Ella Rose Muse: the story: August 2014

Monday, 25 August 2014

She wore blue...

(... earrings, not that you'd know it from today's particular images.)

:-)

Have you noticed this blog's brand new look? All style decisions on here are transitory, of course (there are endless colour options I could play with), but I like it for now. It's all to bring things more in line with my...

>>>...BRAND NEW WEBSITE! <<<

I'm proud to say I did it all by myself (on my 'days off'...). It was quite fun, actually, and the main reason I decided my website needed an overhaul is that I found it very difficult (and very very slow) to update with new images and info, which led to me not really keeping it particularly up to date. Well, that problem is no more, and I can now even update my website from all over the world, so long as I have the images with me on whatever gadget I have at the time (this is particularly good for when photographers/artists send me their results from our work via email). It's also a lot easier to navigate on mobile devices.

Hope you like it! Expect lots of frequent additions there as well as my usual blog posts here.

***

In other news, I'm still keeping ridiculously busy. Today has been a blissful vegging-out kind of day, gorging on the book by this fluency-expert. You'll have a vague idea of what I get up to on and between shoots if you're a friend of mine on facebook...

And here are some stylish monochrome images from a lovely little shoot with Luc Bollen in Brussels. It was a pleasure to shoot with him and I certainly hope to do so again (perhaps next year). The dress in the second set, incidentally, is the one I wore a couple of nights ago to the formal dinner at an international corsetry conference I modelled at. The after-dinner speaker was a favourite designer of Dita Von Teese! Expect some corset-themed images coming this way soon-ish, as I had the incredible experience of modelling for 8 different designers who'd been working on their custom designs for me since February!

Saturday, 16 August 2014

Wheat, White & Apples

Hope you're all well! I've been sooooo busy recently I'm having a really slowed-down weekend, which is brilliant! Previous days off have included working hard on a brand new website... and working days have involved trips to the beach... it's all been a bit upside down! I'm very excited to be the new face of The Wool Company, and am busy looking up flights and options for my trips in October to some places I haven't been before! :-) Also looking forward to Downton Abbey being on our screen again this autumn - I'll be in one episode! I've been doing quite a few filming days recently on various things - it's all got to be secret and hush-hush, unfortunately, but let's just say that next year (and the year after) I think I'll be going to the cinema a LOT to see some of the films being released! :-)

In the meantime, some images from Karen Jones, from out and about!

I'll announce the new site when it's done... And I'll keep blogging as always in the meantime!

Thursday, 7 August 2014

Life from Ash

I had a really good shoot in the Netherlands recently with photographer Martin. He wanted to add some more classical nudes to his portfolio, and I think we achieved that. The location was a beautiful natural park area, which had suffered some devastation (fire) out of which new green shoots were popping up all over the place. The colours were so vibrant that we couldn't resist using the blacks, lime greens and orange shades as an unusual background against which to pitch a pale nude body...

We also did these dreamy nudes, which are a bit tinsy bit Cadbury's Flake-esque, I think. :-)

I'll post some different sets from this shoot soon! :-)

Monday, 4 August 2014

Romantische

I'm back from my 5 days of ~~nature hikes~~ photoshoots in Germany's beautiful and atmospheric Black Forest. You might have seen a few additions to my rather tongue-in-cheek 'Today's Office' album on facebook. :-) Various photographers and I hiked to lakes, stepped across rocks in winding creeks, trekked through tic-filled(!!) forests and visited a small tourist area set up specifically to show enormous roots of trees broken in a storm. I was amazed to realise that the ubiquitous amazingly-tall pine trees were actually the result of neat management and that if left completely natural (as this tourist spot was, to show the difference, and how nature is resilient enough to creatively overcome storm damage and keep growing new life), the plants and trees that grow are far more diverse. I hope to have lots of new images to show soon from this trip.

After consecutive days of hiking and walking up and down steep hills to find the most beautiful locations, I was really pleased to discover that my fitness levels were much better than I thought, after having whooping cough earlier this year had put almost a complete stop to my cardio routine... I'm actually feeling fitter than ever at the moment; and experimenting with a new dietary lifestyle (not to lose weight - I like my curves - but for moral/health/responsibility reasons) is only amplifying the effect. :-)

In the meantime, here are some more romantische portraits from the very prolific David Bailey...

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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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