Andrew Box :D

I had so much fun working with Andrew Box in Castleford - must thank him again for sending me over a disk of images which were waiting for me when I got home last night!

Cxx

Abandoned near Newcastle'ish!

Well here are a couple of my favourites from my first day out with Shepy and Rory :D

My little trip away!!

Well.. as always I will start with the most commonly used phrase I have been posting so much recently "I know its been awhile" - blah blah blah.. Like a broken record I am!

Anyhow - I went on another England adventure, this time I dragged Rory with me - thankfully he wasn't kicking and screaming.  The first day we met up with Shepy at an abandoned hospital in Scotland, sadly all the doors and windows were boarded up so none of us could shoot there - its a shame as Shepy had travelled all the way up to Scotland from Newcastle. Off we went in our two cars, communicating with walkie talkies incase we got lost or spotted anything interesting on the way back down South.

We kicked things off at an abandoned coal miners bath's/showers which was pretty cool, someone mentioned it looked like the set from the film SAW - which was very accurate :D. It was really rather gritty there so we shot a little shadowy set which turned out funky (decided to do separate blogs with Images).

We then somehow managed to fit through a tiny hole in a fence to get into an old abandoned tile factory which was slightly less interesting but lots of open spaces and scary noises, last location was an old tuberculosis home - We didn't shoot there though but the place looked amazing, built in a valley so accessed via walkways at either side. I did take a couple of images of the outside of the place though.

Stupidly I agreed to going into the metro centre for some food, forgetting I am the worlds worst for eating in unknown places which are full of people.. Needless to say I didn't get past the queues and ended up back in the car in a bit of a cold sweat 5 minutes later. Damn Anxiety, always gets the better of me.

We finally got to our hotel - seeing the "leisure facilities" we got our hopes up expecting a pool and the rest of it, the place was undergoing refurbishment so no pool.. Least we had the internet :D

Sunday we travelled down to York - Went in for a visit to my darling Auntie Shelias and discovered you can buy Krispy Kreme doughnuts - caramel shortcake I can highly recommend!! In the evening I went over to the Marriott Hotel in York for a shoot, we shot some lingerie and nudes!

Night-time came and Rory and I were off to the outskirts of Leeds :D
The following day we went over to Andrew Box's studio in Castleford - I had a lampshade on my head and was covered in clingfilm, who needs to pay for a special spa wrap? Rory then had an hour or so with me in this awesome studio, so many toys to play with.. He was in heaven!

After Castleford we were making our way down to Birmingham and came across a funny village called "Bosover" - We couldn't help but pop in to see what they had to offer, we visited the castle and took some sneaky fashion shots..

Tuesday came and we woke up nice and early to the rain, I was picked up by Dinah for my shoot with her and Tim in the morning. Tim took us to a wonderful garden which had gorgeous bridges and beautiful Autumnal Colours, it was lovely. I had a great morning with them both, I always enjoy working with Tim and it was nice to see Dinah again. They make a fabulous team!

In the afternoon Tim and I went over to Robs studio, I had so much fun dancing about on his bouncy floor with gold isis wings - can't wait to see the pictures of me wearing them. They looked awesome at the back of the camera.

Night time came and I got dropped off at our Hotel for the evening, the rain was coming down hard and Rory was nowhere to be seen. He went out for a shoot with a model from Birmingham, I've seen some of the shots they are looking pretty damn good!

Wednesday arrived and we took a Trip down to see Silverlight in Bournemouth (and visited the sealife centre and the beach). Was fantastic to finally meet him and his stunning wife, what a lovely couple and great company :D

We travelled up to Winchester late in the evening and I think I crashed out instantly, all the travelling really takes it out of me! When packing for this trip I took a book with me, hoping to get in some quality reading time - I managed a grand total of 5 pages.

