Nautilus Photo Shoot and Post Production

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...

Sirenetta

Sirens and mermaids in English are two different creatures but one in the same in Italian. Both belong to the menagerie of mythological females who lure men to their doom. In the case of the siren it is her voice that holds the fatal power, with the mermaid her sensuality. That said the pagan mermaids...

Medusa and Metamorphosis: the shoot

I met Valeria at the Incanto restaurant in Amsterdam where she works as a waitress and sommelier. When she came to our table my friend and agent Dick Kits said, "Don't you think she could be one of your Belle?" I showed her my website on my phone and she was enthusiastic right from the...

Metamorphosis

When Valeria Saporetti awoke the morning of 12 March 2013  from troubled dreams she found herself transformed......."What has happened to me?" she thought. It was no dream.* Most maritime nations from the Picts to the Chinese have mythologised the  tiny sea creature, the seahorse. The Greeks named it the hippocampo, part horse part coiled monster....

Medusa

" Nature, red in tooth and claw", these lines by Tennyson describe man's primeval fear of nature. The jellyfish has neither tooth nor claw, it is not even a fish, but it is a pretty terrifying beast all the same: all are painful stingers, many are deadly.  Alluding to the creatures' agonising tentacles as well...

Daphne

Daphne 1995 In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apollo, the god of music and poetry, was afflicted by an infatuation for the beautiful nymph Daphne. He pursued her relentlessly until, unable to escape his clutches, she was transformed into a laurel tree by the river god Peneus in order to save her from capture. A popular subject during and...

Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses 2011 The most famous Metamorphoses are those written by the Latin poet Ovid illustrating Greek myths and a source for countless artists, poets, painters and sculptors. Bernini based his statue Apollo and Daphne on Ovid's tale and I was in turn inspired by Bernini. However, for the rest of the series I was more...