Hello to 2026

Happy Monday. My first blog post of 2026!

I hope you had a good Christmas/New Year and enjoyed spending time with friends and family, however you chose to celebrate.

I had a truly lovely time celebrating with my daughter. Seeing her understand and enjoy Christmas a lot more than last year was so beautiful. We left a homemade cupcake for Santa, which he seemed to have enjoyed because in return, he left lots of wonderful gifts for us both.

We also had fun celebrating New Year together twice in one night! This is because we celebrated at 7pm so that she could still get in bed at a reasonable time (tired almost-four-year-olds are even more difficult to manage than well rested ones). But then she woke up and was wide awake before midnight so we got to see the new year in together. It was great to welcome 2026 with my little sidekick. And she absolutely adored watching the fireworks from our window, which was adorable.

It's safe to say that my festive period was wonderful. But now I'm back to work and getting my head back in the game to make the most of 2026.

This week I'm bringing you a blog post of images that me and Dave Edkins took at the end of last year. This is a was a concept we briefly shot before in early 2025, and always meant to revisit because we hadn't left ourselves enough time at the end of the shoot to do it justice. But we always get distracted with new ideas and workshops and events, so we just never got around to it until December.

This concept is essentially recycling brown paper from inside Amazon parcels. Both me and Dave seemed to have a surplus of the stuff and for some reason it came up in conversation. I had been saving it to protect surfaces from paint when doing art with Pixie, and I have no idea why Dave had been saving it, but he had been. So we decided to put it to good use and shoot with it. When we shot this idea last month at ARB Studio in Longton, I feel like we really captured the images I had in my head and more. It was one of those occasions where we built on the idea together, each adding a little something over and over until we had a set of images that we were both really happy with. The magic definitely happened in the studio that day and I hope you enjoy looking at these images as much as we enjoyed shooting them.

This concept felt like a good one to kick off a new year with because it is reusing packaging and as wonderful as Christmas is, it does generate a lot of waste so the recycling theme of these images feels appropriate. I'll kick off this post with some of my edits, and then move on to some of Dave's. Dave shoots on a Nikon D850 camera.

Breaking Through

I am starting with my absolute favourite image from this set because I just think it came out really well. It was quite difficult to shoot as I was tearing through some of the paper while simultaneously trying to hold it up. I love that we managed to pull it off and the expression here makes it work. I also love how my planet tattoos add an extra couple of lines in the image.

Then these next two images, I decided to include both the colour and the black and white version because as always, I can't decide which I like more. I love the way my skin tone compliments the paper in the colour version, but the monochrome just looks so good too. Again, I'm loving how my planet tattoos look here, especially with my arms crossed over in a rather unnatural way, and the shadow on the one side of my face seemed to fall in just the right place.

Portrait

These next few images are also portrait style images, just without tearing through paper. This first one I like because of the intense look on my face and the fact that I'm grabbing some of the paper in my hands. It makes me feel part of the set in a similar way to the images above where I am literally tearing through the paper, compared to some of the later images where I am seated on top of the set and not interacting with it as much.

These next two portraits I find really lovely. As I've said in my blog posts before, Dave has a way of capturing me in portraits that I just think really works well. It's also a miracle we get these images as in between shots I'm usually laughing at something or being silly, so it's always a nice surprise looking through the images to find out that we've nailed it because I mostly remember the mucking about parts.

The final portrait, I like this one because of the messy hair and the peaceful feel it has to it. This image was shot as part of the implied nude images (more below) but Dave is great at sensing when there's a nice portrait to be had and coming in close to get the shot.

Implied Nude

When I was choosing which images to edit for this blog post, I really did struggle to pick some. There were so many good ones generally but especially among these implied nude images. I think the main reason these two made the cut was due to the expression in both of them. I also like the crouched pose and it's a contrast to the more typical seated triangle pose that I often adopt, as it fits well with the theme. This was fun to shoot as we had to patch the paper onto the background behind me to build up the set to have the background resemble the scattered paper on the floor surrounding me.

Black and White Nude

For the last image of my edits, here is a black and white nude. I chose the monochrome version, purely because it leads well into Dave's edits. Of the ones he sent me, I decided to go exclusively for the monochrome as most of mine had been in colour. I love this pose.

Portrait (Dave Edkins' edits)

As I started with my favourite of my edits in my section of this post, it seemed fitting to start with my favourite of Dave's edits in his section. I just LOVE this one, it has an intensity to it.

Dave's edits from this set are a lot darker than mine (which is backwards as usually I'm the one who goes for the darker/moodier shots) and I love how gritty they all are. But for these next two shots I've chosen to show these two together as I love how intense the first one is, compared to how soft the second one is.

The last portrait, a really gritty looking one. It has an almost film like quality to it.

Implied Nude (Dave Edkins' edits)

Moving on to the implied nude images. Dave sent me loads of wonderful edits (thank you Dave!) but I chose these ones as they were one's I didn't choose to edit for this post. I love these two poses: the more classical triangle pose and a curled up one. He did edit the same ones I had chosen too, but I thought it would be better to show you different images rather than different edits of the same image. Again, I love how much darker these edits are compared to mine.

This next one has a more vulnerable feel to it that I really like due to the posing. The fact that it breaks away from the more typical feminine posed look, along with the darker editing style and anonymity it offers, makes this a strong image for me.

Much in a similar way to this final image, but this one is in an upright pose rather than lying on the paper.

And that's all from me for today. Thank you for taking the time to read my first blog of the year to say hello to 2026.

Thank you Dave for sending these edits over, I really loved so many of them and it was hard to just chose a few. I'm going to pop Dave's links here again, go and give him a follow: Instagram, Threads, PurplePort and E-photozine. If you aren't already following me, which is unlikely, but just incase here are my links too: Instagram, Facebook, PurplePort.

I hope you've had either a peaceful or a productive start to 2026, whichever you were hoping for. I look forward to sharing more with you next week. Until then, Misuzu x