Ella Rose: The Story

>I’m so excited to have in my hands the fruit of several months’ coordination and the physical result of some extremely generous and kind photographers. I’m holding (well, not while typing, I suppose, but it’s here on my desk) a collection of some of my favourite images taken over the last three years, during which I’ve been practising my happy deviation into a life of art modelling.

I’ve mentioned before that I thought it was sad not to have many actual prints to show for my hard work, unlikely adventures and gloriously fun modelling frolics so far, and that computer files didn’t really cut it; and that I had decided to put together a photography book for myself to look at when I’m old (or anytime between now and then…). I’ve now managed to finish this project.

The book focuses on just one theme; it uses shots from one of my twelve website galleries, ‘Faerie’, and collects 29 natural, gentle, romantic and pure shots of me as the nude, female figure in a loose ‘garden’ setting; in tall grass, entwined in trees, in pools of water, surrounded by flowers, in faerie queen headdresses, in pre-Raphaelite forest guises, in the cool, shady dappled light of Mediterranean gardens and against huge, jurassic plants. I’ve never made a book before, so this is a great feeling, and just so wonderful to be able to own!

I’m so grateful to the photographers whose images are printed in this book, and although this was definitely created just as an indulgence for myself, as something to keep, I do have permission to make this book available for purchase. If anyone would like to buy themselves a copy, some money from each book bought goes to Amnesty. If you agree with me that physical prints are sooo much more satisfying to look at than online virtual ones, and you like the idea of owning a version yourself, having it adorn your bookshelf and perhaps provide some visual and artistic inspiration, you’re welcome to preview it online and see what you think.

Huge thanks to the following. Click on the links below to see more of their work:
Rebecca Parker
John Evans
Paul Bartholomew
Rayment Kirby
Voyages2004
Jeremy Howitt
DB Images
Dave Aharonian
Keith Cooper (website pending)
Imagesse
Robert Farnham
Gregory Brown
Michael Cordiez
Sean Buckley
and Pat Brennan

…I hope you like it. I’m so glad I finally did this and am already thinking of making a second book sometime in the not-too-distant future… Just need to choose a gallery/theme and start to gather my favourites!

>Happy Monday everyone! Hope everyone had a nice weekend… I ended up on a boat yesterday for a friend’s birthday party on the river. Lots of fun (and cider and pimms!) and I got to drive for some of it!

Here are some recent shots by Jeremy Howitt, taken on Brighton beach! This was the first shoot of my trip to Sussex at the end of June and resulted in a little monochrome mini-series (and salty beach hair! ).

Jeremy’s plan was to keep these in monochrome, but I couldn’t help wondering what they’d look like in colour (despite the uneventful sky; it was a hazy morning) and after a couple of to-and-fro edits (me vaguely suggesting, Jeremy miraculously realising my ideas with the magic of technology), this colour image is what we came up with. I love the peachy-pink blaze at the top of the frame and the soft pastel hues.

 

>Hello all! Hope you’re enjoying your various weekends. I’m having such a nice one – went to not-one-but-two birthday celebrations yesterday daytime and evening and had lots of fun (though it meant I was unable to go to another friend’s shindig/Paradise Garden fest in London or a festival my boyfriend had threatened to take me to in France (but we couldn’t really make it in the end anyway)… All very triple-quadruple booked, and I’m normally no way near this popular, but it’s funny how things all seem to happen at once!!) Meanwhile, I’m just dreaming of a chance to go and see the new Ice Age film! And watching the final tonight!!! I am GUTTED that Germany did not go through, and will now have to support my third favourites, Spain (but am still deciding!).

So anyway, today is very leisurely and has consisted so far of finishing the novel ‘One Day’, which I loved, procrastinating wildly about doing the next section of my online course, failing spectactularly at replying to emails yet so far (though it is technically the weekend!). Excitingly, though, I hope to finish putting together a book I’ve been working on for a while now, featuring some of my favourite photographs (of myself; vain I know, but I really want something to remember all this by!!). Cannot wait to check the first copy and see it in print!!

So in amongst all this faffing and procrastinating and getting-things-done (I also intend to dye my old pointe shoes black, sort out my accounts/tax, acknowledge the fact that I need to address the monumentally boring task of choosing a new phone as my contract is about to run out, sort out my diary for Sept, Nov and Dec (when I am available for bookings, should anyone be interested!), and maybe even take my chihuahua for a walk/jog, I thought I’d top up my blog with a few stand-alone shots from recent times.

