Above:
Junior by Andrew Bowman
-See More Below-
~Check out today's BIRTHDAYS HERE:~
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Sunflower Seed
'Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It’s what sunflowers do'
Helen Keller
Some of you may remember these shots of Josh from byKent. I featured the images, and my connections to the sunflower on the site two years ago.(Sunflower Season) I'm not really a flower person, but the theme ended up being incredibly timely. Kent had been planing an Autumn / Halloween themed piece for the site and I hadn't expected to open the attachments to discover a sunflower series. I knew there was a reason however, as sunflowers had been my mother's favorite flowers.
My mom had passed away just a few months earlier, and I couldn't help but feeling the images were a sign. If not a sign, I certainly considered them a gift. .It wasn't however my connection to sunflowers specifically which inspired today's theme and series of posts. fitnessfreak_unleashed, gets full credit , due to the image in the post above that he shared on his Instagram last month. When I saw the image of him holding a sunflower bouquet, I tucked it away to use as a 'one off' in my bottom line tagged series of post.
When I later went into my 'to post' folder however, I found I had several other images and story ideas featuring sunflowers. A theme day was in order! I needed a few additional shots however, to pull it all together and I knew just where to go. FH readers know well that photographer Andrew Bowman loves to include flowers in his imagery. I remembered a couple of models holding sunflowers in a previous piece. (The Modesty Bouquet) I quickly got in touch with Andrew and asked (pestered) if he had more edits of the images including sunflowers. He did, and generously sent them on.
Enjoy the next three pages filled with sunflowers, and the hot bodies holding, smelling and enjoying them!
Jay Alvarrez In Dream World
'And you can watch from your window...'
Last year I found, loved and posted the image at the very bottom of this post. I didn't know at the time who the models were, or how the image originated. A little, (well in this case, more than a little...) of googling, finally provided the answers.
The two naked hotties covering their junk with sunflowers ended up not being models at all. The two sunflower field dancers are musician Jay Alvarrez and surfer Eros Exarhou. The image, a promotional shot for the music video of Dream World, one of Jay's songs.
I loved the sense of fun and play in the image, and it captures the feel for the scene in the video beautifully. The scene is very short, just a few brief seconds at the very end of the video, at the end of the song. It's so quick, it's actually easy to miss, so I decided to slow down the clip for the gif above. You can check out the entire video on YouTube HERE:
Long Stemmed: Junior by Andrew Bowman
'I find comfort in contemplating the sunflowers.'
Vincent van Gogh
Anyone who's battled anxiety knows the first thing professionals tell you to do is to take a few deep breaths, and go to your happy place. Your happy place can be anywhere really, but it should be a specific place you can easily bring to mind when needed. Some people contemplate kittens or puppies, or goat and lambs frolicking in a barnyard. Most people however, have a very specific place in mind, a place they love to return to again and again.
Like so many others, mine includes water, beaches are very popular contemplation places. When ever I need, my beach is there, the water is rough, but I'm safely high above in a vast field of wild flowers and sunflowers overlooking the waves crashing in. It's a dark day, not rainy, but a storm in definitely brewing. I guess it's that calm before the storm that makes the location so comforting, at least for the moments I need it to be so.
My happy place of course also features a favorite hunk, rugged and shirtless, walking towards me on the sand. Unlike the water and sunflowers which are fixed, and always there the hunk, well he changes, depending on my mood. Ever since first seeing his images on Model Mayhem a few years ago, Junior's often popped up on that beach, and now, thanks to Andrew Bowman, he's carrying a bouquet of long stemmed sunflowers to the one awaiting in the field above.
I can't tell you how many times I've virtually traveled to my happy place, contemplating my chosen visuals when nervous or afraid. So many times when I've been sitting in a doctor's waiting room, moments before giving a presentation, or sitting nervously before a big event or meeting with my supervisor. It never fails to invoke comfort, even if just momentarily.
Andrew shares that Junior, (a name which really doesn't apply....) was very comfortable handling his long stem, and that for this shoot, the choice of flower was actually pretty random. Although the sunflowers, and their vibrant yellows weren't necessarily planned, Andrew especially loved how beautiful the sunflowers looks against Juniors skin tone. Check out Andrew's work another model with sunflowers, Giuliano HERE:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)