Throwback: July

Hello and Happy Monday!

It's my birthday on Friday (Happy birthday to meeeeeee) and I will be 35. I thought it would be cool to go back over the years and choose an image from July every year for today's post to celebrate my birthday.

Obviously I went with entirely black and white images and there are a couple of the years where I didn't actually shoot in July (between having Pixie and coming back to modelling properly a couple of years ago), so there are a few years where I chose images from a shoot that was closest to my birthday for those years.

I like stepping back in time and looking back over the years in various ways, as you can probably tell from previous throwback posts I've done. It's pretty cool to do one in relation to my birthday because it made me think about the images more in terms of 'me when I was X years old' rather than, 'this was X number of years ago'. For some reason, that felt a bit different... I was 23 when I started modelling and that person is a completely different person to who I am today.

Anyway, let's have a look at some images!

2015: 23 years old

The first image in this series is an image taken by Phil Hawley. My story about this image isn't really about the image itself (the shoot was great, Phil was lovely and we shot some really cool images that day) but what i remember most is about the travel. It was a loooong train journey to get to this shot, which I didn't really mind too much before I had Pixie as I would just take a book with me and got to enjoy some chilled reading time. But that day was really really hot, not as bad as it's been so far this year but it was heatwave territory. It delayed all the trains and so they were all absolutely packed and it made a 2 hour train journey twice as long. I was supposed to be going to a bbq at my parents afterwards so my mom picked me up from the station when I finally arrived back in Stoke and I went to join the family bbq. Within about 15 minutes of me arriving, it clouded over and a huge thunderstorm started so we all went to dash inside and I fell off the decking. I was fine, but it made the day memorable as 'that time I took four hours to get home then fell off the decking before I could even have a glass of wine.'

2016: 24 years old

This shot from Buzz taken at a studio day is just wonderful. It wasn't the first time I'd shot with Buzz and so I knew we would get some wonderful shots. In this same place, we shot some art nude of me with a unicorn mask on too because you can't be serious and arty all the time, sometimes you have to be a bit weird!

2017: 25 years old

This shot from Allen Sheffield was taken in a session before a club shot I was doing in the evening. I had shot with Allen once before this, more local to me at a networking night when I first started modelling. One of the images he took of me that first time ended up winning a competition and being displayed in our local museum. I never got to see it in the museum but I did get to keep the print that had been displayed there once the exhibition finished. I still have it.

2018: 26 years old

This triple exposure shot from Jim Booth is fantastic. I remember moving around trying to do loads of different poses to give him plenty to choose from when he told me his idea for this tryptic shot. It was a lot of fun climbing over all of the tyres and I love the final result.

2019: 27 years old

A summer shot with Dave Edkins: we always try to get a shoot in around my birthday and this was the first year that we did that (we had only met in September the year before and if you want to read more about that, you can do so in the Origin Story blog post I wrote). This was the shoot that Dave introduced me to the ice towel that I mentioned in the blog post last Monday. It's funny the random things you remember about a shoot as the time passes.

2020: 28 years old

And another shot from Dave Edkins in the lockdown. As soon as we were allowed to shoot again, of course we did just that. We went to one of our favourite places to shoot on that birthday shoot to get some wonderful art nude images on the rocks. We actually did two shoots in July of 2020... and who can blame us really after being cooped up in lockdown.

2021: 29 years old

I was pregnant in the lead up to my 30th birthday. This shot was taken by Jonathan Frings at a club night at Pathways studio in Chester. I felt like I should let the photographers there know I was pregnant as I was starting to show a bit, but it was before I was officially announcing anything. This shoot was a lot of fun, but I did miss the pre and post shoot drinks in the local Wetherspoons, which was a tradition at the Pathways club nights.

2022: 30 years old

This is one of the shots that was not taken in my birthday month as I didn't get a shoot in around my birthday that year. This shot by John Duder was taken in the May when Pixie was about 4 months old. It was the first shoot I'd done since having her and I'm so glad that I have these images to look back on...

2023: 31 years old

... as well as the host of images that Dave Edkins has captured of me and Pixie over the years (from shoots we intended her to be part of, as well as some where she just photobombed). This shot from 2023 is one of my absolute favourites and I've posted it in a blog post before, but it's always worth a share because it's just great. Not really an image of me because I'm blurred in the background, but it sums up that period of my life perfectly.

2024: 32 years old

This next shot was taken when I was tentatively returning to modelling. It was all because of Dave really, as I wasn't sure I was going to go back to it properly. This shot was taken on a muck about session a little after my birthday when we started to talk seriously about doing those workshops we had been talking about for years at this point. Spoiler: we started to do them the following year.

2025: 33 years old

Next up is a shot from Michael Szabo last year when I was officially back to being Misuzu and running around outside with my clothes off, creating art. This image was my favourite from that shoot, and it was really good to shoot with Mick again after my break because it had been years since I'd seen him and we always get amazing shots together.

2026: 34 years old

And for the latest July image, heres one from Dave Edkins that I shared with you in my blog a couple of weeks ago about shooting the hoodie in the middle of a heatwave. I feel really lucky to get to work with my favourite photographer for a clothing brand that I love.

Don't forget that you can get 25% off in the Nobody Shop with the code Misuzu25, or 50% off a Nobody hoodie with the code VeryHOT50.

And that's all from me for today! I'm off to spend the week celebrating my birthday with my super awesome tiny human... and of course, a shoot with the wonderful Dave Edkins tomorrow to work through some of our silly ideas in the studio! As it's my birthday, anyone reading this should have a drink for me this weekend, it's the rules.

Until next Monday!

Misuzu x