Waterscrapes

A London-based model, Tansy Blue, was taking a trip to Scotland last week, and she had one free afternoon remaining before her coach trip back down south. So she posted a casting call on Purestorm asking for a shoot, and I volunteered. There was a long pause ~ about 36 hours, during which time I began to feel the first pangs of rejection and inadequacy ~ before she finally approved me.

Had a miserable false start where I inexplicably thought we were meeting on Thursday instead of Friday (my fault entirely, no clue how it happened), but once we met up things were fine. I explained my plans at the outset: a combination of my usual artsy slow shutter speed stuff, plus something new inspired by a lovely black & white shot on DeviantArt I'd come across, using a very fast shutter speed to capture the turbulent water.

Tansy proved to be exactly the kind of model I love working with. Unselfconscious, body-confident, and as interested in the art as her hourly rate. She was also brave... maybe too brave. In all our pictures she's either serene and graceful, or larking about with a carefree smile as in the out-take shots. But she slipped and fell twice early on, coming perilously close to plummeting over the edge and into the churning waters. And then at the death, with only one more set left in the cooling evening, she did take a tumble. A really horrific one where she flipped upside down and bounced off the rocks, before splashing into the freezing water below. She emerged shivering but unscathed (and somehow, with her specs still on), but that was the end of our shoot right there.