Have been itching to get out and do a shoot, but have no models arranged so decided after thinking about it for a while that it was time to turn the camera on my self again, and do a self portrait session.

I wanted this to be a bit different. I am not comfortable in front of the camera, and rarely like any photos taken of me, but over the years I have tried in vain to position myself at flattering angles so the chances of getting a decent one was higher, yet I have still failed.

So like the unusual models that you see parading across the catwalks and magazine covers, I thought I should start making use of what I have got, and use it to my advantage. I am in no way suggesting that I look like a model by the way, but I dont feel that I have a prettiness to me, but an unusal arrangement of features, that dont seem to quite sit happily together.

I wanted to make a series of photos that showed raw emotions, unchecked and uncontrolledwhich , made you feel slightly uncomfortable when you studied them, but made you still want to look, as you could without the embarressment of staring at someone who is upset.
I wanted to try and portray such a strong sense of emotion, and saddness,grief, that it made the viewer feel slightly on edge. The images give a sense of loss of control, and a slight manic desperation.

The images are staged and I wasn't on the edge of madness (well no more than normal) when I was taking these, but some of them even made me feel uneasy while I was working on them, so I guess I have accomplished what I set out to do.

I would love to have some feedback from this set of photos, so please let me know what you think, as this is the first time I have done such emotion rich images, but I have been wanting to do a series like this for a while!
Thanks for checking them out.

Always Asmartartz ....... x

While I remember, I have some funny photos to share.
Having spent a lovely Friday mooching around Brighton, and fighting off huge waves of homesickness for it we wandered into the Pavillion gardens.
There we witnessed a cheeky squirrel at his best. He was overly tame, used to being fed tit-bits by the tourists; he was brazen, and unfazed by humans.

He was being showered in unshelled penuts by a young girl in the park, and you could see from the gleam in the squirrel's eye, that he thought all his dinner times had come at once.
He delicately picked one of the nuts up and elegantly shoved the whole thing into his cheeks like a hamster, while picking up another one, and proceded to try and ram that into his mouth too. After re-arranging the original nut in his mouth to try and accomodate the 2nd nut, he realised that they both weren't going to fit, he pulled out the first one, and threw it to one side, and put the 2nd nut in his mouth instead.

Then with his tail in the air is bounded over to a group of three people on the grass. He circled them, eyeing them up, and then he approached the girl of the group and proceded to try and lift her boot up slightly so to see if he could hide his nut underneath! The boot stubbornly refused to cooperate, so in slight frustration, the squirrel rested his paw upon the girl's knee while he decided his next option, until the girl gave a shriek of fright from being manhandled by a strange squirrel!

Collecting his nut again, he moved off around the back of the group, sneaking behind them to where they had left their jackets and bags, and then proceded to check the pile for suitablility, and then quick as a flash took his nut and buried it deftly into the folds of the coats and bags. Satisfied with his nuts new location he patted the clothing back down into place, and bounced off to collect another nut!

We were all laughing hard by this point, and one of the guys rooted around in the pile and retrieved the buried nut. This is the funniest squirrel I have seen for a while.

You will have to forgive the quality of the photos, as I had been photographing something else, and the setting on the camera was not optimal to fast movement, but you get the picture!!

I am still busy updating and refreshing my website, including updating a LOT of keywording so my site will be easier to search for by the relevant topic (hopefully). As part of the refresh I have added some extra photos to the gallery and some of them are here for you to enjoy.