Ella Rose Muse: the story: September 2011

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Fresh Zing

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:

Tuesday, 6 September 2011

Two To Tango

Just thought I'd show off a few shots from a recent shoot with Jeremy Howitt (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.

Jeremy 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 Jeremy again for a fun challenge:

Sunday, 4 September 2011

Fertile Lands

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...)

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Feature in PHMag

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):

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Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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