Ella Rose Muse: the story

Monday, 19 April 2010

The Sea, The Sea (I ran by it)

And I ran a little bit IN it, which was nice. Being by the sea makes me so inexplicably happy; I deeply envy those who live near it and as if it's just some other landmark or view. The ocean excites me sooo much; partly in a perverse way, since it terrifies me slightly (think of the ghosts down there; the sailors who gulped their last watery breaths alone; the bones; the deep, thundery laps of water rolling over itself and the bus-sized creatures who lurk, glass-eyed, past each other, having changed very little since the dinosaur age; the creaking sounds of ships and debris; the hunting noises and the dull squawks of the gulls over the water.... See, I even love sea gulls). Being at the shore-line is always magical. So you can see why I was quite excited to be working with John Kent down in Bournemouth recently.

We worked primarily on some stock images; running down the beach - lust for life, that kind of thing. My calves hurt a LOT the next day. I'd forgotten how running on sand can take its toll, especially if you don't warm up..!

Then, I spent some time spinning and twirling under an arch, wearing pretty clothes. I do love my job!

Wednesday, 14 April 2010

The final installment

... Of images from my shoot with photographer Mark Bigelow featuring Ivory Flame. I love these images - it was such a creative, productive shoot! :)

Click here to view some 'backstage' shots of the day. :)

Mark will be exhibiting a variety of work as part of Oxford Artweeks 8th-16th May: find out more.

Saturday, 10 April 2010

Allinthemind

Simon Young is one of those photographers I just had to work with. We spent a full day in Gloucestershire at some brilliant locations with some lovely make up (by Simon) and in beautiful evening light. Rob, who I'd worked with previously, acted as assistant extraordinaire, prime reflector holder and distractor of passers-by, and also dedictated grass-gatherer to protect my feet from sinking in the squelchiest mud imaginable.

My Mum's Victorian-style wedding dress, as worn in 1979 and brought to life with a dash of Florence and the Machine (Simon thinks) and Wuthering Heights (I think):

Saturday, 27 March 2010

The iPhone and the Cello

When I was contacted by Gordon Fraser for a booking, two things struck me as particularly interesting about his proposal. Firstly, he wanted to take photographs of me using nothing but the camera on his iPhone (no Nikon? No Canon? What a maverick!) and, secondly, he wanted me to pose with a cello that would shortly afterwards be thrown from either a roof or the window of a four-storey building.

We shot, for the iPhone project, in a village hall. Any photographer who has used one of these for a shoot before will know of the distinct challenges they come with (the most basic of which being the almost inevitable lack of a featureless wall to use as a backdrop), but Gordon made excellent use of the surroundings. See how cool the floor looks in the shots below!

Here are a few from the day..... All captured and processed within the iPhone.

Cello:

Movement (some taken while I held a hip shimmy for motion blur only in that area):

Tutu:

And finally, some nudes. I really love the angles and warmth to these as well as the lighting and the slightly mottled effect on the skin in some of them:

Thanks Gordon!

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

You think it's just a normal day...

... Just hanging out in the studio with Mark Bigelow, standing on one leg, playing with shapes and silhouettes against an azure sky, merrily enjoying the space and the urge to explore the possibilities of oriental fingers...

Little (until afterwards) do you realise a little Ivory Flame-shaped ninja floating into the scene and hovering quietly behind you, ominously gravity-defying and waiting to pounce. This is actually how she entered the studio, you may assume.

(Dear Holly: This is the image I was talking about today.)

Seconds later, I got my own back (kind of):

Fun times!

... And still a LOT more to come from different sets.

This might sound immediately weird to anyone who doesn't know instantly what I'm talking about, but some of these images remind me, for some reason, of little sand pictures of lizards I once bought in Tenerife.

Monday, 18 January 2010

Winter Portraits

...taken by Jewelled Earth. I love the circley bokeh effect in these.

Am also v v excited to hear we are not finished with the snow here in Oxfordshire - more to come on Wed, apparently! :o)

Sunday, 3 January 2010

Actually...

It seems Ginge did make a final cut after all!!! And here he is, the stealthy thing, just before I notice his little face peering at me (thanks Richard!):

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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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