Ella Rose: The Story

>I’m just back from a very enjoyable shoot with a photographer and his wife, a couple I’ve visited quite a few times now and love to see. We did some really nice un-posed and natural, expressive nudes (inspired by Jonvelle) in their beautiful house, and it seems a fitting time to now blog about a recent day spent with another husband and wife team.

I love working with Trevor and Faye Yerbury – they produce such beautiful, classy work and are lots of fun to model for, so I was happy to be chosen to model for one of their Fine Art Nude Masterclasses the other day. As always, the photographers taking the course were all a pleasure to meet and seemed to enjoy themselves very much, snapping away with big smiles all round! The location was Pipewell Hall, an old country manor house in Northamptonshire. I was mainly stationed indoors with Faye, making the most of the building’s incredible features and furnishings, while the other model, Zoi, spent the day outdoors in the grounds with Trevor. It was really nice to meet Zoi after we’d tried but failed to meet up in Holland (where she is based most of the time, though she frequently visits the UK still) and we had a good natter over lunch. We made a good contrast as photographic subjects; Zoi with her beautiful Greek/’Amazonian’ look and me with a more ‘pre-Raphaelite’/serene style (well, that’s what Trevor said anyway!).

See here for more info on the range of workshops currently on offer by the Yerbury team: http://www.yerburystudio.com/

A few of the photographers attending have very kindly sent me some of their shots from the day. It’s interesting to see some of the different takes on the same poses. I was really happy to give my first airing to my new pointe shoes (ribbons to be sewn on very soon; old ones to be dyed black!) and although I’d only mentioned to Faye in passing that I’d brought them along while she was doing my hair at the beginning of the day, ‘ballet’ ended up being quite a strong theme for my posing, with lots of happy skirt swirling in front of the window.

These first shots are by Andrea (Pink Lily Photography) – read Andrea’s blog post about the day here:

By Maria Tanner (Lace Market Photography – see Maria’s blog post here!):

By Ian Parry AKA Maximus Operandi:

Zoi and I posing together outside at the end (first shot here by Ian Parry; colour snaps by Faye)

Trevor overseeing all:

 And a group shot (Zoi and I being silly in the middle)!

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me shots – it’s much appreciated! And to anyone reading, please feel free to let me know any favourites… Your feedback is always fun to read!

>OK, supposed to be going out now and running late – I am so busy at the moment, and recent shoots have involved being up tree houses, riding a vintage sit-up-and-beg bicycle, posing in water, being a bride (today!), balancing in trees… I’m definitely feeling at the upper limit of my comfortable level of modelling busyness at the moment, with hardly a day off, but you’ll notice I remain a blogging addict. There are so many beautiful shots coming in my inbox – I love it! But yeah, I’m keeping this post briefer than planned.

On the way to my shoot with Jan Doef in Holland, my jaw dropped at these daffodil fields and Jan kindly suggested we pull over so I could take some photos! Sooooooooo beautiful!!! I’d never seen anything like this before.

Tulips:

Me:

 

I think Jan did a brilliant job on the black and white figure nudes in particular – luscious smooth lighting!

Over and out for now!

>

The infamous box – an honour to step in this small, equilateral theatre.

A beautiful bodyscape that seems to have slipped through the net of my previous post ‘Strength in the Dark’. Hip bone glory:

Then some joyful striping around. I love this effect – so amazing, especially when in the mix with some curly stray locks lolling around in front of flesh and playing shadow games.

(I think I manage to look a bit ‘eighties’, skeptical and sulky all at once in a few of those stripy portraits above. Brilliant!)

…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…

>…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…

>Yesterday I went up TWICE in a glider in exchange for performing a dance gig at a gliding competition event. If you’ve never been gliding before, I would massively recommend it – I was surprised to find out how affordable it is too (we checked the rates for if we ever want to go back!).

The first glider I went in was a very modern, sleek one. Each of us dancers took a turn to ride sitting directly in front of the pilot, strapped in with a parachute on our backs. The ‘run up’ on the ground is very short – only 5 metres or so, then you’re in the air, ascending with such incredible speed and gradient that you’re 1200 feet within a few seconds. It’s a scary, whooshing feeling, being catapulted up into the sky like that, and amazing to watch from the ground!! When you’re up and flying high, the pilot releases the steel winch cord; there’s a bit of a ‘bang’, which the instructor remembered to tell me about it one instant before it happened(!) but from then on it’s just pure peace and gliding, searching for thermal pockets. It’s so quiet up there, not like in a helicopter where you have to press buttons to be able to communicate with the pilot right next to you. The gliders themselves are tiny, and light enough to catch the air under their wings even when sitting on the ground (hence a picture below of me swizzling one around by the wing, lining it up for the winch).

 

After this rather wonderful day and evening, I was then dropped off back in Oxford and managed to meet up with some friends for cocktails. I highly recommend pear & cardomom.

Yesterday I went up TWICE in a glider in exchange for performing a dance gig at a gliding competition event. If you’ve never been gliding before, I would massively recommend it – I was surprised to find out how affordable it is too (we checked the rates for if we ever want to go back!).

The first glider I went in was a very modern, sleek one. Each of us dancers took a turn to ride sitting directly in front of the pilot, strapped in with a parachute on our backs. The ‘run up’ on the ground is very short – only 5 metres or so, then you’re in the air, ascending with such incredible speed and gradient that you’re 1200 feet within a few seconds. It’s a scary, whooshing feeling, being catapulted up into the sky like that, and amazing to watch from the ground!! When you’re up and flying high, the pilot releases the steel winch cord; there’s a bit of a ‘bang’, which the instructor remembered to tell me about it one instant before it happened(!) but from then on it’s just pure peace and gliding, searching for thermal pockets. It’s so quiet up there, not like in a helicopter where you have to press buttons to be able to communicate with the pilot right next to you. The gliders themselves are tiny, and light enough to catch the air under their wings even when sitting on the ground (hence a picture below of me swizzling one around by the wing, lining it up for the winch).

