*Lost in the woods*
Canon EOS300 + Ilford FP4+
Model: Cassandre
This is another one of those flash failures which turned out really interesting. Normally I shoot on a white background, which would have eliminated the branches all around Cassandre, but because the flashes decided otherwise, the branch background is very present. While Cassandre’s silhouette is no longer separated, it merges with the branches in a really interesting way, I think…
*Mustache in the rough*
Canon EOS300 + Ilford FP4+
Model: Barth
Texture: Fittonia albivenis
So this another one of those images (like Fittonian Blend) where I did not get what I was aiming for… but I love what I got. One of the things on my to do list when I’m finally back home is to figure out exactly how to reproduce that look.
*Stormy Mood*
Canon EOS300 + Ilford FP4+
Model: Nathalie
The last batch of textures I shot in Hong Kong before heading back to France in early July were taken under the stormy HK June sky (I was literally timing my texture outings based on precipitations) and many of the « branches » were shot under heavy weather. As a consequence, on many of these shots the sky wasn’t blown up like it normally is, but grey and moody. As always, embracing the accidents in this projects leads to interesting results. I love how the clouds are caught by Nathalie’s dark hair here.
*Rita with Gun*
Canon EOS300 + Ilford FP4+
Model: Cassandre
In the setting I’m developing, Rita (inspired by the chapel of Saint Rita in Pigalle) is a vengeful spirit of abused prostitutes. We did two versions of this image, one where she wields a knife and one where she wields a gun. In the end, I think the knife is more in line with the idea I have of the character, so that’s the image I’ll end up using, but the gun version is so cool I felt it needed publishing.
*Le Comte de St Germain*
Fuji GW690iii + JCH400
Le Comte de St Germain is the costumed alter-ego of @walk.paris. He roams around Paris in his costume, unearthing tidbits of knowledge and trivia about the city. He was kind enough to walk me through the passages, glass covered arcades designed in the XIXth century to ferry bourgeois customers towards the Palais Royal, the largest « shopping mall » of the time. He is seen here giving a big f*ck you to the house of Adolphe Thiers, aka the butcher of the commune, the president who ordered the massacres that ended the 1871 revolution in France. If you have any interest in Paris at all you could do worse than follow him on Facebook or Instagram!
*Notre Dame du Travail*
Fuji x100F
In July I had the unexpected and unbelievable luck of being able to visit a Parisian church at night. But not just any Parisian church: Notre Dame du Travail (Our Lady of Labour) is a 1902 building designed for working class labourers of the 14th arrondissement (I guess it wasn’t gentrified back then). The structure is Eiffel style, with metallic beams and columns, and it’s just visually stunning.
*Marguerite de Bourgogne*
Fuji GW690iii + Ilford Delta 100
Model: Nathalie
I have an ambitious project currently, which is to illustrate my upcoming role-playing game set in an urban-fantasy Paris with photographs. I’ve started shooting some of the specific characters, including this one, the ghost of Marguerite de Bourgogne, a very unhappy queen who spent most of her life imprisoned either at the Tour de Nesles (a tower by the Seine that no longer exists) or in a cloister. In the game, she’s a ghost of sad lovers. This is one of a series of images destined to be mordançaged once I’ve practiced that technique a bit.
*Wild Back*
Canon EOS300 + Ilford FP4+
Model: C.
I now have a relatively good handle on what I call (by oversimplification) the « branches » technique where I superimpose branches on a subject with a bit of a « japanese cherry tree tattoo » effect. But in the summer the branches are heavy with foliage, so sparseness is not what you get. I really like this photo of C. with some sort of pinetree foliage, I think it’s got a wildness to it that – while different – gives interesting results.
*Fittonian Blend*
Canon EOS300 + Ilford FP4+
Model: Nathalie
Texture: Fittonia albivenis
Sometimes nothing goes your way. I struggled immensely with my flashes on that session, and the white background, as you can see, was closer to black than to white. Thankfully some good emerged of it, such as this delicate image of Nathalie on a bed of fittonia.
*Natural Breathing*
Canon EOS300 + Ilford FP4+
Model: Natalie
This is a very special image in that I’ve not been able (so far) to reproduce that look. The sparseness of the branches is wintery anyway (when I shoot textures in the summer, there tends to be leaves on branches, unsurprisingly) but for all it’s strangeness I find this image fascinating.
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