Crawfish!!!
I was introduced to crawfish in Louisiana on one of my first
modeling trips in 2009, and not quite sure what I thought of being served a
bucket full of bright red, dead lobsteresque “mud bugs” with a few boiled
potatoes and corn, all to be eating by tearing into with your hands, red pepper
and salt to seep into your fingers, beer to wash this all down with. I thought
a side salad would have been appropriate, but that just isn’t part of the meal.
Self-portrait with lobster
Last year was my first home-cooking adventure. I, of course,
wanted to play with the live critters, and carefully sought to do portraits
with them. I didn’t know how quick they’d be to pinch me. This year, I wanted
crawfish again. Yes, to eat, but mostly to shoot with. One grocery store only
sold 35 pound bags, and that was waaay too many to shuck to eat now or later,
but another place sold exactly the amount we wanted and I came home with 9
pound of these little pinching guys.
What do you do with your live food? Throw it on the floor,
set up a tripod and take photos, right? Then recruit help to dump more on you
while you are laying there.
I was distracted by the awesomeness of my live “props” and
have to admit none of these photos turned out to be winning “art” but if you
ever wanted to know what I look like laying on the floor with 9 pounds of
stinky crawfish (I learned I should have washed them beforehand because yuck,
the smell was horrendous), with the biggest laugh of childish joy on my face,
then this is the set for you.
After shooting on the floor, played with them in a more
civilized manner, one at a time, with iphone photos on a table. Then came for
the cooking of them, and I still wanted a couple to walk around on the ground
while cooking up the first batch, and demonstrated one awesome feature of
living in Houston to my California sister and my nephew and niece via facetime.
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No crawfish should be eaten without a swig of beer, or a
couple of bottles, so there was crawfish playtime, crawfish eat time,
recuperate on couch time, coffee time, mop the kitchen floor time, then I was
finally ready for the gym.
If you've missed reading about my antics, I'm back in full swing but taking my stories over to another site.
Come join in my adventure at: The Artful Nomad's Self-Portraiture Project
I have dived into self-portraiture and would thank you for your support with copious photos, stories and a personal look into art created by me, with me. (I will also be sharing my photographs of my fellow nude model friends).
self-shot
Hi Keira! It's so good to see your posts back online again. I've gotten back into life modelling around Brisbane, Australia again. However, it's difficult to get into here. I've found some places get downright pissed off if somebody tries to get in on the act, and then wonders why nobody wants to work with them. I'm looking around the south side of Brisbane (as most modelling gigs are inner-city and I can't get to them due to parking problems). Otherwise, I'm getting back into my painting and taking art lessons at the Logan Artists Association where there's a lovely little gallery and I've had work hung there twice this year already! Yep, things are most certainly looking up this year.
ReplyDeleteCrayfish are tiny lobsters... sounds like you had a wonderful time eating them and working with them. But you know what they say: never work with animals or children; but mainly the former because of how unpredictable they are.
Glad you are back in the art modeling life again! It can be incredibly fulfilling or at least a good adventure. :)
DeleteAnd I hear you on working with animals - they are super unpredictable, being their own personalities with no understanding of what they are being subjected to. At least any injuries I may have faced would have been my own fault on this occasion :)