On Thursday I worked with the awesome Man Kit Wong in Southampton, I have admired his work for years. I remember seeing his shots of Kayt Webster Brown and thought "one day I want to work with this dude" well the day finally came. Our original plan was Autumn Fashion on location, it didn't really go to plan due to the crappy weather so we ended up in a blank studio with cheesy props. We decided to throw on lots of weirdly clashing clothes and strangely they worked together. Really looking forward to seeing how bad my "fashion" actually is!!

From Southampton we travelled up to Newbury, again I maybe managed half a page of my book before I went to the land of zzzzz's...

On Friday we went over to Bracknell to see my good friend Glenn Richardson, we have chatted for years so it was a long time in the making. He took me to this awesome studio, it was massive!! He wanted to get me something different for my portfolio so we shot some beauty which is something I've not had very much experience in doing in the past. After our morning in the studio we went back to Glenns to eat Bacon sandwiches and chat nonsense for a few hours, the sun was out so we popped over to his local park as the sun was setting.. Glenn stood on dog shit then a dog pissed on his jacket - really not a good day for him but it amused me!

On Friday late in the evening we went over to our hotel which was called Eynsham hall, close to Oxford.. It was magical, seriously impressive looking building with so much history (I will go into that in the picture blog I get around to uploading). When we woke in the morning we decided to have a wander round the gardens (and have a bit of a shoot) so we left a little later than we planned so had to dash over to Wales to see Mr Alison..

So we arrived in Wales, it reminded us of Scotland so much - seriously the colours, roads and hills were the same. The only difference is all the Welsh road signs :D Hugh has a mini Zoo at his house & we both love animals so it was heaven for us. Horses, Dogs and Cats <3

On Sunday I was due to work with Ade Kestral but he came down with the flu so had to cancel which I know he really didn't want to do. So next time I'm down I will need to pop over to see him. Hugh took us to a really gorgeous location which was an old Mill then we came across a waterfall on the way home. On Saturday evening Hughs daugher and son in law were over for dinner and we had a lovely meal full of giggles. We were both made to feel so welcome and felt like part of the family! I cannot thank Hugh enough for inviting us over and we had a wonderful time in Wales thanks to him.

Monday was a fun day too - (notice a trend here?). Rory and I had free reign on Hughs land/animals/studio and cars so we experimented and played around until we had to leave in the late afternoon for our hotel in Penrith which was bloody stunning, Lake side views and a grand bed - we woke up this morning and I HAD to pose in the bed, the light was perfect.

So now its Tuesday and we are back home, I missed my cat soo much but being on the road is a pretty good feeling. Part of me never wants to stop moving but the other wants to be in our new home.

I will update when I have some more images to post up

xxx

Day 2 with Carl Grim!

 Yes i realise this is very picture heavy :D I guess we have to thank Carl for that..
I may not be going out shooting much at the moment but when I do go out I defiantly make the most of it. This was a random day when Carl and I just headed off in the car in one direction and hoped for the best that we would find some locations to shoot in - As you can see from the images we did!

 The next 3 were shot at the queens view I think it was called.. Lucky it was so early in the morning before the tourists were out of their campers in the carpark :D

Also just a note to say I'm going to be in Englandshire next month from the 24th of October for 1 weeks.
I will be visiting - Leeds, Birmingham, Winchester, Reading & Nottingham. I have dates still available in Leeds and Winchester so if you are around either city and fancy showing me around your awesome scenery or have me dance about in a studio please get in touch!

Much love xxxxx

Working with others!! - Katy Cee

I do have other things which I really should blog about first but I am attempting to clear my backlog of things which need blogging about so here goes!

I could put literally hundreds of images up with this post from my recent shoot with Carl Grim and Katy Cee (or Pectin depending on what neck of the woods you know her from) but I will try not to :D

Like I said in my last blog which mentioned this shoot it was a fantastic experience, I know I'm not exactly a newbie at modelling anymore (although sometimes I do feel it) I must say that to work with a model who is as experienced and talented as Katy is was an honour for me. I do tend to hide away a little up in Scotland and there are not very many models up here so duo shoots are not the "norm" for me.  My new saying is "the only thing better than 1 art nude model is 2" and I believe when Katy and I came together that really was the case.

