Run I say, run like the wind!

It's no secret, I'm a city guy. With the Calgary Stampede fast approaching so is my desire to run. I'm sorry but Cowboys make me nervous. Maybe its the historical intolerance... maybe its the narrow set eyes, the big ears and bad teeth...maybe its just because I can't get the sound of banjos out of my head...or maybe its just the moustaches. I have never seen so many straight men brandishing Freddy Mercury moustaches before moving here. Its seems very odd to me...

So when I was considering what aspects of Calgary I wanted to capture before moving on, I guess it's not surprising that somewhere in my desire to photograph the beautiful rolling prairie landscape my subconscious inserted a running figure.

Model, Rebecca Li literally ran all over the countryside braving rainstorms, and mosquito swarms to help Odessa and I realize our concept of fashion in motion. Thanks Rebecca, you were a great sport!

Odessa, inspired by wild roses, styled Rebecca all in vintage reds from Cat's Eye. It was

brilliant.

Jason Traicheff put together some amazing hairstyles out of the back of our jeep and MUA Kesar Lacroix make up was fabulous at making Rebecca's beautiful look pop from a distance.

This was another successful shoot, with a talented fun team...and a rainbow.

-Stu

The wickedly awesome Visha Loo Contorts!

After a few months of planning and scheduling and breathless anticipation (ok we breathed a little) we finally shot our "Heels Overhead" series with Calgary's most fabulous contortionist. Thank you Visha Loo!

Everyone did an awesome job, Odessa's wardrobe was stunning as usual, Kesar Lacroix did an amazing job of make up (see for yourself!) and Shawna Jayne made our wig look like no other.

Visha in black... before our stylists got to her

The key feature of the set was an enormous spool. No this is not a typo. A giant spool. When the sewing fairy was out of stock we went hunting behind industrial stores and shops. Odessa finally found one behind a Canadian Tire...(Thanks for the tip Diana Martin - Di Designs!), and we scooped it. A few days to dry and some white paint ......

We had our set....Spool'in!

The spool looked great but proved to be very rickety...(better to look good than to be strong, no?). Shawna and Kesar jumped in and helped Odessa to keep the spool steady while Visha did her thing. We were lucky to have only one small shaky incident where Visha scraped her chin.

Twisting on the spool was not easy...if you are thinking of trying this at home....HESITATE!. You are not Visha!

Here are some more behind the scenes shots

The series is in production and will be posted soon. We love the results!!! Thanks again to the creative team.

-Stu

Rainbow Jeans is now up on Flicker, CD's have been mailed!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/insomniaart/sets/72157624002873782/

After an uncertain start...twin models in the hospital, rousting Caley out of bed, and

kidnapping Alizee in the elevator...we are extremely happy with the results!

We shot the Billboard in sections on a slab of astro turf that we had to coerce a Canadian Tire employee to dig out of their basement warehouse. Have you ever been in a Canadian Tire Warehouse? Very cool and very odd. In each shot was either a single model or the two of them together. Odessa has much more patience than I do and puzzled the pieces together brilliantly mastering photoshop at the same time.

Jessika Morin did an amazing job on hair putting Alizee's blonde locks into an interpretation of the sun and Caley's raven mane into an abstraction of the moon. Lisa Dawson's make up was understated and solid.

Thanks to everyone involved for your impressive contributions to realizing this concept. Awesome work!

Here are some candid shots from behind the scenes in the studio...

-Stu

Happy Accidents and Elevators

Hi Everyone and welcome to the first entry in the Insomnia Art blog!

As you may have seen we have been posting a lot of our work to Flickr. Please check out our recent stuff at http://www.flickr.com/photos/insomniaart/sets.

We have busy in the last few months working with some awesome talent, although sometimes by happy accident. We had Nikita Kiceluk of Canada'a next top model fame fill in for us after a model no-show on Myst. Odessa was franticly calling models and our crazy cool makeup artist Joanne Black rang Nikita and she just happened to be a few minutes away. She was in studio in two shakes of a lambs tail and rocking Holly Irwin's (Dusted Rose Designs) period inspired togs in the fog. Thanks Nikita!

Another great place to find some incredible talent is apparently in elevators. On our last fashion shoot "Rainbow", one of our modelling twins got very ill and had to be hospitalized the night before. We found out that morning and again, Odessa springs to action, like she does so well, rousting the ever-so-striking Cayley Turnbull out of bed. Meanwhile Lisa Dawson, our MUA that day had trouble getting up the elevator so when Odessa went to collect her... the incomparable Alizee Paradis just happened to be in the same elevator, coming home after being on the Breakfast Show. Two great models in 10 minutes...a new record for recruiting at Insomnia Art!

Odessa and I are very excited and happy about how everything is turning out here at Insomnia Art and feel very lucky to be working with the extremely talented Joanne Black (MUA) and Jessika Morin (Hair Stylist).

We have lots more to come in the next few weeks. The "Rainbow" series is in post, we are getting our high impact shots to complete "Startled" with always alluring Aura Alexandra on Saturday, the "Tea Party" is ready to go for next weekend with a wicked spray painted background by Lee-Anne Kennedy.....and we have a contorted shoe shoot coming up....

-Stu

Insomnia Art has a Blog!

Insomnia Art has a long overdue blog! Follow us at http://insomniaartblog.blogspot.com/