Welcome to AQUILINE MAGAZINE’S flag ship issue! After being asked for years to start a magazine, the journey has begun. Why a magazine you ask? The answer is that it’s a natural extension of the online community we have built. Many would say that the most important part of any community is reaching out to people. This magazine hopes to reach out to Aquiline Photography fans, models, and mentors to generate great content, begin new dialogue, and of course to attract brilliant and artistic people.
things we liked here locally. I mean the girl next door has appeal but how do they hold up nationally?
Aquiline Photography started as just some hobbyist friends hanging out taking pictures. That turned into a decent sized group that felt like family. One can notice that some models appear again and again over the years. I don’t believe any of us saw the family union developing but years later here we are. As this hobby has gotten more and more serious with thousands of world-wide viewers it has evolved again. Now we are an online community of people from Russia to Italy and back to Colorado Springs where it all began. Online communities share experiences and expertise in ways that are mind blowing because they are built on different geographical areas, wide interests, varying beliefs, and crazy amounts of different ideas and skills. Like the original Aquiline Photography ideals everyone is giving of their time voluntarily to create articles, timeless images, and new ideas none of us could have imagined. Remember that just because people are on Facebook or Instagram doesn’t make them a community. While everyone is on the internet a community does not actually know each other but they do wish to contribute and enjoy each other’s works. Artists love communities because how large or how small their community evolves hints at the quality of work they are doing. Artists dream of feedback and fans basking in their hard work. With community the artists no longer have to wait or wonder. Online communities let artists know in a heartbeat if their work is needed or just a personal enjoyment of the art creator.
If one thinks of laundry bouncing in their dryer at home during laundry day this is a good example. How many times has the dryer stopped and the clothes all been completely folded? In the universe there are uncounted trillions of ways chaos can be the output. There is only one way in the universe for things to take on total order. For the clothes to be perfectly folded, a human consciousness has to focus on it and make it that one in a multi-trillion state of order and neatness.
In the case of Aquiline Photography, the online community has been very motivating. It was somewhat shocking people really liked the same
Most people pick up on the fact that AQ is a photography service with many races. They get that women of many flattering sizes are represented. At some point they may even get that we dabble up and down the electromagnetic spectrum to find our science-like edge among endless other photographers. The style is what may allude them. In a way it’s the inverse of entropy. Inverse entropy is the key phrase for what drives the looks and artistic style. Entropy is defined as lack of order or predictability and is gradual decline into disorder.
How does this pertain to model photography? It is the models who do the hard exercise. They shop for the most gorgeous outfits when they can afford them. They spend time doing their incredible hair and maybe nails. When that model walks into the studio they are the inverse of entropy. Sure there are others who embrace not bathing and chaos as a lifestyle. However, it is the energy and focus that is inverse entropy presiding at AQ! Please enjoy the following articles in this issue of our magazine. We will showcase many opinions and technically inspiring people we hope will make you want to read issue after issue. Tracy Rose is a technologist, artist, photographer and general imagery aficionado from Colorado Springs, CO. His photography can be seen in numerous online publications and restaurants at the end of the universe. About the Cover: We shot the cover at the Paint Mines in Calhan Colorado. The colorful clay seen was used as war-paint by Native Americans long ago in the past. AQ shot the image from one cliff-face while Nicole13 was on another quite a ways away. The wind speed was incredible!
