Ella Rose Muse: the story

Thursday, 8 December 2011

Lynn Creek Canyon

Hello!

This is just another quick update, probably the last before I get home to the good old UK on 16th Dec and inflict upon my readers post after post of exciting new photos I have received by email over the last couple of months! I feel so lucky to have worked with some incrediblely talented photographers recently, whose work I have truly admired for a looooong time. I definitely feel like I am achieving things I never thought possible, in terms of modelling - working with people from all corners of the world who I did not (note there is no apostrophe on this Costa Rican keyboard, so everything is sounding a bit convoluted and formal) imagine I would meet let alone get together with as equals and create some cooool stuff. I still feel like I have way more to do though and am looking forward to some shoots I have coming up which will show that I enjoy expanding my range and thrive on new challenges.

Kicking off some updates then, here are some images I received from the brilliant Christopher Ryan. These were taken in Lynn Creek Canyon Park in Vancouver a couple of months ago. Film, as seemed to be the medium of choice in that part of the world. Thank you Chris for a great day and I hope to visit again sometime!

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

An Update from Guatemala!

Well hello lovely blog readers! I've had a few concerned emails asking if I'm still alive, and this is to say that indeed I am! Just thought I'd take a little time in the middle of my global gallavanting to update you all with some recent images, taken by the wonderful, kind hearted and generally excellent Ron Skei a couple of months ago. I currently have a Guatemalan boy sitting directly behind me, watching my every move (or rather, watching my every keyboard stroke). I have no idea why. Apparently I am fascinating. I hope when I upload the following images he isn't scarred for life or, most importantly, doesn't call the authorities... So wish me luck...

(...Just checked, and yep, he's still here. Ha.)

OK, anyway... Here are a few shots we did together. I love them! Hope you approve and that this might tide my readers over until I return to more comfortable computing conditions in December!

I think the first shot is my favourite - I love the abstract body shape, as if I've just been washed up from the water. It was such a nice, relaxed shoot - we initially just thought we might go swimming pre-shoot, then ended up shooting at the beach too. The double exposure shots were also really fun! A perfect introduction to a very successful and enjoyable week of modelling, from which I hope to be able to show more results soon!

I will almost certainly be showing some images from my travels (my colourful snapshots!) once I'm home, on top of the modelling ones. I'm seeing some BEAUTIFUL things and having an amazing time, snorkelling with nurse sharks, seeing sea horses in the wild, liberating baby sea turtles, swimming through caves with Mayan skeletons inside, checking out ancient Mayan and Aztec ruins. If you're a friend of mine on facebook you'll also know that I recently lamented the lack of a photographer when I swam around beneath a hot waterfall a few days ago! I am so lucky. Every day is action packed! I'm also somehow learning spanish, presumably through some kind of gradual osmosis, necessitated by the complete lack of english-speaking people here (fair enough) and helped by a 12-day speed learning course I put on my kindle! I'll be back in the UK in time for Christmas and available for plenty of bookings after that, as well as taking bookings for the European trips I'm arranging too. Just bear with me while I have limited internet access - I might be a little slow at replying to messages at the moment. They say a break from the internet is a good thing though, eh?

Back soon...

Monday, 3 October 2011

The Trees...

...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...

Sunday, 2 October 2011

Turning the Wheels

Sometimes, you've just got to cartwheel across the grass. It's an overwhelming urge, especially when you used to do gymnastics (I spent hours and hours doing 'round offs' in the garden. Cartwheeling and hand standing always makes me feel about 8 years old).

These were all taken on the Isle of Wight by Mark Davy-Jones, whose whimsical, sometimes 'twisted', style of post processing is brilliant, and who I'll hopefully be working with again at some point next year. Mark and his lovely wife kindly fed and put me up overnight amongst their gorgeous maine coon cats (sadly I failed to entice one onto my bed at night).

I'm modelling here alongside Miss Kayleigh Lush, who you'll have seen on this blog before. Click to enlarge as always...

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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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