when i say jump

I guess I should explain the jumping thing: when I started this blog about 18 months ago, just doing street style was a challenge for me as an artist. My photography up til then had been quiet, 'fine art': still lives, landscapes, a kind of photo-collage using myself, shot by me with a timer... to approach strangers, explain myself and why I was doing this was a real hurdle to overcome because altho I'm rather chatty, I'm also inherently shy.




BUT.. as an artist, I need to move forward and grow. And by last week at London Fashion Week... let's just say the whole idea of shooting fashionable people standing around hoping to be made famous by bloggers was wearing a bit thin for me. And shooting models is way easier than shooting fish. Fish move around. Models, especially after doing one of these shows, are generally hanging around, moving fairly slowly.

EXCEPT when you ask them to jump.



Why do I occasionally ask people to jump for my shots? Partly to keep things interesting, partly for the challenge of catching them in motion.. partly to amuse myself, partly to break the ice.. sometimes (not in this case) I feel the person is really quite photogenic but they're putting on that bored pouty face because they think that's what people want, and I ask them to jump simply to shake things up. Literally.

In hindsight, this fabulous model from the Unique show was really quite a sport. A generous, lighthearted spirit. I mean, she had just done a really difficult catwalk show in death defying heels, on the old Waterloo station Eurostar tracks.. most of the girls were just finding it difficult to stand up, let alone jump around.



It happened quite impulsively. Shini and I were about to leave - she had just said hi to Tommy Tan - we each got a similar shot of him with the model (damn I wish I remembered her name! She told me.. plum forgot*) - you should see Shini's shot, she had TWO extraterrestrial lights in hers - and suddenly, while I was shooting her, I just asked her to jump.

*Two people so far have told me this is Dree Hemingway, great granddaughter of Ernest. That sounds about right: I think she said her name was Dree. Okay, it's worse then: I made DREE HEMINGWAY, Ernest's great granddaughter, jump up and down having just completed a catwalk show. What is my problem. Just because I was feeling a bit of creative malaise.

I mean, REALLY. What would Ernest say.




Now I'm trying to figure out which one she was on the catwalk.. this might be her. I can't tell. I've been spending hours playing some kind of matching game with my photos, and I'm going a bit cross eyed, and Mr. Dot is getting hungry, and so I am.




I mean, we're talking a SEA of models in that show. And I shot every one. When they came out for the end, it was like an army of amazons walking down along the train tracks. A beautiful army of frizzy haired amazonians on crazy tall lucite platform heels.






It was only today, looking through, that I saw the shot I caught of her minutes after she did her jumping shots. The face she was making at a friend. This is someone with a real zest for life, someone who doesn't take herself, or the madness that is the fashion world, all that seriously.

I just can't believe that a) she told me her name was Dree - several times - and I didn't put two and two together b) I bossed her around like that. But she was a good sport about it.

olivia olivia

Okay, it's time for the Olivia story. I know it's going to be so stupid and anti-climatic: it was just at the time I did the Julia post ('being Julia'). It was all at the same event, Day Two (Saturday), at the Topshop Unique show at Waterloo Station, and there were just so many photos and stories from that day I said I'd tell you the Olivia story another time and then I just got so busy... and I just can't tell anything simply, but I'll try.

Last February, I met and photographed Olivia Palermo ('deer in the headlights') but I didn't know who she was. (I'm always meeting famous people that I often don't know are famous: one of these days remind me to tell you the Hugh Grant story). The City was already on one of the channels here but it wasn't in our listings.. I eventually started watching the show and I saw what people meant about her character but frankly, I didn't think she was bitchy. Maybe it's because I met her and liked her so I"m biased, or maybe it's because that other one - the big blonde - the one who's actually supposed to be nice.. but I don't think she is. I think she's kind of manipulative by playing the victim. But that's just me. I haven't watched the show much, frankly.




Anyway, because of the strange situation I found myself in (as explained in the Julia story) I found myself just kind of hanging around because I hadn't gone to the little party that Shini had gone to (I had a ticket, I just had gone straight to the photo pit) so I'm just standing around, waiting for it to start, taking photos of people, shoes...





... watching Olivia talk to the famous Telegraph fashion journalist, Hillary Alexander (that's another story)..



and finally I introduced myself again, said we met last February.




She seemed really pleased to see me, seemed convincingly to have remembered me (or it could be good acting), and yet, like in February, it felt like this kind of friendly moment passed between us: like she was relieved that I wasn't treating her like a strange creature, an object to be Papp'd, and just that quick nanosecond moment of 'we're all just normal people' before she got swept into more photos, more taped interviews..

..then the show began, and I'm sitting there next to her (separated by one person)..



.. with a view of her hands on my right, like Julia's was on my left..






..more shots of the show, and then after, I was talking with Julia and left Olivia to the hoards and masses, and that was it, really. Then back outside to the craziness of shooting civilians and models with Shini and the other photographers (and yes, that's another post, or two, or seven).

Not really much of a story, is it? I mean, hardly worth spinning you along this long, and I apologise.


Okay, so this is where the story starts veering into Implausibility Land: my lovely friend Natayla (editor of the online fashion magazine Its Fashion Week) asked me what the 'Olivia' story was. I said I'd tell her when I saw her, it was no big deal. Meanwhile we're both running round to different shows, trying to find each other.. at one point (and this is all within like 48 hours) she ends up in Kurt Geiger, and who should she see alone in the shop with no one around apart from what seemed to be a 'minder', but.. Olivia herself. So she introduced herself and took this shot:



Now Nat also felt that Olivia Palermo, the person, is really nice, sweet, warm. So which is it? Is she a really good actress who can play a bitch well, but in real life acts nice? Or is she THAT good an actress that she's really a bitch and just acts nice in public? Frankly, I don't think anyone's that good an actress.



Anyway, enough on the Olivia stuff. Fame is such a weird thing: there are so many lovely people I meet and shoot all the time, and they could just as easily be famous, they're just not. Yet.

I think I like this shot most of all, when Olivia Palermo, the actress, the celebrity, is simply being a human being. All these shots are unretouched and if you look closely you will see it: a spot. A teeny, tiny spot, granted, but it's there. Proof that she's just as human as you or me, after all.