Gayle, My Favourite Dutch Bitch

Hello Ladies and Gents

Well yesterday was a sad day, in addition it being my birthday and one that takes me to the bad end of twenty something, yesterday was the day one of my favourite friends, Gayle, moved back to Holland.

I met Gayle nearly four years ago, I was her freshers rep when she started uni. Now being an international fresher Gayle moved in a week before the UK freshers, and we had set up various special events to help settle them in. Over the course of these events me Gayle and I got to know each other, mainly through bitching sessions regarding other peoples fashion sense. My favourite exchange, and one that has become quite infamous in our circle, went something like this...

Gayle - (upon seeing a rather appallingly dressed fresher)
"Are there mirrors in the rooms in halls?"

Me - (being a freshers rep)
"Yeah, course they have love, is there not one in your room?"

Gayle - (smirking and pointing)
"Well yes, I have a mirror, but SHE obviously doesn't!"

Me - (rather impressed and peeing my pants laughing)
"I like you, you can be my friend"

and we've been friends ever since. I've taken a few sets of pictures of Gayle over the years so in honour of her leaving I thought I'd post some up here for you lovely people.

The first time we worked together was part of my 'Make my picture' project in 2007. I made collaborative portraits with a wide range of people, examining the difference between people's ideas of themselves and their ideas of how they wanted to present themselves to the world in portraits, for a variety of different uses and in a variety of different styles. It possibly warrants a blog of it's own sometime, as I'm still very proud of it as a piece. For her shoot, Gayle wanted a portrait that would be printed on a large canvas and displayed in her parents home in Holland. She wanted something simple with lots of light and shade. During this shoot I experimented with negative space, knowing that huge canvas that was just a close cropped face would be rather oppressive hung in a living room! The two shots below are the ones she chose, the landscape image for the large canvas and the portrait image printed for a table top frame.






The next set of images were again made to be displayed in her parents home, a gift for her mum's birthday. Gayle had already bought a lovely brushed silver frame, so we made bright high key happy portraits to fit with the style of the frame and the feel of the gift. I love this image, I think it looks like a 'Covergirl' makeup advert!




Last but not least, the final shoot we did together in the UK just last week. A couple of years ago I made Gayle a dress, fascinator and shoes for her birthday party. I realised I didn't have any pics of the outfit so we arranged to photograph it before she left. Sadly I couldn't photograph the dress full length as Gayle is far too tall and my home studio is far too small, but I think you get the idea. Although looking at it now I am shocked at how much my dressmaking skills have improved. For the record, the back of the dress does match up but we must have forgotten to close the hook when we made these pics! I've also included a pic of the customised shoes I made her, not strictly a picture of Gayle but they are beautiful beautiful things that the world must see!









So there you go, a retrospective of Gayle, my favourite Dutch Bitch. I'm gonna miss her so much, but Holland isn't so far away and she gave me a Dutch phrase book and guide to Amsterdam for my birthday, so I guess that means she wants me to visit. And then I'll have something else exciting to tell you guys about!
TTFN
CF
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