Geoff Treagus, Model Movements (ART & CONCEPTUAL 2025)

When I'm not doing photography, I'm doing other types of creativity. This includes life drawing, and I run a small life drawing group next to a cemetery, of all places. So for a while I had thought about how the two worlds, that of photography and that of life drawing could somehow meet, or combine in a way. I decided I wanted to produce something more than just an aesthetically pleasing pose, provided by one of our models. Instead, I wanted to capture a sense of movement, and a range of poses. So I decided to experiment with layered photos, layering one translucent image on top of another, and then editing the final result. Whilst doing this, I wanted to keep two things in mind, being firstly, how much detail and 'grit' would strike a happy balance between being able to see defined shapes and some finer details, whilst also having similar tonal qualities, and perhaps 'mess' that drawing with charcoal, graphite, chalk, or the softer pencils might produce, Secondly, I considered how whilst some drawers like to use dark drawing materials on white or light papers, card, and so on, other artists like to use white or light drawing materials to draw on dark backgrounds, focusing predominately on highlights rather than shadows. So I sandwiched negative photographic images between the others. This I think has tapped into the spirit of life drawing as an exercise, with its range of materials and approaches, although in the big scheme of things, is but the 'tip of the iceberg'! Of course there's other aspects to consider too, which I hope to cover in future photography projects covering this theme, which is the sense of community and interaction between all the people involved, including the model. Especially the model, for without models, a huge amount of creativity wouldn't exist, and I truly believe models deserve a lot more credit than they are sometimes given. I certainly appreciate the time and effort the model put into helping me create this submission. To create this photographic work, I used a Canon M6, with a EF 50mm lens, attached with an adaptor, and I used a mix of natural and artificial light.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.