Reading

I feel that my photographic experimentation has been a little less than usual at the moment and this is due to the increased amount of time I have been dedicating to the consumption of academic literature focussing fashion photography.

I have a dissertation to write over the next couple of months, and a lot of books to read:

Because fashion photography has not long been recognised as a legitimate cultural form worthy of serious study there are not very many books are written specifically about this subject, therefore my classmates and I have been reading very widely, researching sociology, photographic theory, art history and all sorts of different areas of cultural studies. Primarily I have been reading to research specifically for the dissertation, but I feel like a lot of the things I have been learning about have also influenced the way I see my practical photography work, and I want to try to incorporate some of these influences here on my blog.

One I forgot...

Another Polaroid of Eva:

Baby Me in the Isles of Scilly

I found this photo of me from when I was a baby.

Growing up there was pretty different to studying fashion photography in London...

I think my absurdly idyllic childhood home in Scilly has definitely shaped the sort of images I like to make now.

Ali Dighe Polaroids

Polaroids of my beautiful friend Ali:

Eva Polaroids

Polaroids from the same model test.

Hair and Makeup: Larissa Carey - Model: Eva at Sapphires.

Eva Model Test

My favorite images from a model test with Eva at Sapphires.

Hair and Makeup: Larissa Carey.

Black and Whte Locations

Some more potential locations for my final shoot.

Peninis Head on the Isles of Scilly is covered in incredible natural rock formations:

St Michael's Mount at Mounts Bay in Cornwall has a beautiful castle on the top. At low tide you can walk to the island but I didn't actually get to go accross there this day because it was raining so hard I gave up:

I promise this is the last prehistoric monument I will blog about for a while, it's a stone circle in Cornwall called the Merry Maidens. Apparently they were once women who were turned into stone for dancing on a Sunday. I love shooting from the bottom of the hill looking up at the stones, the hill makes it look really theatrical:

Amongst the Reeds

I am still thinking about different location ideas so I took these Polaroids of beautiful reeds in the Isles of Scilly over new year:

Eva Lingerie

Fearing that this blog was becoming less about fashion photography and more about my new obsession with prehistoric locations here are some underwear images I shot for a model agency last week:

Makeup and Hair: Larissa Carey

Model: Eva at Sapphires

Stone Circle

Also on the Lands End peninsular (very near a village named Drift) is this stone circle called Boscawen-un. I want to try to shoot here too, I love the horthorn trees, but I'll need a different lens for the Hassleblad if I use it here, this one isn't wide enough...

Lands End

My search for lesser-known prehistoric sites led me back to Cornwall, to Lands End where these two Neolithic sites are really close to each other:

This is the Men-an Tol, it looks like a polo and the hole in the middle stone is just about big enough for someone my size to squeeze through. Apparently it's associated with fertility and children were passed through it in the olden times to cure rickets... brilliant.

Just down the road is Lanyon Quoit, which I think was once a massive tomb, though its not in its original place now because it fell down and was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century. To me it looks like a huge sacrificial table and I can really picture witches practicing strange rituals here.

Anyway I'm hoping to shoot here because even without the bizarre stones the landscape is amazing, so bleak and un-touched, except for that disused tin-mine that looks like castle visible

in the background of some of the images.

I think it's the perfect place to shoot something inspired by witchcraft.