Pedal boats & Bikinis

Evening!

I'm back from a gorgeous 'sunshine shoot' in Portugal - lots of images to show soon, I hope, and in the meantime, the results of some more local (south coast of England) beach frolics, courtesy of a last minute road trip with the excellent Gary Sandy, and the fine Great British weather. Gary's so much fun to work with - I'm sure I'll be shooting with him a third time at some point.

These were great additions to my 'Bright' gallery on my new website.

Catchlight in Belfast

I had a really fun morning today in London at a costume fitting for a new pilot I'm going to be in. It's by the people behind Breaking Bad and Mad Men (neither of which I've personally seen, because I am never on top of these things), and I was (hilariously) picked out specially to be in a particular scene. I suppose I'd better shut up there, as I'm not allowed to discuss anything, but anyway, I get to wear a beautiful dress. :-)

In catch-up news, I really enjoyed a flying visit to Belfast in February, organised by the lovely and very talented Ross McKelvey, who I'd modelled for once before in Dublin and once at a Yerbury workshop. A two day booking at his studio (part workshop, part group thing) expanded into 4 separate shoots, and it went by in a bit of a blur! I definitely hope to return at some point. In the meantime, I'm probably coming to Cork in August, which should be really nice!

Here are a few images from Ross McKelvey, which I really like:

Hair and make up by Julia Clements:

(jpeg straight from camera:)

Hair and make up by Stephanie Burns:

(Hair and make up by me: a quick mess about!)

and one from Hugh Wilkinson (hair and make up by Julia Clements):

edit: and one from Stephen Bassett, which has already gone and got him a medal!

Elephants

It was a pleasure to model again recently for Rayment Kirby, photography-improviser-extraordinaire (I was particularly impressed by the papier mache light, this time - Rayment is incredibly ingenious when it comes to creating equipment with which to work and produce various effects). We were working towards his latest book and created a good range of images, as shown below, with the aid of bohemian cushions, black fabric, jewellery, plastic sheeting, red rugs and rainy windows...

Life has been busy and hectic as always for me recently, with a bizarre emphasis on turning nocturnal over this last week or so, and some fun shoots in the early mornings, parties and exciting emails I don't want to 'jinx' by mentioning. I've managed to be productive too, booking flights, visas, travel insurance, updating my website, repairing my car (well, not me personally; that would be disastrous) and generally catching up on all those mundane things which keep a world spinning. Off to Norway very soon! Will update again soon after that...

Twigs, Sticks and Weaves

Afternoon! I had another highly creative play-around in the studio (Unique Capture, in Milton Keynes, this time) with Karen Jones at the weekend, and have already been sent some shots I think are sooo lovely. Karen and I have worked together a lot on quite a range of styles and settings, and these latests shots are way up there with the best of what we've done, I think! It's really nice to work on 'themes' with Karen, and it's always good teamwork.

The original plan for this booking was something completely different, a 'part two' to a theme we'd already started (and which had resulted in some lovely shots, I think) but on a bit of a whim Karen decided to abandon that idea, for now, and work on some other ideas, including one set using twigs in the studio. Funnily enough, this had been on my 'to do' list for a while, and was also the plan of the photographer I worked with the just day before (luckily the shots are quite different though)! I have modelled in studios and outdoors in nature (as the eagle eyed among you may have noticed), but I hadn't before brought these two disparate tropes into synthesis before, and the idea of bringing nature inside and posing it against an indoor, modern studio setting, makes for all sorts of connections about both life and death, joy and sadness, doesn't it? We did a bit of classical 'mother nature' style stuff, and also some more 'messed up', 'earthy' portraits  for which it seemed only right to backcomb my hair into an enormous tangly state (it needs little encouragement, to be honest). Those came out kind of glamorous (which was nice) though. Karen had made a necklace using moss. So clever (and a tinsy bit itchy, after a while...)!

These twiggy ones were done with natural light, which is often very flattering, I think.

Karen's soft processing and the luminous light here reminds me of the film 300, somehow:

And one we liked without the twigs:

Then, another idea Karen had was inspired by an 'oriental' accessory. I remembered that I once bought a Thai hat on the floating market of Bangkok (why have I never used that on a shoot before?), so I whipped it off my shelf and brought it along, braided my hair and put on this rather funky jumpsuit Karen had brought along and kindly donated to my modelling wardrobe afterwards! I'm not usually one for wearing orange, but I do love it and I think it made for some cute, bright fashion-y shots. I really like the slightly retro tint in this first one especially!

Some monochrome nudes, for a different feel...

And a 'Black Widow' experiment:

Thank you Karen! Looking forward to the next one!