Pinelands Left Foot Step Down

Yesterday’s was an awesome day of  shooting. A long day but an awesome day. I met up with Verity late morning and just made our way to the Hip Hop clothing factorystraight away. I had never been to Hip Hop and had no idea what to expect. Turns out the factory is above the {field office} in town. Cool. I like that place.

The pink curtains didn’t make me feel very confident about what we would find *inside* but man, as soon as you go inside it’s like you falling down the rabbit hole. Clothes, clothes, clothes. Green, red, black, yellow, grey, purple, checkered, stripes, flowers, embroidered, sparkly, see through, petty coated, long, short, shiny, it’s all there. It’s awesome. There were four racks of clothing we could freely chose from and if we needed any help, just say so. That’s another thing about Hip Hop, everybody is super friendly, helpful and enthusiastic about what they do. See, it really like falling down the rabbit hole and being twirled around by a smiling hare offering you a hoompa-loompa accompanied trip down the yellow brick road.

 

After about an hour or so of trying on outfits we made our way down to the {field office} for  some coffee and a sandwich and we were good to go.

 

The idea was to shoot at Oude Molen in Pinelands, find that hippie, trippy car or some broken down wall and just start shooting. While  driving around the place we spotted some old beat up bus in a vegetable pad and that seemed way cooler than the hippie, trippy car which also happened to be covered in shade and wasn’t nearly as cool as I remember. Beat up bus it is then. Or so we thought… The darn thing was behind a closed fence… Off we went trying to find somebody who could let us in. The bar lady? Nope. Some random guy? Nope. The horse guy then? Aaahhhh maybe. The horse guy could at least lead us to The Guy Who Could Let Us In If He Like Us. As soon as I heard the Guy Who Could Let Us In was also known as Opa Jono I knew we were in. And yup, we were.

 

So off we went, pretty dresses in our arms and a camera in hand. Opa Jono and the horse guy settled down nicely on a chair and watched us for a while but fortunately grew tired of it pretty quickly. We shot on, in and around the bus, trying out different outfits and poses.

After nearly two hours at Oude Molen we figured we’d done enough and headed home to the deep south. Relaxed a little bit at Verity’s house and decided it was a pity not to use that gorgeous black dress so should we maybe try for a few more shots? Hell yeah. Must have been around 6 o’clock already and the sun was slowly setting, the wind was picking and it started to get cold. We wondered around the wetlands for a while, took a few photos and called it a day. I say it was a fab day.

Oh yes, there a new The Bees album out! Awesome! Love love love The Bees. Every Step’s a Yes:-) Title … yes from The Bees ‘Octopus’ album….

Parkwood Maximum Balloon

I was all set to go for a jog just now. And right when I got dressed for it and did my warming up things it started pissing down with rain. Yes, pissing down…  So here I am, all set with Adidas and Asics ready to go. Guess not. It seems like a good opportunity to blog a little about last Tuesday’s photo shoot. What can I tell you, I had a great time. I met Miss Eavesdrop at her home in Parkwood and we just wandered around her neighborhood stopping randomly at different places to take pictures. Places that appealed to me for whatever reason; a big 28 sign on a house, a concrete playground, beautiful red earth with a blue truck on it. Stuff like that. Whatever works, right?  

 

I had never been to Parkwood and that’s totally one of the best things about what I do; I get to go places I otherwise wouldn’t go and I gave a chance to meet all sorts of cool people. It’s awesome:-)

   

 On photo shoot days you never know if you’ll end up crawling along train tracks, inside a burnt out train or have your model’s feet eaten by pigs:-) And all that not in Holland. Wish I could stay forever!

 

I submitted a final selection of 6 images to The New Landscape exhibition on Monday afternoon. Picked the last 4 together with Dylan Culhane, co-owner of the gallery and a keen photographer himself. It’s cool to get some feedback and I am glad that one of my favorite images ended up in the exhibition. It’s a rather close up shot of a man and at first glance it doesn’t seem to fit the theme “The New Landscape” at all but as Dylan said you can almost see into the guy’s head and it’s like a psychological landscape.

I like that:-)

 

And yes, those 5 must do’s of this week? Have done 4 and will do the last one tomorrow. Made it:-)

 

Off to We Love Real Beer at the Biscuit Mill this afternoon.

See you there maybe. KaBam!