I don’t need therapy, I can just take photographs. At least, that’s what you might think when you see these photos.
Florian asked me if I had any pictures of moths for the cover of his new single (I’m assuming if an LP is now called an EP, then a single will be called an ES?). I know he also prefers his photos to be dark, gritty, and wild. So, all we were missing was the model.
To make the whole thing make sense, I had a Death’s-head Hawk-moth flown in from England – because – why not? When it arrived and I was holding it in my hand in the office, a fat spider came out from under the stairs. One of those specimens where you’re not entirely sure if the glass is really big enough to catch it. With a bit of coaxing, I managed to get it in and took it, along with the moth, down to the basement. If it was so determined to be in the photo, who was I to argue?
With the wet plates, the exposure times were at least 2 minutes, and with the X-ray films, about 30 seconds. As you can clearly see from the sharpness, although it was happily running in circles between exposures, it stayed perfectly still in the spotlight.
In the end, the spider didn’t make it onto the cover – but oh well, it will have quite a story to tell the others in the garden.
