Ceri Williams: Druantia

Here is a nice short one for you. What a treat.

I take you to August 6th 2016 when I was gardening in the beautiful sunlight.

One of my gardening tasks was to heavily cut back a honeysuckle that was taking over the garden at an alarming rate.

As I looked at the long, thin and bendy branches, I remembered a sculpture making class I did through school during the holidays one year. Year 7, I think so aged 11. We were provided with cut willow branches and we weaved them into sculptures, afterwards covering them with coloured tissue paper. I made a giant blue whale and was hella proud of it.

Anyway, once I was done cutting the honeysuckle back, I started to weave the branches together, just playing really... then I had a a bit of photography inspiration. I thought it might make for a cool druidic headdress or something. After a short while, I decided that I was going to make an 'egg' with an opening and get someone's face in there. Ceri's face, obviously. My 'go-to' face.

So -  4:24pm on August 7th I text Ceri and tell her to "swing by" on her way back from her parents... with no further warning.

So she thinks she's due a nice cup of tea... and BAM! I stick my creation over her head and she is trapped in a blissful, unending, dreaming sleep.

And then, just in my back garden, I took this photo against the low sun.

Dat sexy lens flare. She would have been so cross if she had known at the time.

On editing, I lowered the saturation right down as I wanted to give it a colder, more muted tone.

I chose the image with Ceri's eyes closed, to keep it serene and peaceful. I chose to leave the image with the plant matter still over her face, to keep it natural-looking and less posed. I like to think that this plant grew around her that way rather than was deliberately weaved.

So, there you have it, folks. My 'druid' (who I called Druantia after the tree goddess) was simply just a tired Ceri, in my back garden, dressed in fancy twigs in the late Sunday afternoon sun. 

Like this in fact...

XD

Kiera Gould: A Firefly-Inspired Shoot

The idea of a 'Firefly' themed shoot had come up a couple of times with Kiera Gould (Stunt Extraordinnaire) and we ended up finally fitting this in on the 15th July, the day after shopping for Kiera's wedding dress.

Kiera, Matt (Matt "Reluctant Photography Assistant" Evans) and I met up and Matt's house and then left for the location early in the morning.

The location (be warned) is fantastic, beautiful and pretty darn unique but I am afraid I can not tell you it's location for various reasons. Some of you may recognise it but I'd like to ask that you keep it to yourselves and not mention it in any comments you may leave. Thanks.

Right then. Moving on, let me explain that the majority of these images have been post-processed with the 'Overlay' blending option (previously described in Yvonne Gumbere's shoot) as I love the dirty feel that it gives these images.

For example:

<- Here it is without the 'overlay' effect... 














... and here it is with the 'overlay' effect -> 



I just think it makes this series 'pop' nicely...

So these were the images in the first 'area' which I was hoping might look somewhat like a Firefly-esque engine...

... along with Kiera and her 'engineering' get-up.

This next room/area is my absolute favourite with literally the sexiest damn door I've ever seen in my life. I could quite possibly live here.

(All but one taken using natural light.)

Here's Kiera sat in the 'sexy door'. It was actually once in an episode of Red Dwarf, this door.

Like... made a cameo appearance...

... It's not crazy to be in love with a door, you know. Especially when it's so damn fantastic.

Plus if you think I'm crazy, you should meet Kiera...

She's proper mental...

Right, this next bit's pretty damn cool as well. Get a load of this sci-fi scene. All shot with natural light again but without the overlay effect...

Pretty cool.

Silhouette?

And finally, this last one was taken in a pitch black tunnel with 6 tiny holes of light peering in (not that you could tell whilst in there) so to achieve this, I popped the camera on the tripod and set the shutter speed to 30 seconds...

Fit.

So that was our awesome trip to "miscellaneous location" with the Kierabeast!

Or "Kierannosaurus 6" if we go by her new Roller Derby name...

Interesting fact: Kiera is a member of the Surrey Roller Girls roller derby team along with "Kerosene"... also known as Ceri "Diva" Williams (who also has her own blog now too. So you can read all about her opinions on life, skating and other humans. Figures). Small world!

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.