Wheee, it’s been such lovely fun doing dance shoots with Katy Cee of late that we’re jolly well doing another one, this time further North at the lovely Hallam Mill Studios in Stockport.

Bookings are as follows;-

1 and 2 hour slots available (or more if you fancy a longer booking), if you book 2 hours in a block, you get 10 minutes free!

9.30 – 10.30

10.40 – 11.40

11.50 – 12.50

13.00 – 14.00

14.10 – 15.10

15.20 – 16.20

16.30 – 17.30

17.40 – 18.40

So do send either of us a note if you’d like to come and shoot lovely cheery dance-y stuff with us.  We’ve been accumulating co-ordinating props and costumes over the last few months, and we’ve got more ideas than are probably entirely healthy or practical.  So whether you’re a massively established dance photographer, or just fancying having a first attempt send me an email and we’ll do all we can to help you.

Hooray and thank you as always for reading.

www.thecottagestudio.co.uk

on Saturday 26th November ’11.

We’ve been wanting to work together in a studio big enough for dance work for ages, and the Cottage Studio has ceilings high enough for us to do pointe work, movement shots and everything else our hearts desire. It even has a trapeze and various other exciting equipment that’ll hopefully ensure absolutely unique shots.

Katy and I are both properly dance trained and work internationally (what does that mean??? Doing dance shoots in Australia is the same as doing them anywhere else really – we don’t do special extra-good poses when we’re abroad), but we’ve never had a chance to do dance or art-nude modelling together before. So hopefully someone would like to photograph us doing it.

We’re both flexible, toned and inventive with pointy, pointy toes. We’ve got loads of ideas for the day, but of course we’ll be very keen to work on your ideas too.

Availability is as follows, with anyone booking one of the two-hour slots (as opposed to a single hour) getting 10 minutes free in the middle so we won’t suddenly stop posing and stand like robots, or disappear into the dressing room to eat cake half way through your shoot. No.

10-11am BOOKED
11.10-12.10pm BOOKED

12.20-1.20pm BOOKED
1.30-2.30pm BOOKED

2.40-3.40pm BOOKED
3.50-4.50pm BOOKED

5.00-6.00pm BOOKED
6.10-7.10pm BOOKED

The cost is £100 per hour, fully inclusive of both of us (highly trained and pointy etc etc) the studio hire, and fun costumes and dance wear.

Bookings can be made through either of us, you can contact me directly on jocelinebh@hotmail.com

Here’s a flyer Katy made.

Thank you!

Joceline

I know it’s a long way off but I thought I would give you a heads up on a future studio day on the 27th September

Since Yorkshire Studios (www.yorkshirestudios.com) is one of my favourite (read ‘warmest’) studios, I’m going to base myself there for the day, so if you’re in the Keighley area and would like to work with me there, do let me know!

I’m a 6ft ex ballet dancer with exceptional balance, no aversion to working nude, and long blonde hair which I’m good (and fast) at styling. I’m 100% reliable (I’ll even turn up if I’ve been burgled the night before, oh yes indeed) and generally patient, friendly and creative.

As always, I’ll be travelling with my pointe shoes, a wide variety of fun clothes (I’ve started making my own so everything fits perfectly) and all the ideas I can fit into my (admittedly quite large) head. I’ll be charging a lower-than-normal rate of £40 per hour while I’m at Yorkshire Studio, because its so warm and comfortable, and I don’t want to have to go outside in the cold.

Do let me know if you have any questions about booking me, and thank you for reading my rambling ramble.

Joceline

Picture courtesy of Paul Ottey

Picture courtesy of Scott Nichol

Lordy, I know I never post here; its mainly because I’m too busy with the business of actual modelling to have time to talk about it, but also because I don’t want to post anything ill thought out. Alas, I suspect I’m about to do just that, but hopefully I’ll have the courage to click on ‘Publish’ because I hope it’ll be of some comfort to some people.

Lately, I’ve noticed such a lot of cynicism on the various modelling/photography forums I use for work. It’s probably always been there, and maybe I’m just feeling particularly sensitive at the moment. But it’s bothered me enough to come out of blog-hibernation and post my feelings.

I try not to read forum posts much, because they tend to make me angry and I’m unwilling to enter into debate online. But from time to time, I do notice the sort of things some photographers say about models. (I’m particularly irritated by any threads trying to tell models how much they should charge for example.)

