TARA HILLS PHOTOGRAPHY & DESIGN

26th October 2014

Shortly after the lavender shoot, full of adrenaline and excitement for the shoots to come, I knew I had to create something with the colours of autumn. A complete opposite colour change from the purples and blues of the lavender photos, instead taking advantage of the red, oranges and golden browns of the trees and leaves. Autumn was only a few months away, so I knew I had to act fast.
 

I had a scene in my head of a red-haired lady in a wonderfully long autumnal dress, flowing and dancing in the wind, a winding woodland path and leaves fluttering down to greet her. So with that in mind, I got straight on the case of finding a suitable model for the job.
 

I browsed a few online modelling agencies and settled on a few models who could possibly fit the part. I pondered over a few days and followed them on Facebook to see if I could get a better judge of character. Immediately, Amber Skyline came across as just the right kind of person - bum length auburn hair and a super fun personality. I sent her a message and got a reply almost immediately, the idea was pitched and everything was go!
 

Knowing that Amber was based right up in Glasgow, and I'm based right on the south coast of England, it was going to be tricky to settle on a location for this shoot. There was a public park up in Glasgow with a lake that looked like it could have been quite nice, but in the end we came to the decision that it might be easier to shoot in a forest fairly close to me, to save carrying a massive dress, accessories, props and all my camera gear over 450 miles. Amber has relatives nearby anyway, so it seemed like the perfect excuse for a visit!
 

With a solid idea and a model on board, I got on eBay and had a look at the fabrics that were on offer. I needed something light, bright, and easy to work with. Chiffon was the answer (turns out it really wasn't easy to work with, but more about that later). But, for the amount of fabric and other bits I'd need, I couldn't afford to order anything until the next payday. I also needed to pay for Amber's travel down here which would need to be bought in advance if there was any chance of being able to afford that, too. And find a suitable location! The leaves were already changing and falling off the trees and by the time I would have been ready we'd be deep in to winter. I hated to do it, but I asked Amber if she would mind that I postponed the shoot until the following year. It was such an awful and awkward decision, but luckily Amber completely understood and didn't mind at all.

So, nearly a year goes by, other commissioned shoots take place, and Amber and I keep in touch. It was Amber actually that said 'hey, when shall we start thinking about that shoot?' and I realised that, again, I needed to start work on this pretty fast as I hadn't ordered any of the bits and pieces yet!

I bought six metres of three different colours of chiffon, along with a yellow bodycon dress in Amber's size for the base. After all, it doesn't matter what the costume looks like on the inside, as long as it looks amazing on the outside! With the fabric on its way, I looked at the different ways I could capture Amber's personality within the dress. The lavender shoot had captured Neechee Neko's spirit and her love for birds and nature, so I wanted the Autumn shoot do the same. Amber is a keen (and very talented) bellydancer, so I researched into the typical bellydance attire and started adding things to my eBay watch list. Things such as chains, gems, beads, giant gold and Scottish amber brooches (a subtle nod to her home town), and everything glitzy and shiny!
 

When the materials eventually arrived, I started work on the dress and began to pin things in to place. After a while, I knew something wasn't quite right. The dress wasn't nearly long enough. I wanted to go for a full on parachute effect and the 3 or so metres left draping from the dress I felt just wasn't enough. Back on to eBay and another six metres of each colour was ordered, and I patiently waited. And waited.

I took this time and used it wisely, and checked out some places nearby that might have that special magical feeling that I so loved. I remembered going to see my great aunt in the New Forest when I was little and have happy memories of seeing the free roaming horses and cattle as we drove through on our visits in my Dad's car. I spent a couple of weekends on my own driving from place to place and seeing if any spots matched the vision I had in my head.
 

Everything finally arrived and the golden colour I'd bought to extend the previous gold fabric was a much darker shade. It didn't match. But it was okay, I'd make it work. It HAD to work, I wasn't postponing the shoot another year! Chiffon, as I mentioned earlier, is such an awkward fabric to work with. I'd never worked with it before and it is the most slippery and difficult stuff to sew. I was able to gather it and stitch it eventually, but not after a lot of frustration and wanting to throw it all out the window. It is a gorgeous fabric though, and I would definitely wrestle with it all again. After a month of sewing and gluing in the evenings after work, many hot glue gun burns and completely filling the flat with a sea of fabric and sparkles, it was done. With a Scottish amber and dip-dyed pheasant feather circlet to match, of course.

Being a year behind schedule, Amber had changed her hair in this time. I did panic a little inside, but with Amber being a sponsored model of Geisha Wigs it wasn't too difficult for her to order something pretty to get delivered straight to my flat. With transport booked, date set and friends roped in to help on the day, it was just a matter of waiting for the weekend to arrive.
 

