This Year So Far

Happy Monday.... and happy website launch day!!! The misuzu_solo website is officially LIVE! Too many exclamation marks, but I really don't care today!!!

I felt like this post needed to be an especially good one because it's arguably the most important. I thought for a while about what's important to me in my modelling career at this moment in time, and about what I'm hoping to gain from the site that I've poured a lot of myself into over the last few months. I've come to realise that a huge part of my passion for what I do, is sparking that passion in others. Whether that's through sharing my images with people who just appreciate it for what it is, or helping others to hone the skills needed to progress on their own journey in the industry.

I've always enjoyed working with newer photographers and watching their confidence and skills grow (that's how me and Dave Edkins started off all those years ago, you can read more about that particular story here) but through doing the workshops, that side of my work has really come into play.

Since I've been back modelling this year, there has been a huge focus on the workshops and it's led to Dave having to work with me a lot more often than usual. Between our usual shoots, planning workshops and actually doing the workshops, we've spent an unusual amount of time contacting each other, or working together. We've shot a lot since March, and captured some images that I'm really proud of. We've also captured some amazing images through just exploring and messing around. It's been a lot of fun, so this post for website launch day will be about this year so far, through the lens of Dave Edkins (and a few shots from a couple of our new friends from the workshops).

So here it goes:

March

I only really came back to modelling in March this year (2025), and although me and Dave had shot together in January, I wasn't really back modelling at that point and we had my daughter in the studio with us, so she featured in a lot of the images (intentionally and unintentionally). When it came to March, we were having a play around like we always do, and the workshops were still a 'we should totally do this one day' idea. Here are a few images we created:

The image on the left was taken through some net curtains we were experimenting with. I love how soft this image feels even though it's very dark. The image on the right captured by exploring long exposure. It was a lot of fun to find out how I needed to move to make this work, and I love the final edit that Dave did.

April

In April, we did our first workshop. It was Workshop 1 where we give an introduction to working with models. If you'd like more information about this workshop, you can click here to read more about it and find out when the next one will be (or request one if there isn't one in 'upcoming workshops').

The group of photographers we had for this first workshop were all absolutely lovely and it was a huge success. Despite the fact that I was really nervous before hand, I found that I settled into it really quickly and it was incredibly rewarding. Here are some images taken that day by a few of the photographers:

The first image was taken by Marcus D, the second by Rhianne Lousie, and the third by Brian Matthews.

May

In May, we invited the same group of people back for Workshop 2, which centred around shooting higher levels, covering fashion nude and nude. I'd only just got my Mandalorian tattoo, so Dave took and edited this picture of me that I love:

The second workshop also went really well (obviously) and it was great being able to bring confidence out of some people who weren't sure if art nude photography was something they wanted to pursue further. I love being able to show people that their misconceptions about art nude are wrong, and bring some of my passion around this genre to others. Here are some shots that got taken that day:

The first image was taken by Rhianne Lousie, the second by Tom Swallow, and the third by Brian Matthews.

June

In June, we made the most of the good weather and went on a joint shoot with another photographer to The Roaches in the Peak District. This is somewhere that we have visited together to shoot a few times over the years. I'll have to do a post with images from our previous visits here, because there are some really good ones that I don't think ever really got shared. Anyway, here are the pictures from June:

Not only was it somewhere we enjoy shooting together, we also did some of our favourite things: stick Misuzu into a small space and see if she can make it look comfortable, stick her in the big stocking/sock thing and see if she can make it look graceful, and then give her some material on a very windy day and see if she can hold on to it long enough to get some good shots... I think we nailed it.

July

July is my birthday month and Dave selfishly went on holiday, so all we managed this month was our first lighting workshop. Again, that went really well and although I've not seen many of the images from the photographers who attended, Dave took some test shots that I really like:

In the first image, I am wearing a top that I stumbled across on Vinted and I'm totally in love with it so I couldn't wait to try it out. It photographs beautifully, and really adds something to a classic nude image. I've always loved shooting fashion nude, because it gives you a bit more to play around with and this top works perfectly for it. Then obviously, the classic red material... works every time!

August

One of our shoots in August was a practice session for our first group shoot. We got entirely distracted as always, and had fun playing around with light painting even though we weren't planning on doing the light painting workshop yet (and I had my daughter with us in the studio that day, which was interesting). We got some lovely results that we have since built on, but here is one of our first attempts:

On our next shoot in August, we had a go at bodyscapes. I did a whole post last week consisting of my edits from that shoot which you can find by clicking here, where I explain that we hadn't really done bodyscapes together before, so we put it top of our list of things to shoot, and I'm so glad we did! Here is one of Dave's edits that is just absolutely stunning:

We did our first group shoot on smoke and gels in August. We like to keep things fluid and go with the flow on our events to give people the chance to be more creative and come away with different images. So we ended up shooting some really cool abstract shape stuff. Me and Rhianne Louise had discussed shooting something like this on previous workshops and we decided to give it a go with the blue coloured gel on the lights and mylar on the floor. Here is what we created:

And then me and Dave had a go at a similar thing since we had the lights set up and we had discussed this pose before:

The first one was a serious attempt... and then the second was just us being silly! But I have to say that I do genuinely love it and it's definitely up there with my favourite pictures from the Misuzu and DaveEd collection!

September

And that brings us to now as I'm writing this. We are currently in September and it's been a busy month for me with all of the last minute location shoots before the weather turns rubbish and we are all mostly studio bound until Spring.

We did get in a couple of Misuzu and Dave shoots though. The first was when we went to a new studio in Wolverhampton called Asylum Artists Studio with John Duder. We went to try it out and see if we had any suggestions on how they could make the best use of the space. Although we weren't there for very long and our main focus was showing how to use the space for the studio rather than shooting what we wanted to shoot, we got some lovely images. As it was very recent, there aren't many edits yet but there is this lovely portrait:

Our most recent shoot was about a week ago, so neither of us have had chance to do much with the images. It was just us messing around at ARB Studio again, experimenting with crazy ideas and trying to capture something different. Here are a few edits that Dave has sent me so far that I love:

The first image was us playing around with the gobo for the second time. I thought it would be cool to see what it was like if I was right up against the infinity curve. I love how it came out, especially with the very contrasty edit that Dave did (he knows I love contrast!). The second image was our long exposure/light painting/glow stick shot. I think it's an absolutely insane image but it was so much fun to shoot and came out really really well.

And that has been my year so far in terms of my return to modelling! I feel so grateful to be back doing what I love, with the added bonus of the workshops (my new found passion) and now my website is finally LIVE! I'm proud of me. I can't wait to keep building this space and adding to it.

Big thanks to everyone who looked over my test site for me and gave suggestions on things to tweak until it was something I absolutely love and am genuinely super proud of.

Thank you to all the photographers who have worked with me since I've been back.

Thank you to Dave for putting up with my crazy ideas, co-running the workshops with me and for not letting me give up modelling. You can find more of Dave's work at any of the following links: Instagram, Threads, PurplePort, E-photozine.

And thank you to anyone reading this.

Give me a follow on Instagram or Facebook if you aren't already!

Until next week, Misuzu <3