Electric blue, rain, shapes; workshop & London exhibition

In stark contrast to the blog post below, I will leave it completely to you to imagine how this image was created. It's a weird, freaky one - I love it!

(Taken by the ever-eccentric-in-a-good-way Eric Kellerman at a Dobbelmen workshop he and his colleague hosted, during my visit to the Netherlands last month. It was really fun to see what weird and wonderful shapes and patterns we could create!)

I had a really blissful time shooting in France recently (images on their way..!) and was picked up by a taxi, once back in London, to rush to the evening private view for a painter's exhibition I am currently featured in. I felt very jet set and glam (in my rain-sodden hippie dress and wet feet.... Upon arriving in London, a man even took it upon himself to mention to me that my long dress was going to get wet at the bottom(!). Ha.) Anyway, it was fun to spot 4 new drawings of myself I'd never seen before (I'm rarely allowed to view the results in situ...) and I was struck, as always, by the immense talent and vision of the artist across the whole exhibition. It's lovely (and unsurprising) to see that at least one piece I modelled for had sold already.

Right, over and out - just a quick update. Gallons and gallons of images to come very soon; I'm herding them up gratefully to show on here from the incredibly generous and creative types who have pointed their lenses at me in recent weeks...

Actually, in other, tentative, should-I-mention-this news, I'm working towards a poetry collection on the subject of appearance/reality/identity/performance. Same old preoccupation... But I'm gathering a significant section of thought on the concept of 'muse-dom'. It's a lot of fun. I would publish things here but then that would mess up copyright/permissions, etc etc. (That's the annoying part.)

Into the Deep

I absolutely loved working with Clayton Bastiani on the Isle of Wight earlier this year. He is just so incredibly creative and it's really no wonder that his images have been published on hundreds of novel covers all over the world.

I was thrilled to be booked with the aim of producing a few more for his novel-cover stock (though we also did some different things as well). As someone who is rather fond of books and stories myself, I find it very exciting to be able to find myself on the front of another person's story, representing some aspect of an imagined world - it's a similarly wonderful feeling to know that a complete stranger has a portrait of you hanging in their house (or indeed, perhaps a bronze sculpture!) - really quite bizarre and odd (I always wonder what kind of person they are, and what it would be like to meet them and also how odd for them it might be to meet me). It will be interesting to see what stories out there will be matched up to my image, and why... Anyway, I'd better not get too ahead of myself, but I'll update on here with any news down the line... :-)

I'm allowed to show four individual images here on my blog, followed by a composite grid of some of the other images. It goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: all images are strictly owned by Clayton Bastiani and may not be used/reproduced in any way without permission.

I should mention that Clayton wrote a ten-part series on photo creation and photo manipulation for Black & White Photography Magazine, the May edition of which featured the first mermaid image below. In the article Clayton explains all about how it was made, and you may be surprised to hear that I didn't actually grow a tail especially for the purpose of the shoot (I suppose I'm just not that dedicated.. ;-))

Here's a snippet of Clayton's own words (from his facebook page), from when the magazine came out:

One of the driving forces behind many of my pictures is improvisation, finding ways to create images on a tight budget with minimum resources. This month I wanted to make a picture of a mermaid swimming in the murky depths of the sea.At the beginning of a recent shoot with Ella Rose I asked her to stand in the bay window and pretend to be swimming underwater. After the shoot I popped to the shops and bought a small fish tank and an assortment of plastic plants. Through trial and error and a little bit of torch light I spent a couple of days (in my usual to-ing and fro-ing manner) and created the following piece.

The Deep:

It's always so kind of photographers to send prints to me after a shoot and I was really excited to receive an actual 'moving image' of this one; when you walk past it looks like I'm swimming in the reeds! Very magical! :-)

Mermaid on Rocks:

Moon Dance:

Sword and Fire

And here's a grid of a few more from the day:

A lot of the images above were created in the most unlikely set ups: a lot of hocus pocus went into them and so the results were such a fun surprise for me (even knowing what the intended outcomes were, via some pencil sketches!). 

