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.

Lokasenna

I was feeling sorry for myself a couple of weeks ago, because of a shoot which hadn't gone according to plan; in fact, it hadn't happened at all. So, sitting at home late on Saturday night, I saw a casting call on Purestorm from a new model looking to boost her portfolio, and I thought what the heck.

I contacted her with a suggestion to do some edgy "wet look" portraits, since the forecast was for rain, and she was keen. She also wanted some full-length pictures, as she was 5'10" but didn't have any existing images which showed off her height properly. But would you believe it, for the first time in Scotland's history, the weather was better than predicted. I didn't have a Plan B so we had to wing it, and I'm never the best at on-the-fly creativity, but we still got a couple of usable shots. I did notice afterwards though, that I had this "run your fingers through your hair" thing going, and at the end of the day, I didn't have any shots where Eilidh wasn't doing that ~ dumb of me.

A week with Karen

I had eleven consecutive days off work from 22 April, and I'd organised a shoot for Easter Monday. However the model, normally a reliable and reputable girl by all accounts, flaked. I'd been having such a good break until then, so it dragged my mood down a wee bit.

Fortunately...

A close friend of mine had a date on Monday evening, and when she got home (at 7.45am on Tuesday, wink-wink) she wanted some relationship advice. So I headed over to her place that evening for chow-mein, footie with her dog Dexter, and a lot of bla-bla.

Same close friend needed more advice on Wednesday. So we took a wee drive to our old stomping ground at the Loup o' Fintry to enjoy the weather, the views, and more bla-bla.

I thought she'd have been bored of me by Thursday, but she took a sickie from work and we jumped in the car for a day trip to Millport. Snapshots on the beach, a wee drink in the beer garden, and a third day's bla-bla. On the way back, we stopped off to buy her a mobile broadband dongle, and so got her back online too.

Friday... well surely that's the last I've seen of her? She has a prior engagement this evening, after all. But no, she'd rather cancel it so that I can come over for an all-nighter, and we can get drunk while watching comedy DVDs of Billy Connolly and Kevin Bridges. I slept over, and then gave her a lift to her folks' place on Saturday where she was attending a family do.

This was supposed to be a quiet week of housework for me, but as I write this my place is still an absolute tip. I don't care though; good times with good friends are more important than laundry and washing up.