By Steven Billups, whose images I love and who I will be working with again this month in Germany. (Shot taken in an extremely BOILING part of Mexico; we didn’t last long out there):

By Max Operandi, who also shot me after this summery shoot at a Yerbury workshop a short time later; I’ve seen some of his shots from both, other than this one, and I think they are amazing. Can’t wait to show off more as soon as I can.

And a charcoal by Kristian Mumford, an Australian artist who used a shot by Christopher Ryan (with permission) for the basis of this work. (See images by Christopher Ryan from our shoot here: Lynn Creek Canyon). Kristian plans to create a whole series of artwork using my modelling images as inspiration, which is rather nice!

>Hello!

I’m writing this from my hotel in Manchester, where I’m poised for a magazine shoot tomorrow, and taking some time to catch up on lots and lots of things, including reading inspiring blog posts about creativity like these, and writing this blog post, which I’m excited to show you!

I was lucky and spoiled enough recently to be taken again to Paris by photographer Jeremy Howitt (see previous entries here and here). It really was a bit of a whirlwind, and since the idea was that we’d spend two nighttimes shooting, we were free to sightsee all day around Paris on the day in between (and although I was free to book further shoots in the area, I thought it would be nice to have the day to wander around and look at stuff instead!!).

On the first evening, post Eurostar, I met Jeremy for dinner before travelling around on the metro (to the accompanying sound of the accordian; this is one of my all time favourite things about France; it really is so unashamedly French) towards Montmartre, to revisit a spot we’d worked on before. Voilà:

(Above is Jeremy’s shot of le Sacre Coeur, taken on one of many runs up the stairs to check the status of passersby; below, me in le French mac, then less so:)

The plan was basically then to walk around and try desperately to get enough privacy (in the most popular city in the world…) somewhere with an interesting background. I have a thing about cafés (though I didn’t indulge in a macaroon during this trip), and thought we just had to use this place. And I’m bossy. I love the zebra crossing in the frame, too. The staff were just closing for the night, and we had to be quick not to let them steer their wheely bins in shot…

On day two, we went to la Musée d’Orsay to see the current Degas exhibition, which was brilliant! What an amazing place. I bought a really cool poster, plus a set of 6 monet coasters and some Degas/other postcards to boost my, er, coaster and art postcard collections.

Unfortunately, France hates vegetarians, so what could have been an entire day spent browsing the jaw dropping, inspiring and mesmerising (if there’d been time), with just a quick stop in the cafe there, was necessarily cut short by the urgent desire to eat lunch. Ah well, I hope to go back at some point; and we did manage to see quite a lot!

Next on the agenda, after dinner (yeah, basically day time was spent eating and looking at stuff, and also napping after the late shoot the night before) we went to the Grand Palais, which is currently hosting an exhibition of Helmut Newton’s photography. Lots of food for thought and inspiration! The highlight was the video, made by Helmut’s wife, with behind the scenes footage and some hilarious fly-on-the-wall scenes. Best quote ever comes from Helmut arguing with her (after she notes how fortuitous it is that a model has semi-blinked in one of his images, lending a narrow-eyed, sultry, moody feel to the image): ‘You’re doing it again. Belittling me. I told her to do that. It is my direction that makes her mysterious and wonderful.’ (Or words very similar. Love it.)

After that, aware that Paris is still full of tourists and couples strolling around its streets at 10pm, we went to the Crazy Horse, which was quite an experience!!

And finally, we did some shots in front of the iconic Eiffel Tour. Surprisingly enough, this wasn’t actually planned, but I’m so glad we did it! I think these shots will currently hold my record for ‘crazy things done in the name of modelling’; I am certainly not the first model to have posed there, but it’s still a bizarre, exciting and pressure-filled few minutes (we didn’t have longer than that really; and even then we couldn’t escape the tourists, lazily-strolling locals or taxi drivers, some of whom gave me a thumbs up sign mid-drive… and the pressure was on for Jeremy who had to control focus in low (street lamp only) light). We certainly didn’t set out to be seen; we did everything we could not to be, waiting for what felt like hours for those precious gaps in the stream of people, but in the end it just seemed impossible and we had to just go for it or always regret it. I can say that modelling nude in front of the Eiffel Tower (and, to a lesser-but-still-considerable extent, in front of the café the previous night) is a sort of ‘out of body’ experience. It’s a very odd thing to do. But the structure, power and beauty of the Eiffel Tower, especially lit up so majestically (and I have to mention that at night, the tower’s illumination copyright goes strictly to Pierre Bideau), made a wonderful posing partner and some images I’m proud of! And just look at the moon (copyright Moon)!