You can look through more of Clayton's work and purchase some prints of his fantasy and storytelling work from Stephen Bartels Gallery here.

Right, time for me to finish packing for France tomorrow!

Sunswept Sisters

I'm a bit behind on updates here, sorry! (I've been slightly occupied with various modelling euro-jaunts, and then an amazing hen do, amongst other things.)

Catching up, catching up (in absolutely no particular order, as always)...

Here are some images taken by the ridiculously talented Mel Brackstone, who makes everything dreamy and amazing simply by virtue of pointing her lens at it.

The other model is the brilliant Anoush Anou.

(Infra...)

A sisterly-looking image of me on another day with lovely Ivory Flame:

And to finish is a bonus shot Mel took of me snapping those incredible Jacaranda trees. (I don't normally wear quite so much tie-dye, but had just been picked up from Byron Bay, after all, so it was essentially decreed by law.)

Tryst

More by Malvin Jan Dyb, shot in Norway...

Black Feet & Metal

The first of the Holland updates... 

I really enjoyed working with Barend Jan de Jong in a rather unusual location... a working metal factory in Rotterdam! Such a good idea to find something a bit out of the ordinary. You can imagine how filthy I was, within roughly 7 seconds (not least because I kept volunteering to lie on things). The last one is called 'Secret Symphony'. 

(More will probably follow; these images arrived very quickly!)

Sculpture

I'm back from a very busy and productive week of shoots in the Netherlands, highlights of which included getting absolutely filthy in a metal factory in Rotterdam, balancing on windowsills in an old sugar factory in Groningen, celebrating Kings Day in orange, with candyfloss and stick-on jewels at Loveland (with beautiful model Zoi), a relaxing brunch on the beach at Den Haag, and some frolics around a huge national park (amongst other studio shoots and workshops) too.

I'll post some results soon, but in the meantime, here are some photographs of a bronze sculpture artist Andrew Freidin made of me! It's being exhibited as part of 7 new sculptures at Art in Ardington, which is part of Oxford Artweeks. The exhibition runs for a week from Sat 3rd May, and is described as 'one of the largest and most exciting exhibitions of sculpture, paintings, jewellery and other visual arts to be staged in 2014'.

Do you want to see a slideshow?

It's been an extremely busy few weeks, with photoshoots galore and also a stint of filming (you may have seen me whinging about the 3.45am alarms and 14 hour days of standing non-stop in a corset, if you've got me as a friend on facebook). I ended up being quite featured (i.e. right next to the main actress in one of the most heart-stoppingly dramatic and heart-breakingly shocking scenes of the film (and of history, on which the film is based)) and my acting skills were substantially tested; it was a bit of a thrill! It's out in 2015 and features Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan, among others. I have a feeling it will be an incredible film. I'll make the appropriate fuss about it when it's out, I'm sure.

Some other things:

I'll soon be in Holland, and there's a place left at this workshop I'll be modelling at, hosted by the very-excellent Eric Kellerman.

I'll also soon be in France, and there's a place left at this workshop I'll be modelling at, and if you need me to sell 'France' to you in general (aahh, the locations! And check out the amazing facilities!), you need to take a long hard look at yourself. ;-)

Just explore the links to get involved!

... So, the slideshow.

It's like looking through another person's holiday album isn't it - a mixture of interesting and tiring, you want to be polite but you're falling asleep... but hopefully you'll enjoy this one. It's something I put together in September last year, showing lots of my favourite images I've been involved in up until that point in time (I submitted it for an art festival I went to, where watching each other's work like this is an absolute highlight for me, not to mention inspirational... and I won a prize for it!). I meant to show it here ages ago, so here I am catching up.

Music by the amazing British singer Natalie Duncan. (Seriously, even if you can't be bothered to look at my images, just hit the link below for an amazing soundtrack to your day.) The song is called 'Sky is Falling' and it's grippingly beautiful. All photographers whose work is featured are credited at the end, and underneath the relevant individual images you'll see floating about on my website and elsewhere.

>>> Click here!!! <<<

....Over and out, wishing everyone a joyful Easter! :-)