thomasholmphoto

Home Decoration

I mean, who wouldn’t like to have Mynte hanging around the living room like this?
Just fun and games, but she is amazing to work with.
Unfortunately, she seems to be semi-retired and only does the occasional shoot when she feels like it.

Natural light from the windows in the living room.

Broken wall Sunset

One of my Patrons requested more with Nat Damsgaard, so I scoured the archives and “squeezed the lemon” an extra time and edited these four images.

It’s sunset in the old control tower. When the sun is out during sunset, this location has the most wonderful light.

Broken Wall Sunset - BTS

Nat doing acrobatics in the old controltower.

Box Fox - BTS video

Sylph Sia working a tiny sliver of light in the studio.

Box Fox

Sylph Sia in the studio some years ago.
She is such an elegant poser.

Natural light on the first image adapting her pose in a sliver of sun hitting the floor and wall, and the second is my trusty Westcott 59” Zeppelin with a black V-Flat on the shadow side providing negative fill.

Georgia in the Quarry

I love the different quarries in Lanzarote where I shot this small set with Georgia.
The textures are amazing, but I can also promise you the models hate it while posing. The volcanic rock, while looking great in images, is somewhat unkind to the feet, and various cuts are inevitable. During last year's workshops, I earned the nickname "Dr. Thomas" due to my frequent wound cleaning and fixing abilities.

If you read the post published on Sept 15, you know I have some extra equipment in my camera bag. One thing to add to this is that I always carry a first aid kit. I rarely use it, but it’s pretty bad karma to need it and not have it in a remote location.

Varvara

A couple of oldies with Varvara shot 10 years ago. For whatever reason, I never posted these, which I shot in a 250m2 daylight studio with windows all around and a massive light strip in the ceiling.

I’m cuing up for another shoot with Varvara btw.

Peach Shibari with clamps

Wiana and I did some pretty raunchy sets some time back; you can see a bit of the "aftermath" above.

I think this was the first time I tried to make a tie that would effectively spread the buttocks apart, and I have to admit I was overthinking it.
But this is what led to the tie posted on Sept 17.

For this, we wanted to keep it raw, so I brought out the ringflash to concentrate the light and applied a lot of oil to Wiana’s body to create the shine.

If you are on Discord, in the photographers and Vault tiers, definitely check out the Bonus images.

Trio in Black

Cassie, The Endless Sinner, and Wiana Model shot in the winefields of La Geria on Lanzarote.

The island's wine region was covered in volcanic ash during the last eruption about 150 years ago. Some resourceful farmers found that digging holes down to the still-fertile soil beneath the ash would protect the plants from wind and allow dew to reach the roots, providing nutrition. Lanzarote does produce some nice white wines; El Grifo and Rubicon are among my favorites if you're ever on the island.

Suitcase Bounty

This is an evolution of the Rope I did with CB, published on September 4th.

I had booked an old water tower converted into an Airbnb and spent a couple of days with The Endless Sinner and Wiana model, and we ended up doing some kinky and erotic stuff, among other things, in this set.

The natural light from the few windows was far from ideal, and the environment was challenging, but overall, it turned out nicely.

Duo Shibari adds another layer to the underlying story or fantasy, in my opinion.

Suitcase Bounty - BTS Movie

Wiana and the Endless Sinner on a suitcase, the entire BTS movie.

Suitcase bounty - Teaser

Wiana and The Endless Sinner are on a massive suitcase.

You can have the backstory and the BTS video in the Photographers and Vault tiers.

Portal inverso

Georgia and Cassie are doing their thing in front of a nice hole in the rocks in Lanzarote.

This is, in my opinion, nice but a little shallow.

Two models making nice shapes in a frame, but it has little meaning or real connection to the environment. It’s pleasing, maybe a little interesting, but I can’t read any emotion from it, so it doesn’t really resonate.

What do you think?

Is this a good, OK, or Meh type picture, and why?

Down and Dirty - Teaser

Silas is getting a bit dusty.
Full story and complete image sets in the Photographers and Vault tiers.

Down and Dirty - BTS movie

BTS from the shoot with Silas in the hallway of the control tower.

Down and Dirty

There are many ways to work with models, and the method you choose can greatly impact the outcome.

Silas is a very intuitive model, and since this was one of our first shoots, having chatted with her for some time, I decided to let her go with the flow, which in this case meant getting down and dirty (literally).

In practical terms, I’ll pick a spot to shoot, offer a vague suggestion on where to start, and then watch as she evolves, providing constant encouragement and a few suggestions when I think it would improve the set.

This also means coming prepared, so bring oil for the body, a picnic blanket to keep a clean space, wet wipes, and a towel for cleanup afterward.

This reminded me of another shoot I once did with a semi-famous traveling model. We were shooting at an abandoned, very dirty factory. I warned her about the dirt (since I didn’t bring cleaning supplies), and almost instantly, she was slithering all over the floor, getting super dirty. I felt the set didn’t match the aesthetic I was aiming for, and after she got messy, it was a lost cause because we couldn’t clean her up, leaving her with a dirty - and not in a good way - look for the rest of the day.
This ended up wasting a good day’s shoot.

All of the images with Silas was done with natural light.

Back on the Block

In about a week, we (The Endless Sinner, Wiana Model, Zsan Of Sweden, and Georgia Brown) are heading “back On The Block” to Lanzarote to make two workshops.