>I was booked recently to work with MaxOperandi and his friend Jules, on the grounds of Ian’s friend’s incredible country house. Despite Jules’ already accomplished portfolio, this was her first introduction to nude figure work and we worked exclusively with natural light (the weather was beautiful!! No shivering necessary!) and reflectors. I think these are some fantastic natural images, and along with Ian’s vintage bicycle (I also spent time up in a tree house, standing in a water feature and balancing in branches, which left me with bad scratches which miraculously disappeared somehow the next day!), there is a very ‘darling buds of May’ feel to this sunny set, which I love! I always wanted to be Mariette.

 (There is a serious waist-hip ratio going on above; I wasn’t sure if it was flattering at first, but I decided I like it. )

Let me know if you have a favourite!

>As promised in this Paris-by night post, the day-time evidence of recent Parisian frolics (with photographer Jeremy Howitt) is here!

We went for a black-and-white colour scheme with a fashion travelogue feel; some posed scenes incorporating some recognisable sights plus some obligatory casual cafe breaks… Although a little cold at times (here’s hoping the June visit will be a little warmer!), we had a lot of fun wandering around and getting through our book of metro tickets, then setting me up to pose in front of such picturesque and famous skylines! I basically wandered around in an ‘I love Paris’ daze, I think, and enjoyed the sophisticated-to-playful outfits (I think it would have been a crime not to make the most of the merry-go-round when modelling in a short playsuit!).

Quai de la Tournelle:

Ile de la Cite et Ile Saint-Louis:

Le Jardin des Tuileries:

Some funky disco:

Trocadero:

And finally, the hotel rooms and my room’s balcony:

 

… Thanks again to Jeremy for such a fun and productive trip!

>Remember this post (‘Fertile Lands’), SEVEN months ago? Well it turns out that shortly afterwards, the wonderful Imagesse had sent me a whole other batch of images by email which I did not receive properly! If you are a friend of mine on facebook you will be aware of my recent horror at discovering that my smartphone has been displacing the occasional email at whim and deleting it from my inbox. I happened to come across a folder accessible only on my computer (and invisible on my phone) called ‘POP’, where hotmail keeps emails that have been deleted on ‘a device’ and which it wants me to check shouldn’t be kept. Clever hotmail. No fewer than 1174 emails over the last few months ago were found there lurking, unopened. Luckily, most of them were ones I had meant to delete from my phone, or else not important, but more than a very generous handful were very important, or sweet, or offering me highly-exciting work, and a few included images I had (seemingly rudely, I imagine) never seen or acknowledged! And there was me wondering why people hadn’t got back to me on one or two things!! Urgh. That was a stressful evening. Unfortunately I still need to be able to delete emails on my phone as I often make the most of spare minutes when out and about in order to keep the stream as clear as possible, but at least now I know to check my ‘POP’ folder (a bit like a ‘junk’ folder, but for non-junk that your computer doubts you meant to delete) for hidden jewels.

I’m on top of the problem now that I know about my phone’s mischievery, but hey – if someone doesn’t reply to your email, consider this post encouragement that a gentle nudge is sometimes necessary!! Technology, eh? Who’d have it?!

Without further to do, here are some beautiful (I think) images taken in a lavender field in Gloucestershire during summer last year. I think the colour is so eye catching and I haven’t seen (m)any images in this type of location before, so extra points to Perry for finding somewhere special! The flowers were so vibrant and fragrant. Modelling in places like these is so incredibly pleasurable – I’m not sure I would ever have visited a lavender field otherwise – I certainly hadn’t seen one before. Mmmm, lavender honey…. And I’m now remembering for the millionth time that I need to buy myself a new calming lavender rollerball fragrance bottle to take when travelling, since they are so relaxing (and mine ran out/leaked everywhere a few trips ago). Why is lavender so calming? I was having a similar thought recently when driving through countryside… Why do humans tend to find blue and green colours so relaxing (as opposed to, say, red or orange)? Why did God choose those colours to paint the majority of the world in? Did he want us to feel relaxed/peaceful/stop killing each other, etc..? Or do we feel relaxed because the natural world is blue-y green and we find nature relaxing? And then I thought I’m thinking an absolute load of nonsense, as really an object’s colour is only a secondary (not primary/essential) quality (as said philosopher John Locke), not independently objective… i.e. the colours of a lump of matter depends on the perceiver and context, like weight (where mass is fundamentally part of an object’s character) …but then maybe if we were designed to see something a certain way then the fact that we do is all that matters… Hhmmm. I’m awesome on car journeys… If I were the sort of person to write ‘dot com’ after words to emphasise my feelings, I would probably write ‘I miss studying at university dot com’.

