Bella Blue Burlesque

That stupid Right Said Fred song…I know you finished the lyrics after you read that;) You can’t help it….

When I started burlesque dancing, I didn’t ever really think that modeling would come into play. About a year after dancing, I was approached by Max Prophet about shooting with him. I explained to him that I’d be game but I had no idea what I was doing. He told me not to fret….that it would all be fine.

And it was. The shoot went very smoothly. We worked together really well. And we got some pretty good images from that first shoot. I can’t say that I wasn’t hooked from that point on. I enjoyed being able to express myself with my body and someone capturing it. It was a learning experience for me in learning how to pose my body, learn facial expressions…I really, really enjoyed it. Max taught me a lot of things before “kicking me out of the nest” so to speak and encouraging me to shoot with other photographers.

Over the next year, I shot with most of the most well known photographers in the area. I have a pretty extensive portfolio that’s for the most part pretty diverse. I became more known as a nude figure model than anything else. The thing that I didn’t know about this is the creepy dudes who come out of the woodwork. Sometime last summer I was hired to do a shoot by a photographer who told me in the middle of the shoot that he was “going to get in the shot with me” as his wife and child roamed the house downstairs. I had never been so appalled in my life. It was the worst experience I had ever encountered…and it made me lose some faith in the fact that people truly wanted to created art…and mostly just wanted to see if they could get a girl naked and possibly sleep with her. That one person nearly ruined an entire year’s worth of work that I had built up within myself to be able to do what I was doing AND make money doing it. Without having to sleep with anyone might I add. Come to find out later that a bunch of my other female model friends had also had the same experience with this same guy.

I have taken a long break from the modeling world. Outside of burlesque dancing, I was very afraid to show my body for the camera again. I think that constant fear was in the back of my head that I was going to be in a vulnerable position again. I took a crack at it when I was asked to shoot by Reny Ramos. We did a shibari rope work shoot. It was pretty intense. It was something new. It was the first time in months that I had been nude in front of the camera. I was nervous. I wasn’t feeling very confident about my body that day. I was being tied up. And I just didn’t know what to expect. The photos came out amazing(of course). And I felt like I had gotten a little bit of my mojo back. A few months later I decided to shoot with Brian Perkins. We did some underwater stuff…some fashion work. And it all came out beautifully. I still just wasn’t feeling it. I was running into a quandry here because with the website, I feel like I need to be updating with photos on a regular basis. It’s how I sell myself to people. I started to think I just didn’t have it in me anymore. And shooting was going to be a necessity from this point on as opposed to something I really enjoyed doing.

Enter Carlos Baez. I got an email from him last week asking me in I would be interested in working as a model for a lighting workshop that was happening in New Orleans as a apart of a conference. It was a paying gig. It was in a good venue. And it was in a controlled environment. I was game. I figured at this point it couldn’t hurt to give it another go round…if anything I knew that I would get some new work for my port. I was one model with a room full of 10 wedding photographers who are learning about lighting and exploring shooting nudes and boudoir style photos. Last night I was able to express myself again. I was able to move freely. I was able to help these photographers learn something but I think I maybe got more out of it than they did…I got my footing again. Something I hadn’t had in a long time. I got my confidence back. I was challenged to come up with new poses…challenged to quickly build a relationship with 10 different photographers who had 10 minutes each to shoot me so that we could create some amazing images…challenged to teach these photographers what I have learned from a model perspective in how a nude model wants/expects to be treated. I felt like I was finally taking the power away from that one person who had almost ruined the joy of modeling for me by being able to speak to these 10 individuals about the do’s and dont’s of approaching a nude shoot. And the importance of respect. Mutually.

I look forward to showing the work that came out of last night. Each person was uniquely talented in their own way. I am very thankful to all of them (and to Carlos for hiring me) because they gave more back to me than they even realize.