Instinct

This is a part of a 3 drawing series i made today for "Illustration Friday" the word of the week was "instinct" It made me think of the owl tattoo I got last week and how all my Tattoos aside of one are of Animals, because I feel they represent best different state of minds and massages I want to bring into my life.

The series shows the same model (Sierra) in 3 different state of minds, each followed by an animalistic inspiration of the moment.

Severine

Ned and I haven't shot in about a month and a half, Ned was sick, we were tired, then sad with his dad's cancer news and other things, it's winter, it's cold, we were busy with other things.

We've seen Severine's Model mayhem page a while ago, and both liked her style and photo personality, Ned wrote her an e-mail and said we'd love to shoot with her if she ever comes to NY. Then, a couple of weeks ago, she wrote back to say she's going to be in New York for a week and would love to shoot with us.

Ned and I were pretty nervous about this, we both felt unpracticed in taking pictures and also, unprepered, we decided ot not have hair, make up or wardrobe for this one and to just shoot intuativly, without any type of concept or idea.

So the day started sort of slow, as Ned was adjusting the lights and figuring out while shooting what are better angles, I was very tired and feeling sort of sick and upset all day, which meant I couldn't really take any charge as far as outfits goes, Ned had to deal with everyting on his own and I felt like a usless lump.

Severine on her side, was really nice but also very closed, she felt very guarded and dignified, I liked her strangth but it felt somewhat hard to communicate, She was pretty shocked when Ned asked her to shoot without any make up on, and then also made her wet her hair and let it frizz as it naturally wants to and not just be straight like she's used to wear it all the time, I had to go out and get a blowdryer so she can strighten it before the shoot.
We talked about how we all see ourselves in different ways and always want to look like different people then ourselves. Both me and Ned agreed that her hair looks beautiful when it's curly, it actually looks like a lion's mane, but she wasn't intierly convinced.

When she was drying her hair in the bathroom, I fall asleep, I only slept for about 10 minutes, but when she came out I felt a lot more refreshed and much more awake. I looked into my camera and were shocked to discover I took 174 pictures! I felt like I was doing nothing all day...
Andthen when I downloaded them I was even more amazed at how the pictures came out. I really love what I shot. I think it's my favorite photos that I took of a girl that isn't me.

We are shooting again tomorrow and I'm going ot try and use Ned's lens and not my own, I'm ciourious to see how those would come out.

Shoot - Sierra

The first shoot we had in a while with an independent model who doesn't belong to an agency.

The experience of shooting a models is always surprising and fun for me. I always somehow expect them to "act like a model" which is my mind, I guess based on TV and movies, is somewhere between stupid and nasty - I'm not sure how I got so prejudgist, maybe it's jealousy or mistrust in beautiful people. Non of the models I've met were either stupid or nasty so far.

This girl was so awesome, she was funny and creative and just really fun to be around. She brought such great energy to the shoot.

Clutter

It's just what I'm feeling this week, cluttered, my mind is working so fast it doesn't get anywhere, I'm tired and wired, the apartment is a mess and so is my head.

I hate this obsessive way of thinking, it feels as if I'm running around in circles.

I miss some peace of mind. A couple of really nice things happened this week and I'm s obsessed with everything that didn't get done, I can't even bring myself to enjoy any of it...

Faith

This is one of my favorite photos I took with my new camera! I'm still getting used to manual focus and learning a whole bunch of terms like aperture and ISO and other things. It's hard and a lot of my photos are totally out of focus.

I took this photo on my birthday. It was evening and we were about to start working, but then a friend called, she was really sad and so she came over. For a couple of hours she didn't talk and just set there, being sad and out of it.

Eventually she talked and cried and talk some more. Ned was shooting here in the studio apartment next door, it's being renovated and the workers left the door open. I left my camera in our apartment, and the moment was so intense I didn't want to break it by going out.

We went back to our studio and I did take some pictures. It was interesting and strange to try and preserve my photography style, which was highly effected by the limitations of my old camera.

This picture means a lot to me, it makes me think of how strong my friend is and how, though she doesn't have a lot of faith in herself, I believe that she can can overcome everything, even herself. We are all our worst enemies.

I submitted this photo to JPG magazine, please vote for it here

Shoot Today

I'm still sick, it's not as bad, but still, not 100% OK, I'm coughing and I get tired really fast, it sucks! I just need to rest every now and then and I can't work or do as much as I want to and usually able to.

I especially felt it yesterday and today while we were shooting. Usually, I'm really energetic and positive and taking care of a lot of different things, but today it was really hard to both make the model feel comfortable, shoot some snapshots and look at the monitor to make sure Ned's photos are in focus and that everything looks great.

I mainly focused on the model, but I'm still pretty happy with some of the photos I took.

Cards and Rides

Summer is here, well, spring at least, and it's awesome! we are having so much fun. Last weekend we took Olga, the motorcycle out of the apartment and back where she belong - in the street! ever since then we took her out for a ride each and every day. It's so much fun, I missed riding so much when all 3 of us were stuck in the apartment for the winter and it's so wonderful to be out and about now.



Sadly, that means that I'm doing very little of anything else... And I really didn't craft enough this week, however, I did make some sexy art work for this year's Grafuck book, I really hope I'm going to manage to get in, I got rejected last year and so I'm not hoping for too much, but still it would be really great if I do.

Landscapes

Louchelust is one of our website, it started of as an idea that we had, not so much something one can put into words, but more something that we wanted ot feel and to express and didn't quite know how. The idea started off with talks that we had about pornography, being as accessible as it is those days, is no longer interesting because it does not invoke any emotions.
And so as an experiment in art and photography, we started to try and bring back feelings into naked body and sexuality. It grew into a site that contain short clips and photos that we shoot and make together.

Watch our latest piece called Landscapes on louchelust

Still sick

Still sick, 3 days in bed and going nuts! I can't stand it anymore - I have so much stuff I want to do and absolutely no energy to do it with... I just sleep all day, drink tea and feel like there's a big dog sitting on my chest. I feel like an old woman complaining...

In a few hours of relative health yesterday, trying not to sleep so I can actually do sleep at night, I did manage to finish one deck of cups, it took me about 4 times more then my usual amount of time, but at least I wasn't completely useless that day.

Also, finally manage to finish Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man since I was in bed all the time and couldn't do anything but read. It's such a complicated book I'm not quite sure what to make of it, I'm not even sure what the whole thing was about. However, I did find a lot of parts of it very inspiring and made a small photo project on flickr inspired by it.