What’s upset me more lately is how much criticism is being levelled at amateur photographers. If I WAS an amateur photographer, I’d find it upsetting and unnerving to read this sort of wholesale criticism, so I’m going to tell you why I work with amateurs, in the hope of providing some comfort to those of you who take pictures for fun.

I DON’T believe that there’s a clear distinction between amateur and professional in the photography field. There are good photographers and bad ones. There are ones with a professional attitude who choose to make a living from something else. And there are professional photographers who could learn a lot from them. There are photographers who ARE professional, but shoot models for fun. There are amateur photographers who don’t have much skill, but are splendid people who enjoy photography (just as a terrible golfer might enjoy the occasional lesson with their club professional, or an unfit person might book a professional personal trainer). There are photographers whose ideas aren’t terribly original, but since I’m their model rather than their grand patron, I don’t really think it’s my place to judge whether their ideas are hip enough or not.

Some of my favourite photographers are, strictly speaking, amateur, in that they make a living from something other than photographing models. This doesn’t make them terrible, cliche-persuing, masturbating, potential date-rapists who’ll never be satisfied until they manage to get sneaky shots of their model with her legs open. It’s an abysmal stereotype, and not one I’ve had the misfortune to have to deal with in my 8 years as a full-time model. Indeed, sometimes I’ve based trips across the Atlantic upon my desire to work with an amateur photographer whose work is particularly lovely.

That’s not to say people aren’t sometimes tactless, over-familiar or a bit awkward to get on with. I expect the same could be and has been, said of me from time to time. Certainly I’ve had photographers suggest shots I didn’t want to do. I’ve had people make comments about my body that perhaps weren’t terribly intelligent, I’ve seen bad pictures of myself and I’ve not enjoyed the company of every photographer who’s ever booked me. But for heaven’s sake, I’m a professional business woman. I can cope with difficult people. I’m capable of saying no to things I don’t want to do. And I’m more than able to deal with a bit of tactlessness. I’m sure I’m not the only professional model who has these skills.

Deriding amateurs is a miserably unkind thing to do. After all, they may not be professional photographers, but they’re likely to be professional in another field. It’s not as though they’re some sort of alien creature who has no idea how to behave in someone else’s workplace.

Most models who work in the fields of photography found on internet sites are only professional BECAUSE of the cash injection amateur photographers provide to the industry. Thanks to the people who make their living in property, banking, carpentry, taxi-driving, medicine and the like, I (and models like me) have profited from amazing shoots; week-long location trips in beautiful countries; tours round Asia, full-day art-nude shoots with no pressure to produce work for an absent client, bookings which include a lunch break and lovely chat with the photographer’s wife at their kitchen table. Flights on private planes! Safari shoots in Africa! The list goes on and on. I’ve had brilliant professional shoots too, indeed I have. But the luxury of having made a living for almost a decade by doing EXACTLY what I love doing is due, in large part, to amateur photographers.

So, rather than ranting on and on about things other people have said, I’ll finish by saying thank you.

Thanks to each and every one of you, who has parted with hard-earned cash for a shoot with me.

Thank you to the photographers who’ve booked me multiple times, while never making me feel as though we were making some kind of clandestine sexual transaction.

Thank you for having model-photography as a hobby. As someone whose hobbies (baking, dressmaking) are very cheap, it’s amazing to me that anyone would spend so much on doing something just for fun. But I’m grateful that so many of you do, even if you do go on and on about Canon 5D Mark 2′s (if that’s a real thing) and prime lenses sometimes

Thank you to the friends I’ve made, both professional and amateur. Thanks for letting me stay in your houses, giving me lifts to stations, advising me on romance, lending me your jackets when my own clothes have turned out to be uselessly inadequate. Thanks for giving me lovely portfolio shots, unprompted and sometimes with extraordinary generosity. Thanks for letting me into your lives. And thank you for giving me a career that feels like a hobby, while still enabling me to make enough money to buy a house and have decent insurance. I know I wouldn’t be here without you.

Hello everyone! I’ve come out of blog-hiatus in order to tell anyone who’s kindly visiting about a super-dooper location shoot I’m going to in December, with the fab Ivory Flame, Madame Bink and Sammie B. Follow the link below to find out how to book the super-ness.

www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Studio-Blanco/304833924798?ref=ts

It provides a rare opportunity to get out of the studio at this time of year, so if you’ve worked with me before, or have been looking for an opportunity to do so, then come along.

