Ella Rose Muse: the story: Guide us to Thy Perfect Light

Monday, 24 December 2012

Guide us to Thy Perfect Light

Evening! I'm bringing you a special Christmas Edition of blogginess today, courtesy of photographer Karen Jones who booked me recently at Eye For An Image Studio in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and subsequently got an image accepted onto the excellent 1x.com photography site. With no cheesy Santa outfits in sight, here are some of the shots from our festive 2-hour session:

'Ice Prom Princess'; with my bridal net underskirt and Karen's beautiful crown tiara.

'Merry Christmas'; with Karen's stunning berry extravaganza:

'Laced Light'; My vintage Victorian-style wedding dress, plus some lights weaved into my hair!

'Self Doubt'; All done with one exposure:

'The Powder Room'; Karen wanted to do something a bit 'different', so I ~~made~~ asked her to bring some flour so we could make a mess. In the end we used talcum powder, and I smelled utterly amazing afterwards! I love how well the fine powder shows against the black; it looks a bit like smoke, floating in wisps around me!

(I liked then in colour too! Or are they best in monochrome? Hhmm.)

Thank you so much Karen for always being such fun to work with and up for trying new ideas. We did so much! Just shows what can happen in two hours, with a bit of creativity, forethought and fun effects/props!

I'm really hoping more photographers will want to try 'different' things with me where they can, whether that involves stylists for distinctive themes and strong 'character' work, make up artists for close up beauty portraits, fun ideas for textures or effects, interesting locations, crazy hair dos... whatever. Why not make 2013 the year you vow to do something a little unusual...? It doesn't have to be expensive (and the model often has contacts who are willing to collaborate!), but starting with a theme and asking a model what they might already have and can contribute can work wonders!

On that note, I hope all your Christmasses are filled with joy, love and wonder. I'm back from a carol service (Christmas isn't Christmas without one; 'We Three Kings' being a firm favourite), after having decorating the Christmas cake (my traditional contribution; involving some worse-for-wear plastic festive characters, reindeer and edible golden balls!), and then we all decorated the tree together with German wooden decorations, baubles, bells, bows, candles, etc. etc. I absolutely love this tradition of waiting until Christmas Eve to do it; until now the tree has been simply festively green. We have two new cats this year, fresh from a rescue centre, and one of them would win awards for her potent blend of fearlessness and clumsiness. All eyes on the (quite controversial in this house; is it disgustingly tacky? Or does it pick up the candle-light beautifully?) silver lametta.

Merry Christmas everyone! X

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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Monday, 24 December 2012

Guide us to Thy Perfect Light