Model: Cherry Bomb MUA: Cherry Bomb Photographer: Aquiline
What Is Beauty? We’ve all heard someone shoot us that line about beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Books, movies, television; hell, even your grandma probably said it once or twice about some finger paint atrocity of yours that she put up on the fridge when you were six. But you’ve never stopped to really consider what it means? We’re told by other people what “beauty” is. Our own visions of individual beauty are constantly being overwritten by what advertisers and manufacturers tell you is beautiful. What’s attractive? What’s not? I come across a dozen click bait articles every week in my Facebook feed where some high school acquaintance is gushing about what’s “hot.” And it isn’t just a matter of self-image and artistic view. Beyond photo shopped shots of airbrushed models being whittled down to the new aesthetic, we’re being forced to view beauty through someone else’s eye. Living in Music City, USA, I have my choice of one classic rock station and thirty country music channels. The problem is, as I’m tuning the dial (yes, I still have a dial in my truck) I can’t discern pop music from country music or any other genre. It’s all gradually being homogenized to fit into a very specific, lukewarm sound. The literary world isn’t doing much better. Every day I see new advertisements for the Hunger Trials: The Divergent Twilight Giver or some other ridiculous tweenage pseudo saga set in a ridiculously bland dystopian society. It seems like everything is being thrown into this cultural gazpacho without any thought about how it impacts our culture. I finally joined Instagram last year. It doesn’t sound like a big deal to most people but, for me, this was a huge decision. As an author and photographer who, until last year, still looked at # and said “pound” instead of “hashtag” getting onto the social media platform to try and network and advertise work was clearly going to be a challenge. I was worried because not everyone can see things the way I see them. There were all those doubts and self-recriminations about posting any of my pictures or stories online where complete strangers could not only access them but comment on them. The first few weeks I felt naked, completely exposed. It could have been a personal catastrophe but it wasn’t. Suddenly, I was connected to pages and people who shared my unique perspective on art and beauty. More importantly though I was finding new interests and outlets, things I never could have imagined before. As someone who grew up in the nerd and Goth cultures, I have my own particular ideas about beauty. I love the works of H.R. Geiger and Vincent Van Gogh alike. Geiger for his strange, sexually charged, imaginative
creatures and landscape. Van Gogh for his color and his vision. I follow a number of horror magazines and special effects companies on Instagram while also enjoying sets of models like London Andrews or burlesque star Dita Von Tease. AQ has quite a few amazing sets and models including their infrared and tape sets, the latter of which have some elements of both science fiction fantasy and light bondage that are provocative and intriguing. I listen to a variety of musicians across a spectrum of different genres from classic jazz to nerdcore rap while reading classic and contemporary strange fiction and admiring the smoke rings billowing up from the hookah on the patio. You find beauty where it exists and, to me, I find it in the macabre and the strange, in the tantalizing and slightly taboo. Your idea of beauty, of art and the artistic could be anything. It might be in the societal mold, in those cookie cutter idols hammered out by conglomerates every other week to turn a profit. You might live for #caturday when Instagram is awash in cute kittens playing the piano, rolling around in boxes of yarn, or just scowling back at you from the cell phone display with the caption “NOPE” under their fluffy little faces. Bowls of fruit, nudes, still life or the great outdoors, whatever it is that brings that spark of imagination and life to you. Your views of beauty are limited only by your imagination and your ability to open yourself to new forms of art and experience. Take what you love, what you know, and look out beyond it just a ways. A picture is just a picture unless it makes you feel something. It’s only after it leaps off the page, comes off the canvas or the out of monitor and slaps you in the face that it becomes a beautiful work of art. Beauty exists in everything, from the mundane to the extraordinary. All you have to do is look around and you’ll find it. Dan Lee is an author and amateur photographer from Nashville, TN. His fiction has been seen in numerous online zines and publications and links can be found through his blog at dannoofthedead.wordpress.com
Model: Lolita MUA: Lolita Photographer: Aquiline
Truly Blessed
Currently wrapping up work on her follow up Count Your Blessings with help from her wonderful editor, Tina Rosekrans. The book should be available through Amazon later this summer. Modeling, writing and bodybuilding are just some of her many hobbies as she passionately pursues her acting and reality television career. Feel free to follow her along moving onward and upward in all her positive and energetic adventures. Modeling website: www.modelmayhem.com/carnes Facebook page: Blessing Carnes Amazon Author Page: “Daddy Was an Exorcist� Blessing Macho