>(Blog title courtesy of photographer…:-))

Hello! I got back from my German/Dutch trip to Dusseldorf, Nijmegen and Amsterdam yesterday. It was a very productive time and I managed to sightsee a lot between appointments too! I enjoyed getting back to my german roots in Dusseldorf, and really really love Amsterdam in particular, where I spent a whole week dodging stag dos and taking roughly nine million snapshots of the unbelievably pretty canals, visiting the Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum, the tulip museum – very sweet; and I was lucky to be detoured by one photographer to see the vast swathes of rainbow tulips growing happily and stripily in a field on the way to a shoot – another photographer drove us via a windmill, so my dutch experience was complete! I also went to the Anne Frank House, which I found almost unbearably moving and heart breaking; I walked around on the verge of tears and in awe of what a wonderful man Otto Frank is/was. The literary talent of Anne Frank is amazing, too, and I wish we could have seen what she could have produced if she’d lasted just a few more weeks until liberation. Other highlights included the ‘Katten Kabinet’ – a canal house turned into a museum devoted solely to the depiction in art of cats throughout history. To top off that visual pleasure, asleep on the ticket desk as you enter lay a tabby, as though trained specifically for the purpose of easing the hearts of tourists missing their own animal kinds… This wonderful visit prompted my boyfriend to link me to this utterly brilliant video, featuring the hilarious french cat ‘Henri’ (full of ennui) considering the nature of his existence…. Watch it!

Modelling adventures on this trip included modelling in a box, in a cupboard, modelling with no limbs, modelling with two taxidermied ferrets (who I named Alexander and Margaret) and other such beauteous events, making for some interesting shots ranging from the very simple to the very quirky. I will be showing some images from the 12 days soon. But first…

I was lucky enough to be whisked away to Paris by Jeremy Howitt last month. We’ve worked together many, many times now and had been thinking about working in Paris for a while. It’s really nice to be considered for such a trip – Jeremy has been inspired by  Parisian photography and I just absolutely love the place, and having worked together so often we knew it would work well. It’s a real compliment to be chosen for a big project, and a testament to the coolness of an ongoing and successful working relationship.

Jeremy cooked up a plan for french travelogue-style shots, some hotel-room lingerie and these shots below; loosely Brassai/Helmut Newton-inspired. In practise, modelling in such a very busy part of the city was not at all easy, and took a bit of bravery (and the ability to stay wrapped up warm until the very last second, then undress in a nano-second then shoot fast for 3/4 mins between the streams of couples casually strolling up and down the stairs), but we both think these shots are worth the effort! Jeremy did 99% of the styling for the trip, which consisted mostly of very elegant, chic and sophisticated clothing in black and white. Here I’m wearing a ‘halterneck skirt’, some wonderfully dangerous high heels, and a sheer body underneath, avec gloves. We used the lamplight, a limited pool of glow.

My favourites from this set – a brief part of the trip:

Jeremy’s decided he’d like to develop this particular theme (streets at night) with me in a couple of months when we will be re-visiting Paris (and checking out the current Helmut Newton exhibition) in part deux.

…And I’ll blog some shots we took during the day times very soon.

>I’ve been battling over the last few days with a strong desire to dye the tips/ends of my hair a pale, pastel ‘baby’ pink. I had the idea that it would suit my look in a sweet, ‘fairy’ kind of way rather than looking ‘punky’. Obviously my natural curls do soften any colour put into it, so the overall look would be quite gentle… Well, I indulged myself yesterday and went ahead and did it in my bathroom. The pack said to leave it in for 15-30 mins, so I conscientiously erred on the side of caution, wanting it not to come up too bright for photoshoots, and left it in for around 20mins (was aiming for 15 but then got distracted…). The result is barely noticeable; it blends so well that it doesn’t particularly appear to have made much difference. The lengths of my hair are quite light anyway, and now it looks to me like there is just a bit of a rosy, fiery haze around the ends. I love it! (But I don’t expect anyone else to notice much difference; will test it on my dinner companion this evening…). Maybe sometime after my 12-day trip to Holland and Germany this week I will try again for the full 30 mins and see how it looks!

Anyway, I know I’ve slightly flooded the area recently with images from Billy Sheahan and our fun foray into Mexican beach life, but he’s just sent me a whole new batch of colour edits which i think are eye-poppingly gorgeous. Billy originally imagined the shots in black and white, but we both think these are so vibrant. I love the mossy feathery green hues of the last four shots too; so warm and inviting.

Righty-ho, I’m off to make a ‘zuccini bake’, which involves whipping out my old ‘microwave cooking for kids’ book from my childhood. Remember when microwave cooking (‘put in, cover, leave for 3 mins, uncover, cook for 2.5 more mins…’) was all the rage? Haha.

>

Desiderata — written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s —

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul. 
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.