Making of the GIANT swing.

A GIANT swing was high on my list after creating the GAINT rocking horse image, if I'm honest, it was partly because it was a damn sight easier for Will to build but would still make an awesome photo! We luckily had a bunch of wood left over from the horse and so, an evening before the shoot date, Will built a giant swing! He is amazing really, he thought of all aspects of hanging the swing, luckily too as I just assumed there would be a perfectly placed branch, of course I was wrong and Will was very right to plan for creating a bridge between two trees to hold the thing! 

So the day was set, it was a seriously beautiful October morning, my best friend Megs was there to help as was Will's best friends Ed and Matt, so we were off! The boys went off to the woods to start setting up, and Megs and I went to the train station to pick up the model. We waited. We waited some more. We waited for 30 minutes and finally I gave in to the realization that the model was a no show. For all those reading who aren't photographers let me tell you, this is a common occurrence and one of the most annoying aspects of being a photographer. Anyway, the model was a no show, but luckily I had a stunningly beautiful best friend sat next to me in the car and I managed to convince her to model for the photo! She's good like that :)

When we arrived the boys were setting up bringing the gear into the woods and so Megs and I started getting ready with wardrobe and make up! After the boys set up the swing a wonderful florist named Claire who generously offered to bring along flowers for the shoot arrived bringing the most beautiful headdress she made plus extra flowers to adorn the rope. I mean seriously, how amazing is this woman!! (check her work out, it's amazing).

So we were off! The sun ducked away a couple of times but for the most part stayed out for us and, well, I adore the shot! Megs was a pro, as expected, and for the fairly early stages of our friendship, it made us all the closer, this may have in part been because we decided to do a naughty naked bum shot together...

Even more of a highlight for me was shooting all three boys with their bums out...

For some added fun, Will recorded the whole experience as a time lapse which you can see here!

As you can see at the end of the video, after wrapping, we all went to my favourite place in the world, the pantheon that lives on a hill in the gardens of a beautiful estate...which, you know, we kind of broke into :)

This project, since the beginning, has been as easy as breathing in a way. Despite the work, prop building, sourcing material, planning, coming up with ideas and being cancelled on and travelling to locations and trying to find locations, it has still been easy, all because of the people I do it with. Creating a real life goddamn fantasy, a strange yet relatable world in front of my eyes and my lens, it's pure joy, and I only hope there will be many many more images to come :)

I'll end with a couple of outtakes from the swing...

xx