Model: Eriana Lawrence
Location: Parque del Retiro de Madrid
Date: 03/03/18
Tag: Dance
Aerial Black and White
Eriana is a dancer who splits her time between the US and Europe. We met over Christmas and arranged a photo shoot just a couple days before she returned to the States.
This was an incredibly fun shoot and a lucky one: it had been cloudy and cold all week, but on this day, the sun came out and the temperatures were reasonable for late December in Madrid (I wouldn’t have wanted to try this shoot in New York).
This set was far more complex, both in the shooting and the editing, than anything I’ve done before, and a great learning experience. Luckily, Eriana was game for most everything and a versatile model (quite important when you have someone literally hanging upside down on a bridge).
Every new shoot is a chance to learn more, and boy did I learn a lot. As I’ve discussed previously, I’m shooting with very limited equipment (just a camera), and lack a lot of the tools (light bounce, varied lenses, etc.) that a professional might use. That means getting creative with the light I do have, and learning new editing techniques in Photoshop.
I’m far from a pro, but I’m learning bit by bit.
I’m posting all of my black and white photos from the shoot here, but if you would like to see the full color set (and all my sets), you can click on 1000 Words in the top menu or go directly to Eriana Aerial.
Click on the images to see them full size.
And a couple tinted experiments:
Thanks for taking a look and let me know what you think in the comments. And if there are any models (or aspiring models) in or near Madrid who would like a free shoot, click on my contact page to get in touch.
Cheers,
~L
Pasodoble
Watching you dance,
so pretty,
depresses me
like most things depress me
or: Like the dour expression of the woman dancing next to you
in the arms of a man who’s trying too hard
to be the kind of man who dances
with his lover
and has, thus, learned to keep time
in his head without mouthing the count
and is, instead, smiling.
So I Wish I Could Dance
There are a lot of forms of artistic expression that I have mad appreciation for but I simply do not have the capacity to participate in (some people would say writing is one of them).
Fashion, for instance, is an art form that I neither have the finances nor the facility to be invested in, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect it. In fact, I find fashion design to be very interesting and I admire those who bring a unique eye to it.
But the art form that I admire the most and have the absolute least skill in is Dance.
Other than drunk and at a club, I do not dance, and I’m not sure what I do under those specific criteria qualifies anyway. But truly talented dancers blow my mind. Hip-hop, Ballet, Jazz, Tap, Ellen Degeneres. Whatever, I’m impressed.
I don’t normally do posts like these, but instead of writing paragraphs displaying my ignorance, I just want to showcase some of my favorite dance videos that I’ve seen online. If I found a genie’s lamp, I’d wish for moves like these. And a pony.
(Give some of these videos a moment, sometimes the really cool stuff doesn’t kick in for a minute.)
The only reality TV I could ever bare, and here’s a couple reasons why:
Combining two cool artforms:
Because dance should be about freedom (and because I have a man-crush on Thom):
Oh, and this is random, but too fun to pass up:
By the way, This is Krumping
Random Video: Elephant Gun
I cannot describe how much I love this song. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if I had even a smidgen of musical talent, I would create songs like Beirut. It might be natural to dismiss this American boy’s Eastern European flourishes as pretentious or unauthentic, but once you’ve listened to his music I think its beauty and grace will overtake your critical posturing.
Besides, we all create art that emulates our most affecting influences, so why not Balkan folk music (is it any less authentic than mining British folk music)?
Plus this video is a giddy pleasure of mine. I love the dancing. I am, actually, quite a sucker for dance and love to watch masterful performances. Someone take me to a ballet, I’d plotz. Maybe not.
Good stuff all around. Enjoy.
Random Song: The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
There is something hypnotic about a good 10-minute-plus dance song. As a genre, electronic music is too diverse for me to make any overarching statement about it. Sometimes songs work for me, sometimes they don’t.
I’m really digging on Justice lately (as in, since yesterday morning) and Four Tet’s “Love Cry” is amazing, I could listen to that song over and over again.
But perhaps my favorite epic dance song is, on the surface, the complete antithesis of a dance song. of Montreal’s “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal” is about the dissolution of a relationship. The lyrics are painfully raw and straightforward, yet they are backed by music that dares you to stand still, as if Kevin Barnes is violently expelling the relationship through cathartic beats and pulsing bass.
With lines like “I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met /Who could appreciate Georges Bataille” and “Somehow you’ve red-rovered the gestapo circling my heart /And nothing can defeat you,” the song manages to take the intensely personal and make it universal and propulsive. Astonishing.
If real life were like the movies, this song would blast in a club and the entire crowd would synchronize into an orgasmic orgy of dance. Sigh.
Listen with the bass up loud.
10 Cities/10 Years 