The weekend certainly did arrive... but the wig didn't. Luckily Amber had packed some spares that she already had, and boarded her coach for the 9 hour overnight journey to Chichester. Blonde and brown wigs, but at this point it really didn't matter! (Turns out red hair may have been a bit much anyway, the blonde wig balanced out the whole look perfectly.)
 

I woke up on the morning of the shoot to find a picture Amber had taken on her coach, bizarre bunk bed style seating and some really dodgy looking passengers. As funny as it was, I felt so bad... I had no idea the coach journey would be so awkward! She changed from coach to train at London Victoria, and I met her at Chichester station at about 9am. Not wanting to throw Amber straight in to everything, I made her some toast and offered her a shower, let her wake up a little bit and chatted until my glamourous assistants Jaz, Becci and Callie arrived to help out for the day. Amber did her own makeup which looked amazing, we loaded the car and set off on our adventure.

An hour later, we arrived at our location and carried our bags upon bags of stuff through the woods to a perfect little stream. Everything had turned golden brown, the waters were clear and it all fell in to place. Amber got changed and off we went! Jaz did a brilliant job of taking some behind the scenes photos, and Amber was absolutely incredible and up for trying everything - climbing on to half-fallen rotting trees, jumping over muddy banks, balancing on a dodgy rope swing, laying in a freezing cold stream, getting wafts of smelly dense smoke bomb in the face... amazing! I only had to tell her what I wanted the once and she needed minimal direction after that. A true star. Thank you so much.
 

The sun was beginning to set and we were losing light. We called it a day and wrapped Amber up warm in towels and blankets and got her back to the car. My other half Luke was waiting with a Chinese takeaway menu in hand ready for our return (bless him) and we went through all the photos on the computer while we waited for our food to arrive. We were all so happy with the results it was smiles all round!

Amber eventually got picked up by her Mum who lives a short drive away. It was sad to see her go but I absolutely loved shooting with her after so long planning. It was a brilliant day and we created some beautiful images together. I would definitely work with her again in a heartbeat - such a shame we live so far apart!

Thank you to Amber for being amazing, Jaz, Becci and Callie for helping out and also Luke for putting up with yet more of my creative mess. I couldn't do it without your constant support. I'm so lucky and grateful to have these people in my life!

Here's to us, and making more memories in the future.

21st July 2013

Hey everyone,

I thought I’d take the time to write a blog post about the lavender shoot experience: the making of, the build up, and doing the shoot itself.

The idea for this shoot actually came to me in my dreams in November 2012. I often have weird and wonderful dreams. In short, I dreamt of a mystical winged goddess, fallen to Earth and confused as to where she was. She spread her wings and took off gracefully into the sky, never to be seen again. But that moment when she spread her wings really caught me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Flicking through the wonders of the internet a couple of days later, I came across an image (a painting I think) of a lady in blue, with peacock feather wings and blue hair. I instantly thought of the lovely Neechee Neko. It was definitely a sign.

I’d been a fan of alternative model Neechee Neko for a couple of years, but never had the confidence to message her asking to shoot - until now. I knew she was perfect, considering she keeps 16 birds of her own and is known by her friends as the ‘crazy bird lady’. Those who know of her will also know she is a very colourful person through and through, a big hippy at heart, and loves anything unusual and creative. So, I contacted her with this idea and a few other ideas I’d thought up, and waited.

Sure enough, Miss Neko replied. She loved all of the ideas I’d described to her, but especially the wings shoot. We discussed it in length, and decided to meet up in Brighton in February 2013. I sketched out some images, collected fabric samples, decided on the kind of location I wanted, printed off pictures from the internet, and did some research into how this dream could be made a reality.

Having never met a well-known published model before, I was so nervous on the train up to Brighton. I had butterflies, kept checking my bag to make sure I’d brought my sketch book, measuring tape and other bits and bobs. My other half Luke was with me, supporting me, telling me it’ll all be fine. After asking around, we eventually found our meeting place - the Choccywoccydoodah café (which is AMAZING! If you ever get the chance, go!) and shortly behind us followed Neechee and her other half Chris.

I had no idea where to start or what to say, I stumbled on my words and rambled on about nothing, really trying to make a good impression but failing miserably! I showed them the sketches and took her measurements, chatted for a while and that was that. We parted ways and I was buzzing - so excited!

I spent the next couple of months gathering materials, doing more sketches and contacting the lavender farm, all the while still doing my full time job as a Graphic Designer, 40+ hours a week. The only time I could work on this project was evenings and the weekends I wasn’t working. Challenge accepted!