Phew, and I really shall try to blog a bit more often. How ridiculous.

Joceline

PS, And here’s a lovely picture by the very super Scott Chappell www.schotz.co.uk/

Not really for any reason, except that he just sent it to me and I think he’s great.

By Mighty Aphrodite, who put me forward. Thank you!

Well, not ALL that famous, I suppose, but still….

Last year, just before I had an operation to repair an abdominal hernia (as a result, of course, of an art-nude shoot) I was offered a day’s work, filming close-up video shots for possible inclusion in the title sequence of 2010′s behind-the-scenes Pirelli Calendar video. I took the job (naturally, I was awfully flattered to be asked to basically be a body double for models a great deal more famous than me). And then shot the job 5 days after my abdominal surgery.

Ouch. I’d been told I’d have fully recovered by then, and, not having had any kind of surgery before, I believed the doctor. Which was an extremely foolish thing to do. I struggled my way through what would normally have been a very easy, comfortable shoot, and went home feeling rather disheartened, because I wasn’t sure I’d really been agile enough to be much use.

So hooray, I’m so glad to tell you that I am indeed in the title sequence. Here it is!

See if you can spot me. And then, please, acknowledge that I am now, very, VERY famous.

Thank you

The very excellent Bill Mundy ( www.billmundy.blogspot.com/ ) has just finished this lovely miniature of me, and I’m awfully proud of it. Not only because it’s beautifully done, and very flattering (check out the slightly enhanced boobies!) but because somehow, a painting feels less transient than a photograph. This is probably partly novelty value for me – I don’t pose for many artists so I see a lot more photographs of myself than I see paintings. But the feeling of timelessness of a painting (especially a nude one) makes me hope it’ll be around long after I’m not.

Actually, I hope my photographs will be too. But this painting makes me feel a little bit immortal. And makes me want to read the Harry Potter books again to get some tips on immortality.

Hope you like it too! I’m off to work with Bill again today, and I’m excited about producing some portraits in the bluebells, although the weather seems to be trying to warn me off….

Joceline x

I love it so much that I even tried posing it sideways on a wall (In Scott Brown’s picture). It is now time to MOVE AWAY FROM THE POSE and make up a new favourite. But I’m not sure if I’ll be able too, because I just love it too much. I think it works beautifully, but I think it’s been done as well as it can be by me now. Thanks everyone, for indulging me while I worked it out of my system

Anyway, one of the shoots I’m planning is with a photographer I’ve only had the chance to work with twice, but who I really love to shoot with. Here’s a link to his work at homepage.mac.com/gravenimage/PhotoAlbum60.html and here are some of his pictures of me from last time we worked.

It’s probably vile of me to be so interested in pictures of myself, but I like looking at them. Scott’s pictures are much more highly-coloured than most of the artistic nude work that I do, and probably a fair bit more sexual feeling. I really like them – I don’t really recognise myself in them very much, which makes me like them more (I suppose everyone gets a bit bored of themselves sometimes) and I like the idea of the kind of person who looks like that. Sort of confrontational, and much stronger than I normally look, I think.

Sometimes I wonder if modelling is a weird unofficial kind of out-of-body therapy for me. If so, Scott F Hill is a great therapist. I’m excited about working with him again!

I turned a page, and suddenly found a picture of myself. I imagine that if you’re Kate Moss or similar that this is probably quite a boring experience, but I’ve never really got used to it, and so I squeaked loudly enough for everyone to think I’d been attacked by an insect. Yay! Sometimes having a picture of you appearing in public can be rather painful, because the picture that gets chosen often isn’t one that you’re awfully happy with. But mercifully, this one is a picture I’m really proud of. So here it is.

Whee! Well done to Darren Birkin of www.v11.com/ who’s made the final of ‘Photographer of the Year’ with this picture. I’m very happy. And glad that he chose that dress for me to wear for our action shots – in the picture I think it looks liquid.

After I discovered it, I got very excited and looked through all the other magazines in a great frenzy of ego. But none of the others had any pictures of me at all. Bloody rude – why SHOULDN’T ‘Yachting Monthly’ support artistic nude photography a little bit?

PS – Sorry if none of the links work, I’m still learning how my blog works, and I’m a bit slow with these things…