I have had the good fortune to work with Christine on four shoots. She is on Instagram as kissydollxo.

I wanted to do a fun Friday shoot but eventually it happened on a Tuesday. The shoot had an autumnal theme with Rachel Blair as the beautiful model and the very talented Rebecca McGrath as the makeup artist. With Christopher, Rebecca and me on one side of the lens and Rachel on the other a good time was had by all.

Rachel In Autumn

I had always steered away from going to Venice. I had heard about the smell and how busy it was. Well it happened that I was going to do a cycle trip through the Poe valley, which is wonderfully flat, and discovered that Venice was just around the corner. We bought a wonderful mask there that could only have been worn by a wood nymph to disguise herself from the world and the idea of a series of shots based on this mask began to develop. Emmie was my model for this project, a wonderful young lady who thought the whole thing was great fun and made the  process so enjoyable. The falling leaves in image 4 were painted onto Emmie’s back by the very talented Kat Paine of Belfast City Skinworks. She used water colours  not ink. The panel of four prints, each 6′ x 2′ were exhibited as the final piece in my HND course. I have been back to Venice and on my last trip I tried to find the artist who had made the mask. I found the shop but he was long gone. What I would have paid to get a second mask to keep the wood nymph company.

Wood Nymph