Working with other models really does make you move that little bit more, its  great learning experience. You not only have to think about what your own body is doing in relation to the grand scheme of things but how it works overall with your partner, then when you are in the studio you have to be more aware of where the lighting is falling as to not shadow over the person you are posing alongside.

First up is some outside shots, in the pissing rain.
I did have a plan of action but not being able to find the "plan" in the forest kind of messed up the overall plan so we settled for doing some nymphs in the woodland which actually (and thankfully turned out well).

The deep greens worked wonderfully with Katy and I's porcelain skin - its amazing to find another model who is as pale as I am. I used to dream that my freckles would all join together to give me a wonderful tan but now I really would never want that to happen - mainly because I see now my freckles are more orange than brown and secondly because I love how light skin photographs in some of the locations I visit.

Some duo nudes -

I have to admit I was slightly nervous about working with Katy, she is a dancer and dancers poses are always elegant and bendy. I only wish I could bend around like Katy does, she makes it look effortless but having worked with her I can tell you its anything but effortless she put in so much work and like me gritted our teeth when the rain was pouring and the wind was blowing!

I have to say again on here thanks to Carl for booking Katy and I together and taking such wonderful shots of our day, I will never forget it and I hope we are both booked together in the future *hint for anyone reading*!

xxx

Yorkshire Post!!

Things are still uber busy just now but had some awesome news that I was in the yorkshire posts weekend magazine a couple of weeks ago!!

Horray :D

Thanks to the lovely Claire and makepiece :D

Ouch

Ok I know its been ages since I last updated..
I have had a few shoots since I last posted though so I will soon have new images to show off :D
One of my shoots was with a lovely man new to model photography called Yad. We had such a great day out and it was terrific to meet him!

I had 2 shoots this week with Mr Carl Grim, the first one was on Wednesday and I got to work alongside the beautiful Katy Pectin.. She is awesome!! Half of the day was spent in the rain posing like forest nymphs around the trees and the other half we went to a studio.

It was great working with Katy,  I thought I had found every way I could of posing my body but I guess working with someone so amazing inspired me to push myself even further than normal and I was upside down on a sofa doing poses I never thought would suit my body or be humanly possible for me to do but I did :D

I have seen the shots, can't wait to get them back though. If I hadn't been involved in the sets I honestly wouldn't have thought it was me in them!

I went out yesterday with Carl again, we travelled around "winging" it in Scotland and wing it we did..
We managed about 10 different stop offs, all doing at least 3 - 5 variety of sets in each location so we got lots of images :D

My house is still falling apart, I have been living at my sisters all week with the kids and dog its a bit of madness but nice to get to hang out with my little nieces again and their lodger works in a old style pub so we are angling for a shoot in there!

We fixed a pipe yesterday at the new place, still one to fix but we need to get another piece of pipe from BnQ.  I can't wait for my house to be ready to move into!! Just irritating that at the moment its down to other people to fix the shit which is wrong with it.. I hope the 2 pipes we are fixing are the only ones with holes in them or we need to rip up more floor.

Underfloor heating. new electrics. boiler and hopefully a roof getting done in the next fortnight..

Fingers crossed

xxxx

By Request! *waves*

 Ok upon request here is a blog update, I think this has been the longest I have went without updating with something. Life has pretty much been on hold this month I know what I'm waiting for its just not coming as quickly as I was hoping it would.


Last week I did actually go out and shoot (see pictures) so I have not been totally unproductive in the last month. I was going to do some self portraits last week now the flat is empty but I kind of ended up being side-tracked and ended up cleaning the floor or something instead.

I did do some photography myself this month just not of myself. Alfie is getting so grown up, he is staying at my mums until we get the new place, he has been outside having little cat adventures :D

 As you can see I also dragged myself out at sunrise one morning :D I say dragged I was actually raring to go, I have noticed the sunsets being so gorgeous recently so I had to. Its amazing how peaceful standing on the tay bridge is at 4.30am during the week, apart from a couple of taxis I was totally alone watching the sunrise.. It was beautiful! I'm going to miss being such a close walk from the riverside but being in the country will have its own advantages, I just need to spend a few weeks hunting around for nice local locations!