AQ got to shoot with Blessing Carnes during the summer of 2015 and some equally beautiful days to boot! All models have something that has motivated them to move toward modeling. Blessing was brought up with a very sheltered childhood ironically. Those extremes may have been her fuel. Deriving a vibrant, blossoming girlish persona without quite realizing her full potential she was eager to learn and devour knowledge wherever she found it. A lifetime of surreal experiences, some good, some bad, she found herself becoming not only a competition body builder but the winner of the 2007 Nationwide Natural Bodybuilding Competition. Within another year she would find herself and her husband fighting against the elements to save their home from floods that raged through their town. Now, as a model and author of the intriguing memoir, Daddy Was an Exorcist she continues to broaden her horizons including her current endeavor to pursue the reality survival television spotlight. The challenges and tests to prove herself for such a show include videotaping real life survival skills and training, learned from her father during her homeschool days. With beauty, brains, and the talents learned over a young and unique life, there seems to be no end to what she can do. Not only does she accept new challenges as they come her way but she welcomes them with open arms. With strength and a courageous personality that have made her the woman she is today, she is truly an inspiration. Desire, passion, romance; all come blazing from her eyes with each photo snapped. Her memoir, Daddy Was an Exorcist might be one of the best ways to better understand the passion burning behind those eyes.
Model: Blessing Carnes MUA: Blessing Carnes Photographer: Aquiline
Model: Loren Reece MUA: Loren Reece Photographer: Aquiline
Model: Kasey May MUA: Kasey May Photographer: Aquiline
Think big. Shoot small! As a kid, I often imagined me to be a huge giant looking down at the small stones to be large rocks, the grass and flowers to be trees, streams to be rivers and waterfalls, and ants to be humans. I noticed the equality to the physics acting on the small objects compared to large objects. When you start looking at the small things from that perspective, the little world starts to look and feel like you are flying an airplane through a valley. This made me appreciate the details in the smaller objects. By simply laying down and looking for the details, the equalities from the small world to the large world we see every day has many of the same features, and is actually more unique.
One of my favorite objects to shoot is water. Water brings life into the images both if it’s calm and clear as glass on a lake, and when it’s flowing. Therefore, I love shooting long exposure shots of waterfalls. Unfortunately reaching the large and mighty waterfalls requires a few hours driving. When out taking photos, I often come across smaller (and sometimes larger) streams that have the same components as mighty waterfalls. Looking at the stream from a human perspective high above the stream, it’s normally very dull. But when you get into the perspective you would have if that stream was a large waterfall, it turns into a beautiful and impressive waterfall. And there is a lot of them that have never seen a camera before.
I came across a rockslide where large boulders are stacked on top of each other, creating space in between them. And lucky me, a stream is flowing down through it. When looking inside this space, it has the same feeling as looking into large caves in deserted areas with a large waterfall in it. When I shoot photos of this small world, I imagine me to be a tiny person looking at this huge scenery or objects and thinking of where I would have been standing to shoot the best photo of this scenery. Then I place the camera at this position and starts shooting. As the scene is small, you have the power of setting the lighting and modify the scenery as you please. Adding a few rocks and removing some twig to improve the photo. In this setting, you are God, and it’s only the imagination that sets the limits. Think big and shoot small!
Remi Palm is a photo enthusiast and software engineer from Vennesla, Norway
The Luxury of Art, Photography, and Modeling Art, Photography, and Modeling intertwine in life in all aspects. Modeling is stereotyped to be based off of the beauty of a person, place, or element in the world. From the viewpoint of a model, I view every location and characteristic of life in everything I look at as a beautiful moment to be captured whether it’s a photo, on film, a video or mentally remembered. I can view an old building as an amazing historical landmark which every person can view sentimental memories from older elements in the world. Art is just as majestic as watching the sun rise or staring at the stars at night. The rush of the daily life can always prevent one from seeing the beauty in the world.
“Think about it when you get up early and actually get to see the sunrise, the beauty makes you want to capture the moment.”