The lavender farm got back to me and said they usually harvest mid July, so the week before would probably be best for a photo shoot when the lavender had bloomed at it’s fullest. But nature being nature, we couldn’t have an exact date until closer to the time. It could be anything up to 2 weeks early or 2 weeks late.

While we were waiting for Mother Nature to do her thing, I made a start on the wings. Well, I say ‘I’... turns out, I’m too weak to bend piping, so my lovely man Luke stepped in and helped. After a few tantrums and ‘I give up’s', the first set of wing frames were done. It gave me an idea on how many feathers I needed to get, so I googled feather wholesalers, and ordered batch number 1 of 2000 blue feathers.

Two weeks later, the feathers arrived! I was itching to get cracking and get the ball rolling. I laid the feathers out over the frames to check coverage and... there wasn’t enough. Knowing it would take another two weeks minimum for delivery again, I hopped straight back online and ordered 4000 more. But before I hit the payment button, Luke came up with a great idea to not have the wings one solid blue colour, but have maybe some yellow in there as well. What a genius! With imagination flowing I decided green and yellow would look great with the blue, and ordered 3000 blue and 1000 white instead.

I bought some yellow, green and turquoise fabric dye and began the process of washing the white feathers, counting them out, splitting them into lefts and rights, mixing the green and turquoise dyes to make a soft green, and finally the yellow. I had my good friend Alana helping me (another crazy bird lady!) as I have no idea when it comes to feathers. Together we washed, dyed, dried, steamed, and dyed again to get the perfect colours.

By this point it was the start of June. I had a month to get these wings done, and I hadn’t even started on an outfit or the shoes (nothing like working under pressure to get things done!). I bought some cheap heelless shoes to represent talons and customised them beyond recognition with blue tie-dye fabric and small blue duck feathers. I contacted Elspeth at CuriologyOnline, a very talented jewellery designer in the UK, and told her of our plans and ordered a bespoke circlet. I sent her a few googled images of circlets I liked and asked her to add the ‘usual Curiology flair’. What I received was absolutely incredible, with handmade and hand dyed roses that matched the colours of the wings perfectly. Another genius!

With the feathers prepped and ready, I looked at the frames we’d made a couple of months before. They’d flattened out and looked rather large. I re-sketched and sheepishly went to Luke, who begrudgingly agreed to start again from scratch. Literal blood, sweat and tears later, we had some beautifully curved, correctly sized frames. And because these new frames were smaller, I had so many extra feathers! Better to have too many than not enough, right?

I spent my next free weekend coating the wings, carving them (with the lovely Alana’s help again) and getting them ready to be feathered. The green feathers were cut in half to mimic the shorter feathers of an actual birds wing, which took an entire evening to do with 3 of us working on it.

It was finally time (mid June) to feather the wings. The lavender farm had got back to me with a harvesting date so I knew the deadline was near. I bought in plenty of energy drinks, chocolate and sweets (diet and exercise completely out the window) and spent 14 hours solidly with glue gun in hand, individually attaching the feathers. And those 14 long hours was only the backs of the closed pair of wings! Realising it would take a LONG time to finish them, I spent the following weekends & evenings, and an entire week off work (the very week before the shoot!) to get the wings and outfit done.

The corset was a cheap thing from ebay which I was going to cut up to show off Neechee’s fabulous tattoos. Luke had a few bits and bobs in his tool box and made some fixtures to hold the wings, which were bolted to the back of the corset. Being near enough the same meaurements as Miss Neko, I tried on the corset & wings combo and they were quite heavy. The decision was made to keep the corset whole. Luke, bless him, popped out to get me a mini sewing machine as there wasn’t a lot of time to hand sew, and I started cutting up fabric and customising the corset and made a skirt to match. Everything was going far too smoothly. Until...

DISASTER! I had run out of glue gun sticks AND YELLOW FEATHERS! It was the Monday I had booked off work and luckily had some white feathers left over spare. Running around like a headless chicken, I managed to get glue and more dye, wash, dye AND dry the remaining feathers all in the same day. But it had put me behind on the schedule by an entire day, which didn’t leave me a lot of time. Still, the show must go on...

... but not for long. Disaster number 2: On the Wednesday, I ran out of glue sticks again and GREEN feathers. Absolutely panicking with no more spare white feathers, I finished all the yellows and used whatever was left with yet more green and turquoise dye, pleading with the Gods that they would turn out the same colour and not a horrid yellow-y grassy green. It was 4 days before Neechee arrived, 5 days before the shoot, I’d somehow caught a nasty summer cold, and I was ready to break down in tears.

Somehow, with either karma or blessings from a higher being, the feathers came out the perfect colour and I had JUST enough. By ‘just’, I mean I had only 2 tiny little green feathers left. That’s it. You have no idea how relieved I was!