Big thanks to John Mcnairn for the shoot last week, it was awesome to get out again and have a nice chilled out shoot :D the last one was a bit of a sneaky shot in the grounds of a beautiful country house. There was other people kicking about but this little scene was hidden by hedges and John was at the entrance so horray for this little spot!

I have a shoot next week which I'm really looking forward to :D next month will no doubt be another quiet one as we need to start doing the new house up and concentrating on that but I already have atleast 3 spots in the new place which are screaming to be photographed..


Anyhow thats all for now

Cx

ps - thanks Ciaran for reminding me that I actually have a blog :D

Another personal blog update..

I know this blog is totally turning into a "diary of" rather than pictures and thoughts on things..
I guess I use this to throw out my feelings, its like the nice feeling you have when you are singing and nobody is listening!

To be honest I've not done a whole load of shooting recently, have something on this weekend but everything has been on the back burner while trying to sort out this new house. So the last update was about us budgeting our already small amount of money, well this one is basically saying we need to budget even more.

We had the nicest man out to report on the woodworm in the property earlier this week, the great thing about it was no estate agents. He picked up the keys and met us at the property, we were there for around an hour so we kind of got a better look around the place. The woodworm guy was great, not only did he look at the timbers he had a swatch at the boiler/roof and chimney. His company might even have a kitchen in a warehouse which he can give us for nothing!!!!

So I was right, there is woodworm.. and its active :( but I did kind of suspect this although I hoped it was an old infestation. Thankfully its not widespread and only noticeable in a couple of rafters in the attic space, its not caused any serious structural damage and wont set us back "that" much really.

What was discovered was the flashings on the roof need looked at urgently, he actually said "first thing you need sorted is the roof, everything else can wait". He gave us a rough cost so when we get the people into quote we know a general guide price so we wont be ripped off.

Another thing is the current boiler is basically fooked, its ancient. Never been serviced and he recommended that being the 2nd thing we need to fix. So to have hot water and heating we kinda need to do that asap, the guide price for that was a fair whack of money - infact it would eat up so much of our budget that we wouldn't have much left over. I mentioned the need for the boiler and radiators and my sister reminded me that my brother in law used to have his own underfloor heating company and he still has the equipment and enough pipes to do most of the flat and he has offered his services for nothing - although his usual rate is a packet of fags and an irn bru so providing we get the boiler replaced the heating is pretty much sorted, we will need to buy a few bits for him to do the job like new floor coverings and it will be messy but we can't turn our noses up and its awesome he has offered to do this for us :D

Chimney flashings are letting in water, another issue. Currently there is work going on outside the property and there is scaffolding up.. the issue may have been caused by the work going on outside, so ive been advised to contact the person in charge of the work to ask if they will fix it, if not we can piggy back their scaffolding and save some mollah there too!

We informed the landlady that we are moving, bought a car..
So if this deal falls through we will have to live in the car :(

Its still scary, actually owning something worth so much money.. although to others the price is pretty pathetic compared to their homes but its the most we have ever spent EVER. I think the scary thing is the settling in and work needing done, if we uncover more shit wrong with the place there is no more money there to make it right. It was a terrible idea watching "help my house is falling down" programme last week, they had woodworm/roofing issues and damp so it struck a few chords with us, thankfully their property was like a billion years old ours is only 110.