 

After this rather wonderful day and evening, I was then dropped off back in Oxford and managed to meet up with some friends for cocktails. I highly recommend pear & cardomom.

>I’ve been looking forward to showing some of these… A few more from the week I spent in Spain with Gregory Brown and John Evans (and fellow model Hannah Ashlea).

But first, a cute snap I got someone walking past to take with my camera on the last day, just as were packing up the car to go back to the airport.

I think I’m going to have to post a load of ‘behind the scenes’/'outtakes’ from this trip once I’ve posted all the proper shots. There are too many golden moments of hilarity caught on camera (mainly of me looking stupid), along with some cool shots which show the positions of the photographers in relation to us in the landscapes.

But for now, I still have millions of images to show. This first one is by Gregory Brown, then the rest are by John Evans.

I love this headdress – I bought it over a year ago for fancy dress opportunities (as one does) and thought it would be worth taking to Spain, as I was told some amazing rocky venues had been scouted. The wind was so strong (especially as we were near the edge of a bit of a cliff) it kept nearly flying off, all of a feather.

These beautiful lilles, on the terrace of the apartment, were teasing us with their photogenic potential all week. I love the freshness of this set:

We shot the following in a derelict, crumbling house on the side of the road. It just so happened that the turqoise underbust corset I’d brought matched the graffiti perfectly. A very happy coincidence.

A tree John found…

An amazing rock formation, surprisingly close to a mountain road, up which some German/Swedish/Austrian cyclists were huffing and puffing (I’m not sure we ever established which nationality they were, though we had a very long conversation with one man, who seemed keen to take any opportunity to hang back from the group and catch his breath and so wanted to make sure he had recounted the thitherto events of this particular trip in great detail for us.) Greg and John were positioned too far away for us to hear when the camera was actually clicking!

 (And one from Greg:)

And finally (for now), I’m always happy when I’m near water… I’m really pleased with these, taken on a beach:

I’ve been looking forward to showing some of these… A few more from the week I spent in Spain with Gregory Brown and John Evans (and fellow model Hannah Ashlea).

But first, a cute snap I got someone walking past to take with my camera on the last day, just as were packing up the car to go back to the airport.

I think I’m going to have to post a load of ‘behind the scenes’/'outtakes’ from this trip once I’ve posted all the proper shots. There are too many golden moments of hilarity caught on camera (mainly of me looking stupid), along with some cool shots which show the positions of the photographers in relation to us in the landscapes.

But for now, I still have millions of images to show. This first one is by Gregory Brown, then the rest are by John Evans.

I love this headdress – I bought it over a year ago for fancy dress opportunities (as one does) and thought it would be worth taking to Spain, as I was told some amazing rocky venues had been scouted. The wind was so strong (especially as we were near the edge of a bit of a cliff) it kept nearly flying off, all of a feather.

These beautiful lilles, on the terrace of the apartment, were teasing us with their photogenic potential all week. I love the freshness of this set:

We shot the following in a derelict, crumbling house on the side of the road. It just so happened that the turqoise underbust corset I’d brought matched the graffiti perfectly. A very happy coincidence.

A tree John found…

An amazing rock formation, surprisingly close to a mountain road, up which some German/Swedish/Austrian cyclists were huffing and puffing (I’m not sure we ever established which nationality they were, though we had a very long conversation with one man, who seemed keen to take any opportunity to hang back from the group and catch his breath and so wanted to make sure he had recounted the thitherto events of this particular trip in great detail for us.) Greg and John were positioned too far away for us to hear when the camera was actually clicking!

 (And one from Greg:)

And finally (for now), I’m always happy when I’m near water… I’m really pleased with these, taken on a beach:

>Kinda. In a way. (See below.) (I suppose all hair would float.)

Urgh, excuse my even-more-than-usual chaotic brain. This is the third day I’ve had an all-day headache. I am in a bad mood. It’s been going along that ‘I’m not quite a migraine but might turn into one at any moment if I feel like it, mwahaha!’ borderline which makes me very much want a new head. I got migraines quite a bit when I was younger and now, thankfully, have them pretty rarely (my last one involved hallucinating at night and at one point believing my pillows were a pair of tortoises wanting me to ride on them, which is always fun). Luckily I’m going to Spain in a few days for a week-long shoot and will be able to stock up on their glorious high-strength ibuprofens in between arty nude frolicking.

ANYWAY, (ow), on a positive note, I had a really nice shoot on my birthday last week with photographer Karen Jones (in her beautiful house) and hair stylist Stephen Robinson. My hair’s getting pretty long now, so you can do so much with it and its texture means it’s easy to style and holds shape/structure really well. Most people who book me want my natural, curly hair left loose (I just wash it and turn up), so it makes a real difference to style it in other ways. I’d love to do more hair shoots. Alternatively, I’d be quite happy to spend my days having other people play around with my hair – it feels so good.

I kept my make up really natural (until the last set) to show off the hair. Thanks Karen for the splendid shots, and Steve – you did good!

 If you have a favourite, please say which! I’m edging towards the very first shot at the moment for my portfolio, but still deciding – think the landscape ones work well for the head/hair shape.

Right, I’m off to blow my head off with my speciality vegetable dhansak.