Feathers done with 3 days to go, shoes done, circlet received. I finished off the corset and sat for a while, looking at the wings. They needed something. The colours were very blocky. Green. Yellow. Blue. Straight lines and pure blocks of colour. They needed to be blended in and shaded. I had thought ahead months before and bought some turquoise hair dye just in case this needed doing. I set the wings down on the kitchen floor, and began painting the feathers individually with the hair dye, blending them in, adding darker gradients to the bottom, lighter at the top. It took about 40 minutes per side and per wing.

With only two days to go until Neechee and Chris arrived, it was done. Everything I had lost sleep over was finished. We’d done it. Lavender was in full bloom, cameras were charging and lenses had been cleaned. DONE. It felt amazing.

We spent the next day ridding our flat of feathers and getting ready for our very important guests. It felt so good to finally have a clean flat to relax in after months of feather bits and craft stuff EVERYWHERE!

Neechee and Chris had agreed to travel to us the day before the big shoot as they had a whopping 4 hour drive from their door to ours, which was a good opportunity to do a latex shoot on the day of their arrival. They got here (SO EXCITING), chilled, and did the latex shoot followed by a beach BBQ, had a relaxed evening and a fairly early night in preparation for an early start to get good light and a cool breeze for the big shoot.

...THE BIG DAY! We got everything packed up and ready and set off to the lavender field. It was a beautiful day. The field was a stunning colour and there was barely a cloud, although there must have been some planes flying around before we got there as there were pretty patterns in the sky - perfect! We got the corset and the rest of the outfit on Neechee, tied her in tight and strapped the wings on. I felt so sorry for her, it was still morning and it was already reaching 30C.

With no shade in the field, uneven ground, heelless shoes and a ridiculously tight heavy outfit, we had to work fast for fear of my lovely model collapsing! We found a good spot in the field and unloaded all the equipment. We were ready. Neechee was so professional, kept going even though I offered her breaks and she stayed completely focused.

I really wish someone had filmed the shoot. It was so funny when the smoke bombs were set off: the wind kept changing direction, so Luke and Chris had to keep moving them around (but very quickly, they only last 60-90 seconds!). At one point I looked through the viewfinder to see Neechee posing perfectly, very serious and completely in character... Chris in the background, leaping and almost falling over the rows of lavender trying to run from one side of the field to the other with a smoke bomb in hand. Luke ducking behind the lavender trying not to be seen with his smoke bomb, only to peek up to see what was going on like a whack-a-mole game and capturing half of his head in shot.

An hour later, we finished and took the wings off of Neechee and got her into shade. I looked through the images on my camera and was amazed by what I saw. It worked - it all worked! It was such a surreal happy moment. That was it, months of stress and glue and breakdowns all over. And it was so worth it.

The entire experience has been a long yet extremely rewarding journey. Seeing everything I made by hand (with help!) come together so perfectly was literally one of the best feelings I have ever had. I thank everyone involved for all you have done to help. You’re all superstars! ...Now to start on the next one ;)

Believe in your dreams, for they can come true if you put your mind to it.

Tara

17th July 2013

Here it is - the new website! A marker of starting afresh, with an all new look and a new photography series to boot.

The first shoot of the new series has been released, with other shoots to follow. The series is still untitled until inspiration strikes, but hopefully it won't be too long until a name is chosen.

This is just a short blog post really, to introduce you all to the new Tara Hills Photography & Design, and also to say a few well deserved thank yous:
- Firstly, I'd like to thank the stunning Neechee Neko, who was the first model to star in my new work - you did an absolutely incredible job and remained completely professional even though we shoved you in a corset with heavy wings and silly shoes all in 30 degree heat! You're a star. Thank you so much.
- To Neechee's other half Chris, for being a wonderful assistant and taking some behind the scenes shots for us.

- To the amazingly talented Elspeth from CuriologyOnline, for making a stunning circlet for the shoot, hand dying the roses and everything!
- To my lovely friend Alana, who helped me with dying, cutting, preening, and figuring out the patterns of the feathers for the wings.

- To the owners of the lavender field, for letting us spend an hour or so dorking around and trying to find the right spot, setting off smoke bombs, and making our dreams come true!

- And lastly but by no means least, my amazing, caring & patient boyfriend Luke, who I couldn't have done this without. He made the frames for the wings because I'm such a weakling, and kept me going when I was feeling low. Without you, none of this would have happened. I love you.

So with those done and dusted, I will leave you to enjoy the various snaps recently posted while I get ready for more which will follow later in the year!

Please take a read of my GoFundMe page, and support if you can.

http://www.gofundme.com/3gu160

Thank you,

Tara