Think about it when you get up early and actually get to see the sunrise, the beauty makes you want to capture the moment. When you think about even your very first
Do you remember when you first saw a piece of art and
vacation to somewhere new, the lifestyle, music, and
just thought, “Wow!” I remember seeing a piano for the
entertainment was different but even then you captured
first time up close in the third grade and just thinking
the moment with your camera or on your phone.
“This is so beautiful.” I still get super excited and get
Sculptures, paintings and photographs are all of
mesmerized at the sight of pianos. No matter where I see
something that was modeled or an artistic creation that
a piano it will always bring back the memories of
we want as a visual aide. We take pictures every day and
playing my first Mozart piece. I am a huge music lover
we check our surroundings, the lighting, and especially
too, it’s the best piece of art to me but every day life’s
either the smile or the pose we are making. In very many
luxury is art. With art there is photography, the right
ways we all are artistic photographers that like to model
angle, the right lighting, the scenery, photographers have
to our own rhythm.
a lot of work to do in producing the best photo for their masterpiece. Photographers and models may not even have the same idea for a photo but they can always take both ideas into consideration.
Virginia Marie is a glamour model, music enthusiast and student working on her MBA from Colorado Springs, USA
Poised to Pose By Casey Elliott
Model Abella Harlow
the plunge on that contract? Do it! An agency finds the work for you for those of us that have a commercial look “outside of that look is harder, you have to build a network for yourself.” Building a network for yourself requires a marketable product sample so get that portfolio together! You’ll need a few shots to get started. Trading your time for images (TFCD) is ok to start out, but our model in the know makes the point that while TFCD can get you going in the right direction, “Once you get the message, hang up the phone. If it is a commercial shoot and your image will be printed and out there, you should be paid.” Never do a nude or implied shoot without being paid. You may ask yourself, what should I charge for my time as a model? While that is a topic that could take a whole article itself, a simplified answer would be anywhere from $50 to $200 and hour depending on the style of the shoot and what you have to offer. You have to adjust the price accordingly – Don’t forget your travel expenses for those far away photography gigs!
"I get rejected like people get coffee"
From sending snap shots to a modeling agency at twenty three to being printed internationally and winning an award for best alternative model within a couple of years – Abella Harlow shares with us the progression of her career and some simple advice for making the best of yours. Some of the first questions to arise in a potential models mind are; can I model? Do I have the right look? Where would I start? While there are not any guidelines set in stone, one could find the answer to these questions by doing something as simple as sending a few candid selfies to a local modeling agency – at least that’s what our own local model did. “I didn’t realize you could be a model just anywhere, I thought, it couldn’t be Colorado – it has to be Paris or something.”
“You are there to represent someone else’s image not your own, things go wrong all the time.” Abella got the inspiration to try modeling from seeing a friend model, and after sending off her snap shots to a reputable local agency, she was cast for a shoot that same week. From that very first shoot her career took off in a big way. “I was very lucky, the photos from that shoot ended up being printed in different countries.” Where do I start? When asked about signing with an agency Abella cited that her agency has always been respectful to her which “isn’t always the case with other agencies.” And when it comes to whether or not to take
Model Abella Harlow
Do I have the right look to be a model? When we asked Abella to weigh in on the body image debate she had this to say; “At the end of the day you have to be comfortable with yourself. Don’t project your own body image issues onto others. What most models don’t understand is that you are not always going to look pretty as a model, the goal of high fashion is not to look pretty, and it’s ok to look bizarre or different” It is important to remember to be easy going in this industry while still maintaining standards. Picking the right photographer to work with can be key. If you have a good ‘alternative’ or unique look, you may want to hunt down some of the well-known photographers in
your area that can get you great shots to start out with, don’t be afraid to pay for a quality shoot to get yourself ahead of the competition. If you get some great shots with a high ranked photographer they will be seen by more photographers that will solicit you for modeling jobs as well. That being said, Abella wants models to remember that you still need to be modest in your ego when you are working with professionals, mentioning that, “You are there to represent someone else’s image not your own, things go wrong all the time.”
of the most talented, beautiful and creative people while travelling and expanding our own art form, and for some, that is all they want or need. For Abella? She found some old pictures of her mother that she loved and she thought “I want pretty pictures of myself to look back on when I’m old.” We all agree she is very well on her way.
