Ceri Williams: The Subtle Swan

This one is titled as such due to this being a little bit of an ‘Ugly Ducking’ story, except that Ceri has, by no means, ever been an ugly anything.

I think you might understand the title a little more by the end of this blog. It's more of a transformation reference.

Ceri is, in fact, a rather lovely friend of ours who, throughout all the time that we’ve known her, has been, what can only be described as a ‘cute tomboy’. She rarely ever wears make-up, she’s always wearing jeans and a t-shirt or hoody (often brightly coloured). She has a style of her own and even though she seemingly never tries, there really is just something about her that you can’t quite put your finger on. She has a face (not unlike many other people) but hers is particularly captivating. She’s exciting, funny, and off in her own little world most of the time but whenever she’s in a room, I still think that subconsciously, most people can’t keep their eyes off her. Even the way she speaks is lovely. And she’s just got these big, beautiful eyes.

Before I seem as though I’m caught up on some sort of strange, less than mild crush on her, this is Ceri normally:

See. Cute and tomboy-ish, right? (she's even climbing trees and playing with sticks!!!)

Now Rachel and I have spoken about Ceri before. She’s a model you see, but she has no idea. Another fantastic thing about her. Ceri is an incredible girl. She’s so very talented. She can sing, she can dance, she can act. A good fighter, a good conversationalist, a good writer. She could probably do anything, but possibly the most wonderful thing about her is that she genuinely has no idea how truly talented she is. One of those, ‘Yeah, I can kind of sing but…’ people. Seriously. No clue. It’s quite amazing, really.

When I first started to teach myself about photography, Ceri was one of my first ‘victims’. I asked her to come with me to Waverley Abbey where we went to practise (because I really needed to get the hang of setting up for outside! Too blurry, too bright, I had no idea). Ceri was pretty shy about it but came along all the same and followed instruction whilst I swore at the camera and tried to figure it all out. I thought back then that I would get her back in front of the camera when I was better and knew what I was doing. She had not done anything particularly different that day but I really found it hard not to notice quite how photogenic she was.

So now, you may have heard… somewhere along the line… that I have a Canon 7D now… which is alright, I suppose (;D) plus, I can take pictures a little better, I like to think. And so, Rachel and I have been conspiring…

So, quite late on Sunday (11^th Sept), after another shoot, Ceri was at our place with some of the guys that had come over. We snuck upstairs, approached her from the shadows, hit her over the head with some bars of soap in a pillowcase and dragged her downstairs to the studio. (Note: there was a slight dramatisation in that last sentence somewhere, we may have just picked her up and run downstairs with her).

I grabbed a nice, pretty top combo for her to wear and Rachel did some nice gold and brown make-up that looked rather stunning, as always.

This is what we got. (Note: There wasn’t a single bad shot of her and we only took about 12 pictures, if that for the sake of variety.)

Stunning, wouldn’t you say?

Next, we did something a little different. A look that blew us away even though we did it to her.

I’d like to mention at this point to any friends or family of Ceri’s, if they are reading, that these upcoming images do not really look like Ceri at all, of which we are aware and I guarantee that you will prefer the above images to these.

But the truth is, Ceri really suits high-fashion as a styling. I’m sure even those who don’t follow fashion can appreciate that the models are often made to look pretty unusual sometimes rather than typically pretty.

And so here’s the next stage of our experiment (again, only 20-25 pictures?):

As I’m sure you can understand. Ceri is a big hit already. I’d say ‘keep your eyes peeled’ but you couldn’t overlook this face.