So now we wait for the bank to say yes again after getting the report on the woodworm, then we contact the solicitor to do the deal.. then we get all the savings out and wait till the 12th of July.

in the meantime I will continue packing, pacing the floors and doing online research into really silly things. I was up at 4am earlier this week watching videos on re-facing kitchens, they are a bloody fantastic way of entertaining yourself!

xxxx

Shoot with Carl Grim & New house :D

 Well I had a shoot with Carl Grim alongside Britalicus recently and Carl kindly sent me to all the shots he got, here are just a few of my favourites. I can't believe how much variety and settings we ended up using in such a short space of time :D

 Don't get used to this sight, my backside is one of my least photographic parts of me. I know every model has something about them they dislike, usually its something which other people say "don't be silly" about. So many times on shoots people have asked to shoot me from behind, I always warn them and say photographically it just looks crap. They think thats a challenge to get a nice bum shot, most fail. A couple of people have managed to get a decent bum shoot, I still hate the way it photographs but below is a shot I don't hate with a passion so its being added.

Other good news is that the offer we put in on a property was accepted earlier this week, there is so much to organise and do though and that thought scares the shit out of me. I guess I never really want to grow up and thinking about having a mortgage is frightening for me.

Whats also frightening is the work which needs done on the place, we didn't get as much money as we hoped. We kind of thought "well it costs X amount for the place and will cost y amount to repair it".. Well the X meant putting much more savings into it and the Y well, we didn't get any Y money from the bank so we need to put all our money into it but even that still falls a few thousand off what we estimated the work would come to.

Our plan of action is this..
New kitchen, Ikea is much cheaper than anywhere else we have seen plus the kitchens actually look like good quality. New bathroom - a cheap take away one, Ideally I wanted to move the bathroom or extend it but theres not enough money in the budget for that because of a supporting wall needing to be moved so its staying as a dark small pokey bathroom for the time being. The roof has some slates missing so thats getting fixed straight away, a section of the roof leaked through into the livingroom so a chunk of the ceiling in there has to come down an be replaced. The radiators all need replaced, we wont know if the boiler works until everything is switched on so thats another thing which needs sorted out straight away. All flooring needs done.. Aye we need to buy a car also and sort out and pay for all the insurance stuff.

We own a tv and a laptop, a couple of cheap storage things so we have to buy the basics like a sofa/bed/table.. washing machine.. which reminds me in my initial list I forgot microwave and little kitchen things - the amount we need to spend is going up everytime I remember something else. I did buy a toaster when I was on tour with the girls so atleast I have one of them!!

Ok so all that work needs done, we get the keys next month - around the 8th...
We should be leaving this flat we are in at the start of August so that gives us 23 days to make it liveable but I have a few things on during that time so make it 20 days. I'm getting in a family friend to help with things like kitchen/bathroom/ceiling and light fittings but other than that I think I'm on my own. Chances are Rory will just need to drop me off in the morning at the new place and leave me with a pain brush until he finishes work!

So thats the 6 month plan...
After 6 months we can release money and get down to fixing other things -

There is old evidence of woodworm - we are getting a specialist around to check it out - Gutters and chimney need seeing too. Maybe get some insulating sorted out in the loft.. If there is any money left over (i would need lots) then I want to get planning permission to make the attic space into two bedrooms - currently 1 is a bedroom without permission and the other half of it is a basic attic space I would kind of like them to stay pretty similar but just do it all officially. There is beautiful skylights up in the loft, the light that gets in there is gorgeous! Infact its one of the things I liked most about the place, seeing a pool of light coming from above always impresses me!

So yeah, scary - exhausting times ahead!
I'm sure oodles of fun will be had along the way :D

xxx

and a few more...

Well we were planning on going out for the sunset but the grey sky just got darker so it wasn't "ideal" shooting weather so i went for a bath and shouted Rory through..

I have a couple of other shots I wanted to post up from my shoot with Mr Steve Gabbett with Rachael Lyon and myself, I actually had trouble selecting which ones from that shoot I liked and I have tried not uploading all of them to my various portfolios but my blog is unrestricted so here they all are :D

i actually think I look like a half decent fashion model in these shots.. i guess its better late than never.
I'm trying to do more fashion and things just now because well time is never on anyones side and I want to do it well before im too old to do it :D

Next blog I MUST post up is from my shoot with Carl Grim :D I also have a couple from Mike Niccoll from our recent shoot..

xxx