How can I set myself up for a good shoot? There are a few key things to bring that every model should have: 1- A set of black and a set of white undergarments. (Seamless is better) 2- Two pairs of shoes – one black and one white. 3- Water and food; posing for hours will take it out of you! Stay hydrated and bring a snack. 4- A good book; sometimes you can’t move much and there may be a lot of waiting around.
Model Abella Harlow
Congratulations to Abella Harlow for her award as 303 Magazines’ Alternative Model of the Year! We look forward to seeing more of her work as she conquers the local modeling scene and continues to grow her presence abroad. Her final take away thought for our models out there perfecting their craft; “Don’t get discouraged, people aren’t going to always love your work. You’ll be rejected all the time, don’t let it get you down. You might get 50 no’s before you get a yes – but it’s the yes that makes all the difference.
Model Abella Harlow
The most important thing to bring? A good attitude! What is the end goal? / Where does a model career end? The possibilities are infinite. In this field we meet some
Casey Elliott is an Actress, Photographer, Author, Model, Outdoor Adventurist and Denver Creative
Five Things I Didn’t Know Before Modeling
and drinking lots of water at least a week before your photo shoot. Your photographers will thank you!
We all think we know how easy it is to model. Show up and be pretty right? Not much to it, tall pretty girls get the best job ever and they don’t even have to “work”. All they have to think about is what to eat and exercise. That was a lie. There is a great deal to it and even for those who are models but not runway models. I am too short, too “big”, too old, not conventionally pretty enough for it, but I do enjoy getting some pictures done every now and again and I have learned that a lot of work has to go into modeling.
“I am the type of model that if the photographer has an idea I do my best to achieve it as that’s my job for the shoot.”
1) It hurts sometimes! You read that correct. Sometimes getting the perfect pose hurts badly! You have to stay tight and strong. Sometimes you get shoved into tiny places, sometimes you are in the middle of nowhere and you have to hit something and look like its nothing. The perfect pose might need to be held a while with small changes to get different pictures and you can have back aches, side cramps etc. you still have to look pleasant. 2) Safety and research. Local models who don’t take proper precautions disappear and that is scary. Please do research on who you plan to work with, ask questions, and get references from other models that they work with. Take someone with you, tell people where you will be and check in with them. My advice is if someone doesn’t want you to bring a person with you, and doesn’t give you some names of people they have worked with for you to contact then maybe you don’t want to work with them. 3) Stay hydrated and get enough sleep! I never realized how much water and sleep helped in day to day life! If you go out drinking and clubbing the night before a photo shoot, your pictures will look awful no matter how much makeup you have on. Please make sure you are sleeping enough
4) Practice makes perfect! That is a phrase I heard all my life from riding my bike, to playing my instruments in band, cheerleading, to real life work. I work at a dance studio so it makes sense to hear it at my job. It works with poses as well. Practice in front of a mirror so you can see what your face does, how your body moves, if you like something. It is important to practice your poses you so you look like you know what you are doing in front of the camera. I am the type of model that if the photographer has an idea I do my best to achieve it as that’s my job for the shoot. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions or for visual aids of what they have in mind so you can practice! 5) It’s liberating! I believe doing a great photo shoot for anyone is important! It helps you be confident in your body, you can get a full treatment of hair and makeup (who doesn’t love that once in a while?). Something about being in front of a camera can make a person feel so confident and then seeing the final images and knowing that it is you is a great feeling. Don’t be scared to go out and try modeling once for yourself.
Nicole13 is a Model, Dance Instructor and COS Creative