Patrick's musings about recent photos and images
NAUTILUS A new entry in the Metamorphosis series. After 6 years of gestation, the Nautilus photo shoot in Amsterdam is the latest addition to my Metamorphosis series portfolio. Sometimes the gestation period for a picture runs from months into years. I met Silvia, a dusky Portuguese beauty, in Holland in 2013 at the first public... Continue Reading →
The shot of The Three Graces was on my list of projects for over six years, but I could never get three friends together at the same time. Two beautiful Canadians, Kelsey and Renè walked into my Orvieto Gallery in mid October and looked attentively at the pictures both on the walls and in the... Continue Reading →
Location: St Patrick's Well Orvieto and Danae The Umbrian city of Orvieto and its environs in Latium and Tuscany have provided me with most of my locations for the Belle. Sometimes I realise the image on location, but occasionally this is physically impossible as was the case with Danae (2009) for which I wished to... Continue Reading →
Rusalka, a Slavic folk tale set to music by Dvořák Rusalka was suggested to me by a professional opera singer who had herself performed the role in Dvořák’s eponymous opera. A folk tale found in the slavic world akin to Andersen’s Little Mermaid and equally tragic. Rusalka is a beautiful water sprite living in a... Continue Reading →
Unusual connections sometimes can spark art photography inspiration and creativity. Baudelaire’s poem “Invitation du Voyage” and a news item about Choco Pie are behind the making of this image. Luxe, Calme et Volupté comes from a line taken from Baudelaire’s poem Invitation du Voyage, but it was a news item about a chocolate confection popular in communist North Korea that inspired this image, the coveted Choco Pie.
Poetry, music and painting, all converge in this photo-shoot, setting the mood for the final image. This picture had its origins in the sight of a freshly painted blue boat on the shores of Lake Bolsena which reminded me of a painting by Carl Moll, a mysterious, unsettling picture of a blue boat in a flooded... Continue Reading →
We set off to take a photo on the beach in mid October despite the awful weather because this was the last opportunity of the year. We had planned to take the picture back in 2007 when I met her shortly after opening my gallery in Orvieto, though something had always conspired to postpone time... Continue Reading →
In early spring 2009 I took the picture above of a weeping willow on Lake Bolsena. A fortnight later a high wind ripped off the upper bough and for at least a couple of years it lay semi-submerged, rotting in the shallow water below. I grew up with Willow Pattern. As a child I was... Continue Reading →
A hundred years ago few anywhere suspected that the most deadly war of all time was about to break out in six months time. What occupied the minds of Britons was whether women should be awarded the vote or not, the disruptive campaign the Suffragettes were carrying out and the Liberal government's heavy handed reaction... Continue Reading →
In London over Christmas I paid a visit to the London Museum with my wife and 10 year old daughter and what did we run across quite unexpectedly? This, the actual placard that the so called Protein Man paraded up and down Oxford St, London for 25 years. His name was Stanley Green, a harmless... Continue Reading →
On a recent visit to Paris I thought I must see Marat's original bath tub in which he was stabbed by Charlotte Corday on July 13, 1793, in the Grévin Wax Museum. The tableau, one of the oldest in the museum, purports to show the scene immediately after the stabbing. The bathtub, which is impossible... Continue Reading →
Back in October 2007 I set up a picture based on a painting by the French academic painter Gerome called The Judgement of Phryne. I had to shoot 5 pictures in the course of a week as a Swiss TV documentary crew were following both me and my models for a film entitled Woman Portraying... Continue Reading →
Patrick Nicholas Photography 