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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: inspiration

[Vampire Month] Vampire Photography II: The revenge

30 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Vampire Month

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Emma Darling, inspiration, model, vampire model, Vampire photography


Last week I showcased some of my own photos with Vampire themes. Today we have some images of Emma Darling, a Preston based model, taken by various photographers. Each one shows a different aspect of the image of the Vampire. I asked Emma to comment on the photos and this is what she said:

Emma Darling vampire model

Photographer: Rob Vanner 

I had so much fun shooting these images.

 

I love the darkness and beauty of vampires, there’s something spine tingling yet thrilling about these dark creatures.

Beautiful yet deadly.

I’m Emma Darling a professional model and actress from Preston,

I adore modelling and feel honoured to be part of people art.

I cover a whole range of styles my favourite being fantasy, horror and cosplay,

I find it exhilarating playing new characters each day I throw myself into it wholeheartedly and imagine I am that character throughout the shoot.

This can be challenging but so much fun!

54370-a1485002909441

Photo by Graham Peers

 

Emma’s work covers a range of different styles and shows how the image of the vampire has changed. The second photo by Graham Peers shows a traditional Nosferatu style vampire posing with Emma as a Hammer style character, while the one above (by Rob Vanner who also seems to have many more gothy vampire shots on his portfolio) is a more modern style.

The final shot, also by Graham Peers, is also a modern look. All three have a definite goth vibe to them. Consider Jack Cutler’s gothic tragedy vampire from my previous post for another take on the concept. I guess that the immortality of vampires, both in fiction and as a concept in fiction, opens up a lot of possibilities. You can have a vampire character in a novel from any period of history or from any part of the world.

Of course, the tendency is for a lot of Vampires to find themselves mired in the Victorian period. I guess we have  Bram Stoker to blame for that as Dracula, a tale so firmly set in that period, is the most well known vampire character. After all, he does seem to come up a lot in answers to the Vampire Month

54370-a1485009333267

Photo by Graham Peers

questions. However, other periods do get a look in with Ann Rice popularising the 1700s and good old Edward Cullen being a first world war veteran. The modern day is also well represented with the classics there being ‘The Lost Boys’ (though it may not be politic to point out that film was released in 1987 which is exactly 30 years ago now, so I guess it counts as a period piece…) and the Underworld series ( the first of which was released in 2003).

 

All these examples do have one thing in common, of course. They all show the vampire as sexy. Even Dracula was described as being attractive. The exception seems to be poor old Nosferatu in photograph two. That was a character who wore his dark soul on the outside.

If you felt like commenting, you could talk about which type of vampire you prefer or whether you think there is an historic period or other style of vampire you think is overused or should be used more.

Death and taxes

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Wierdness

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Benzene, Christopher Lee, Danny DeVito, Death, DNA, inspiration, Neil Gaiman, Ouroborous, Taxes, Taxi, utter rubbish.


It is sometimes strange where inspiration might come from. For example, today I got a letter from the tax office. I happened to be musing on that letter (mainly confused thoughts about what the hell they were talking about and what particular confused comments I would make when I rang them to say ‘Eh?’ a lot) when a funeral crawled slowly by. This, of course, made me think of Benjamin Franklin and triggered the following inspiration in me:

Death and Taxes – he’s an accountant working out of an office above a funeral home, she’s a mortuary assistant single mother. Together they fight crime…

I got as far as working out characterisations for the main characters and some concepts of how plot would develop before common sense kicked in and told me it was a stupid idea. Besides, the one that followed it was even better:

Death and Taxis. Starring Danny Devito and Christopher Lee. He’s the manager of a New York cab company, his partner’s the anthropomorphological manifestation of the end of life. Together they fight crime.

I, of course, blame Neil Gaiman entirely for the whole ‘they fight crime’ trope. I still find it hilarious even many years after he used it in the Kindly Ones. This is probably why I am not likely to ever be a writer of sit coms or TV drama.

This incident did make me wonder about inspiration and what can cause it. It is basically what happens when our brains make connections between things which might not normally be connected and derive from them some epiphany – often a clue as to how to progress something that was causing problems. Whether it be a difficult scene in a story or cracking the structure of benzene, as humans we pay attention to external stimuli and if we see something inspiring we often interpret it in light of whatever problem we are currently working on. It’s a symptom of our ability to pay attention to things. Sometimes it is not an obvious inspiration, the universe can be subtle and a number of small stimuli add up to one great idea. Other times it is a blinding flash – a road to Damascus moment. You see the spiral staircase and think about the structure of DNA or dream about Ourobouros and wonder if Benzene might be a ring structure or see a funeral procession and think up a crap TV Sit com concept.

Sometimes I wonder if the key to being a good writer is understanding this process of inspiration and learning how to use it effectively. But then, I am a scientist and my first impulse is always to try to analyse everything…

If you feel like commenting, feel free to share any experiences or thoughts you have had with inspiration…

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