Sleeping Beauties

Presenting Our Featured Artist of The Month
Unconscious Women Beautiful on Film
The Photo Art of Lakehurst Images

Please Welcome A Morrison  Founder of Lakehurst Images

lakehurst-images.deviantart.co…






A Morrison is one the DA's most talented masters of the camera

His work features museum quality photographic work of damsels in distress, young women tastefully posed , unconscious in styleish clothing and settings utilizing  DSLR Cameras ranging from the quite small but versatile (and beautiful) Fuji x20 to full format Canon EOS 6D. But on the other side:





TLD: Guten Tag ! and thanx for the photo artwork you've shared with us here at The Lady is Down What made you join DA ?

AM: Hi there! I'm glad you enjoy my work that I decided to urge on you via Deviantart I joined DA mostly because I got tired of Flickr which had and has some glitchy upload functions that make me want to clean a sewer with the head of the guy who programmed it. A very dirty sewer. One that doesn't get invited to other sewers birthday parties.
DA ist more simple and does what it is supposed to do: Make my pictures available to you.


TLD: Can you share with us the history behind how you got started in Photography

AM: The possibility to capture a moment on a picture fascinated me as a kid when Polaroid still was the Instagram of the day. But as I was totally free of any skills I had to wait for digital photography to come along. With this a bumbling idiot like me could shoot a thousand lousy pictures without having to spend a fortune on films and the process of developing them. I got my first DSLR (a Canon 350D) in 2006 and began making mistakes instead of pictures. Some of them have made it into my gallery






TLD: Most of your Damsels in Distress Artwork, women in perril in a style similar to 1940's and 50's era pulp fiction novels , Where does your character inspiration come from ?

AM: I've grown up with some of the most obscure vintage horror- and sci-fi-movies that were shown late at night on german TV in the 80ies (Flash Gordon serials, old Dracula movies, THEM, Formicula, Forbidden Planet. Oh, stop. This was a good one. It even had Leslie Nielsen in it!).





Somewhere in the twisted mind of this - back then - 12year-old this stuff had an influence. I've been a fan of vintage horror- and sci-fi-cinema since, aquired quite a collection of movies, posters and other memorabilia that I could get my hands on on this side of the ocean. Along the way I got into collecting pulp magazines as well. When I decided to do pictures with people on them, I felt that it was best to give this some direction. Some unique style if you like. I didn't want to be the 100.000th guy with a camera trying his hand on being the next Herb Ritts or whatever. So I looked into my other hobby for inspiration and discovered that there was an image that had nearly completely vanished from pop culture: The fainted, knocked out, spirited away damsel in distress one can find depicted on so many old movie posters, pulp magazines and so on. So I wanted to show this again, with a more modern twist. With modern women. That's - mixed with a little sleeping beauty images - the story.

TLD: An where do find these fantastic ladies so willing to pose?

AM: Some of them are personal friends of mine, most of them are paid models.


TLD: About your models clothing, scenes, and choice of locations, do you do extensive scouting and research ?


AM: Not as much as one might think. The models I find via some sites on the internet and most of them are pleased to do something else than the usual fashion poses (there are some who don't get the theme of my pictures but remember: These women aren't making their money being rocket scientists). With the personal friends it's more that they ask me to be on these pictures as soon as they have seen my work. Many women I know like the "sleeping beauty"-theme, like being showed vulnerable or just like to act out this dramatic helplessness. Seems like there's not much room anymore for these things today.

As for clothing: I try to stay away from the ubersexy, lapdancer style you see on so many model pictures these days. I work a lot with the models and ask them what they would like to wear, what would be believable. Sometimes I also have a special outfit in mind and if she has it, we use it.

Locations: In the wintertime or when the weather is rough (ergo: 300 days of the year in germany) I use a rented studio, sometimes the models allow me into their apartments to shoot there, I have rented hotel suites and the rest happens outside, often on locations we have to find while shooting as I work with models a bit away from the area I live and where I would know a spot or two.

TLD: How long does it take to capture one scene on film ?

AM: Usually we shoot for about three hours, but one good picture can be taken in seconds or minutes. It depends on so many things, so it's hard to give a timeframe here.


TLD: Your art, photography history, are you formally trained or self taught?

AM: I still learn by my mistakes. Which is a good thing for an artist. Bad thing for a doctor.



TLD: Fave cameras. filters, bounce curtains, postwork software?

AM: I use a Canon 6D most of the time, sometimes the old 600D comes into play and more seldom the Fuji X20. No filters apart from the usual UV-filter (mostly to protect the lens), no bounce courtains. Favorite software would be the latest Photoshop version, but I'm quite happy with an old version of elements that came with one of my cams and some filter packs I found free on the internet. Still trying to figure out GIMP which seems to get better and better but more and more complicated. Or I'm getting dumber and older. Maybe that

TLD: Amazing backgrounds to your shots, the extra details "sells" the shot and provides a cinematic mood.do you adapt the detail from motion pictures

AM: I "steal" a lot inspiration from motion pictures but more subconsciously. I once did a pic on vacation (none of the sleeping beauty theme, so it is not shown here) that rang a bell back in my head somewhere. A year later i rewatched an all-time-favorite-movie of mine (Tarkovski's "Stalker" from 1979) and there it was:





The whole picture, the setting, the colours, the feel if you like was like in that movie. Happens a lot. What I don't do is think "Let's work hard to make this picture look like it was taken as a still from this or that famous movie!". More like a still from a movie that just plays in your head. I provide the still, you write the script around it in your fantasy...




TLD" With a woman on the ground outdoors, are there any funny or precarious incidents that happened while you were shooting ?

AM: There were some, like people staring. But I never had one ask "Is she ok?". I had one elderly man ask "Will she take her clothes off later on?" and I had to tell him that I would love to take his head off if he doesn't leave immediately. One model fell asleep while being in such a pose for about ten minutes in a studio once


TLD: Who is your favorite comic artist?

MP: I guess Gary Larson won't count here...to be honest: I don't know any names apart from Jack Kirby and wouldn't recognize his work when I saw it. Stan Lee! Oh no! He's an actor, sorry (OK, now you can kill me, comic fans *g*).




>>Editor's Note for Non Comic Geeks  Stan Lee (Father of Marvel Comics),  actor , it has to be spelled, "Actor" <<





TLD: Who is your favorite action movie director/producer?

AM: I'd have to go for Ridley Scott here, even if he has destroyed Alien(s) with Prometheus.

TLD: Are you currently marketing any of your artwork ?

AM: Nope

TLD: Last Question. Any advice for those wishing to enter the world of photography and illustration ?

AM: Do what you really love to do (Ok, not if you love to skin taxi drivers with a cheeseknife. Then don't.), try to bring to live the images you would like somebody else bring to live for you but doesn't. Don't get distracted too much by people who praise or criticize your work. Don't put too much money or trust in equipment. Many great pictures were done with quite low key cameras by todays standards. And most of all: Fail. Fail as much and as glorious as you can and be proud of it. Only the one who can make mistakes can make art. (Who the heck do I think I am to write such sophisticated bull? *g*)


BE SURE TO CHECK OUT  THE ARTIST OF THE MONTH GALLERY