This location is both fun and engaging.
I don’t know the background story of the white spots, but they do add to the interest, and I get associations with skyscrapers or a city-scape when I see them.

Prepare for liftoff

One of the principles I have when working on location is that I want the models to interact with the environment.

Now that can be a bit tricky on a 15m 50' wide runway that's flat as a pancake.

But since runways usually have (incredibly long) arrows painted on them, there are still options if you can create some echo shapes, and as you can see, that's what we did.

And I'll bet you just had an association with "playing airplane" from your childhood or kidt pretending to be airplanes.

But everything counts.
Everything that will make you look longer than 3 seconds at a picture is a win in my book.

Open Suspension - Multicam BTS

Just over 100 minutes and the full shibari session with Gracie Sweet from her first ever suspension. I took my time on this one to minimize the pain; it's better to have a good experience initially.

Open Suspension - Teaser

The reason behind the title of this post has a lot to do with the type of suspension I made with Gracie. If you are not yet on the Photographers or vault tier, I'd suggest you upgrade if you want to watch the almost two-hour-long multicam Shibari session and all the images in the series.

Open suspension

At some point, I posted a video from one of my Shibari suspension images in an Instagram story, and Gracie Sweet almost immediately sent me a message saying she wanted to try that.

Some months later, she was planning a trip to Denmark, and we set up a Studio Day for her at my studio and a solo Shibari session the day before.

I knew what I wanted to do, but I made things a bit too complicated for myself, so I ended up with too much rope and too little time to perfect it. However, I still love the type of suspension. It easily turned into an “open all areas,” and neither Gracie nor I minded that.

I hope you don’t mind either?

Double Interlock

Emma Helena is in the studio.

I’d set up a string curtain and my focusable Elinchrom spotlight to create a hard light source that would generate hard shadows (you need a focusable spotlight for this, or the sun). And then we experimented with creating body shapes and incorporating her shadow into the image.

I've done this many times before, so the challenge is to make something that's better or different from the others, and in this case, we went all in on working with the shadow.

Kung Fu Kayla

Art model Kayla was in Copenhagen, and I had booked her for a day of a private workshop with @AdamLovesEve.

We went out on the runway (yup, almost the same place as last time).

One of my lessons of the day was teaching Adam that you can use nearly anything as a location, and a case in point is Kayla standing on a 40cm Concrete block.

I easily edited out some trees and straws popping up behind the concrete, and all of a sudden, you have gorgeous sculptural images shot on location in sunlight.

Perspective in this case is anything, and shooting from below often creates a nice, calm background.

Roller Girl - Teaser

Georgia Satisfying her exhibitionistic streak (and then some) with the Gimbal cameras and of course the photoshoot.

Roller Girl

I saw some shots of Georgia wearing roller skates and asked her to bring them next time she was in Denmark. Other than using them for the duo workshop with Wiana, we set up a solo shoot the day after.

The weather looked a bit dodgy, but I packed up all the gear I needed, and two cameras for making BTS movies, and off we went. I was driving an electric scooter out to the runway, some 12-15 minutes away.

We set up, started shooting, and Georgia got her exhibitionistic streak satiated with the BTS camera and the van driving down the runway (Check the BTS movie).

Then, the first drops came.

We could see the massive rainfall move toward us, so essentially, we just threw everything into the camera bag and started going back, me driving the scooter, Georgia on her skates, holding on for more speed.

And then the torrential rain hit. After two minutes, we were as soaked as if we had been in a shower, and after two more minutes, we were driving in 5cm/2” water on the runway; it just couldn’t run off.

Georgia looked like a drowned kitten and had to redo her hair and makeup.

So we continued shooting some nudes, me only wearing undies as all my clothes were soaked…

Just another day at the office.

Rollergirl - Duo-cam BTS Movie

A short but sweet shoot with Georgia Brown. YOu'll realize why it was short when you see the end.

White Pocket

Roarie Yum in White Pocket, a part of the Grand Stairsace in Utak. It’s a magical place where the rock resembles a massive human brain. This image was one of the ones that didn’t cut my previous book, Venus on Mars. There is something both tranquil and alien about it, though.

Regina in Harness

I had bought a cheap Chinese harness, and Regina was the first model it actually fit. She didn’t mind trying it out.

Light is precisely as you see it. Streaming in through the window, up against a wall I built to be able to get light patterns to work with during winter.

It took me a couple of days to make that wall, but it was well worth the effort.

Angel Hair with Sylph Sia

This was one of those super-annoying things that happens, but you have no control over.

I had the Australian Sylph, Sia, over for a 3-day trip. The first evening we had gorgeous weather, but the rest of the journey offered fog, rain, heavy winds, and to taunt us further, perpetual sunshine just off the coast half the time…
I shot this in heavy winds, using my Profoto B2 flash in HSS (high-Speed-Sync) mode to add some shape to the light, as the light was very flat in reality. I do adore the rays of the sun through the clouds in the background, but it would have been great to have them closer..

Hold me tight - ROFL

This is one of the cases where the main image we eventually ended up with almost was superceded, but a lot of the “off-shots” that happened where the weight got a little on the heavy side, and the girls just cracked up with laughter (and I kept shooting on purpose). I love this set, and I'm thrilled to be able to share it with you here on Patreon. It’s more fun than the behind-the-scenes movie.