there?), documenting the perils of long hair in strong winds. In the last one, I was actually being attacked by my own hair. Nice of Dave to help…
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:
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):
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…
I’ve had such a busy, productive day today, getting lots done, but the two things I’m most pleased/excited about are:
1. I went for a run this morning. I’ve been meaning to go for a run for roughly a million years, but never quite worked out how to go about it. I know, I overthink things. The thoughts flittering around my mind are those such as: where would I run? Is it better to run on tarmac or grass? Will I be able to do it? By what date, exactly (and this is my ambition surfacing), would I be able to qualify for and enter a marathon? Which charity would I choose to run for? And then the more immediate concerns, such as, how do you make the transition between walking and running without looking as though you suddenly think you might be being chased? (Seriously though, I never see people begin to run – they are always already running, as though they came out of the womb doing it and haven’t even stopped to consider other methods of getting about.)
And anyway, I know; who cares what you look like? I actually don’t, but I am reminded of a comedy sketch I once saw about that moment when you’re walking in the street and realise you need to be going in the opposite direction. Do you just immediately turn around with no apparent acknowledgement of your error, the comedian wondered, or do you slap your forehead, shake your head at yourself, rolling your eyes at passersby so that they too might acknowledge and share in your foolhardiness, admitting, by your dramatic display, that it’s not the normal thing to just turn swiftly and change direction, and invalidating each and every step you’ve taken thitherto in the current trajectory as being wrong and misguided and wally-like? (I am very slightly mad and once, when walking to school, started pigeon-walking (you know, where you take tiny steps so that the heel of one foot touches the toes of the foot behind; no, I was rarely on time for school) then, intrigued by my new foot pattern (the alleyway was particularly monotonous), started mimicking my feet with my hands as I walked (a kind of ‘air walk’, if you will), before realising there was a girl innocently walking in the alley behind me, quietly bemused. I immediately resumed a more conventional walking motion, hands back down, strides at a more practical length (pigeon walking is quite wobbly when you’re in a rush), and hoped she might think she’d merely imagined my non-conformist methods of getting to school… Apart from this episode in my life, I am frequently told I have a nice walk (again, ‘nice walks’ strike me as bizarre, but no more tangents for now), so should/could possibly, in theory, have a nice run. I also won a lot of races at school for sprinting and was always chosen to compete in the county sports day, but I’m showing off now (and it’s irrelevant).
Anyway, yep, I went for a run. I ran up and down hills; mostly up, in hindsight; on grass and on tarmac, and on a lot of mud. It was fun! I was terrible (I’m flexible, strong, but lung power has room for improvement), but I’m promised by my younger brother that this is an inevitable and temporary affliction of beginner adult runners. I’m wondering now whether my body will change shape, if I keep this up, and how strange that would be, considering I haven’t changed body shape since the age of 15/16. We shall (literally) see, I imagine.
2. The second thing I am unbelievably, perhaps unreasonably excited by, is the fact that I’ve FINALLY mastered making masala chai like I used to drink in India. Being prone to foul moods whenever I remember and think of the lack of it in my life, this is a massive cause for celebration. Now I know exactly how to do it I can whip up a brew whenever I fancy one. This makes me incredibly happy. (I still need to go to India ASAP though, even just for the Thalis.) …Pestle & mortar-crushed spices (cloves, cinnamon sticks, black peppercorns, cardamom, dry-roasted ginger), a tablespoon of indian tea, milk and water in a pan boiled up, sugar….. luscious frothy, sweet heaven in a glass.
Oh, and I have some new photos from Drew Smith, taken in Oxfordshire recently. Thanks Drew! 🙂
Yet another blog entry today, and already a few more ready and waiting in the pipeline… don’t say I don’t spoil you..! 🙂
Today’s offering comes from a weekend trip to the stunningly beautiful West Cornwall I made at the end of June, working with Perry (of Imagesse photography). I am thrilled with some of these images. When Perry mentioned before the shoot that he would quite like some kind of ‘wing’ theme, but wasn’t sure how possible that would be, I immediately thought of Isis wings, which I’ve modelled in and danced with before (they’re an oriental dance prop), and ordered some of my own in time for the shoot. I chose some large silver translucent ones, which I thought would shimmer in the light and look delicate enough to let it through in certain conditions – I personally prefer them to other colours I’ve seen and used before, but you can get them in all different shades to suit your skin tone; traditionally you would match them to the colour of your costume. I love the permanent pleat structure on them, too, which can look a bit like the veins on a leaf (or, er, a wing). As a prop they can be difficult to work with in windy conditions, as they literally feel like they will take flight at times, so balancing in delicate poses isn’t as easy as it would otherwise be. They also reflect a lot of light (which I think is a good thing). I am so pleased with how these came out and think Perry caught some absolutely jaw-droppingly beautiful scenes, some vivid colours and along with the reflections in the water, it was definitely worth the 5.5 hour train journey each way!
When I got off the train in Penzance, I was immediately greeted by pirates. Someone had joked to me previously ‘watch out for the pirates’ but, bizarrely enough, there was well and truly an official ‘pirate day’ celebration, or something going on that weekend. (That’s as much as I could get out of the cute little girl who befriended me as soon as I arrived in the hostel with Perry; she even followed me in to the bathroom, showing me her eye patch and pirate dress, which she was concerned wasn’t a real pirate dress, but which we agreed looked pretty all the same… so I had to give her a task to do, asking her to take my bottle of water to my bag in the reception area, to distract her so I could pee in private. SO cute!). The entire area of Cornwall seemed hungover from the night before, and there was mess everywhere as though a bomb had dropped, and people gallavanting around in costume. Quite a contrast from the serene, natural scenes Perry and I were shooting at!!
Anyway… With thanks to Perry, here are some of the results from a drive around different parts of West Cornwall, from beaches, to rock formations, to stone circles:
P.S. I nearly forgot to thank my ‘support group’, without which I would perhaps not have made it down to the beach in those first shots at all!!!!! In order to get down there, we had to climb/scramble down a very steep rock face. This was nothing for Perry, who does mountain climbing in his spare time (but who admitted the route was more precarious than he’d remembered from visiting the area when he was younger), but for me (in my Diesel flip-flops, as brilliant as they are), it was a little panic-inducing. There were some people climbing up and down the narrow bit who took it upon themselves to pass my bag down to Perry then direct my feet into specific places so I could get down. I said to Perry afterwards that I should just have waited a minute or two longer and they probably would have passed me down between them like a sack of helpless spuds… Hahaha. (I am adding the ‘Damsel in Distress’ tag to this post, I think.) Nothing like a bit of early morning fear to get a good set of photographs. Since then (bearing in mind my backpacking trip later this year), I have purchased some more suitable footwear… All good practise, eh? 🙂
I have, since this shoot, worked with Perry again in another stunning location (to be blogged soon I’m sure!), and hopefully there’ll be a third shoot together sometime in the future!
 
Ella Rose - Photo actress, Muse & Dancer 